WORDS
It fife inM y o t y f p j j p g e !
from the
WORD by Charles L. Feinberg, Th.D., Ph.D., Director, Talbot Theological Seminary
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M y s t e r y
T he word mystery is never found in the Old Testament. The Greek musterion occurs 27 times in the New Testament. It is thus a truth limited to the New Testament, as far as the Bible is concerned. Webster defines mystery as “ something that has not been, or cannot be, ex plained” ; “ something beyond human comprehension” ; “ a mysterious sacred thing” ; “ a profound secret.” In the classical religion of the Greeks and Romans the word (it was used in the plural) had reference to religious rite's and ceremonies to which only the initiate were admitted. The Greek and Roman mysteries (from the sixth century B. C. on) drew heavily upon nature worship, and dealt with the problem of death, the question of an offended deity, and the matter of cleansing. Most elaborate and highly developed of all the Greek mysteries were the Eleusin- ian, enacted as a sort of religious drama at Eleusis. They appealed strongly to the emotional nature of the participants. There were an autumn and a spring festival. These included purification, great proces sions, mystical aspirations, priestly pronouncements and the permission granted by the priest to see certain sacred objects. Much stress was placed upon immortality. There is one great contrast between the heathen mys teries (to say nothing of those which go deeper into the essence and nature of religion) and those of the New Testament. The former are only for the initiate; the latter are for all. When we come to the New1Testa ment and study closely the word musterion, we are amazed at the breadth of meaning and wealth of spiritual truth which inhere in the word. Thayer in his Greek-English lexicon defines it: “ In the N. T., God’s plan of providing salvation for men through Christ, which was once hid den but now revealed . . . used gen erally, of Christian truth as hidden from ungodly men.” In the New Testament the word refers to a re vealed secret. A good definition; is found in Romans 16:25, 26: “ Now to him that is able to establish you ac cording to my gospel and the preach-
ing of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which hath been kept in silence through times eternal, but now is manifested, and by the scriptures of the prophets, ac cording to the commandment of the eternal God, is made known unto all nations unto obedience of faith.” The references to the word under consid eration are found from Matthew to Revelation, with ten of the usages in Ephesians and Colossians. The first occurrence of the word in the New Testament is in Matthew 13:11. See also the parallel passages in Mark 4:11 and Luke 8:10. In these portions the Lord Jesus Christ, confronting the unbelief of His peo ple and their coming final rejection of Him as their Messiah and King, in dicates what God had always pur posed for the time of His absence from the administration of His king- : dom on earth. He outlines to His disciples the commencement, course, and consummation of the Church age, seen in the parables of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. The truth is stated that these revealed things are hidden from many hearts. It is not that these are meant to be hidden, but that lack of receptivity by unbe lieving hearts makes them incompre hensible. The features of this present age, then, are the subject of the first usage of this important word. The citation in Romans 11:25 dis closes that, although the Old Testa ment had repeatedly set forth the blindness of the people of Israel (see Isaiah 6:9, 10), it is now for the first time made known what the termina tion of this malad^ will be. The blind ness will go on for Israel nationally until the Body of Christ is completed. Then those whose hearts are open will receive Christ as Saviour unto their salvation, and His coming to Zion will mean the turnine: away of ungodliness from Jacob. The other reference in Romans to mystery is the one we have given as a definition of the word, namely, Romans 16:25. It is the barest mention of the mys tery which is elaborated on in Ephesians 3, which we shall treat next month in this column. (T o be continued.) I
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MAY 1954
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