1. What did we learn concerning the mystery of God in our last study?
"Which in other generations was not made known unto the sons of men, as it hath now been revealed unto His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit." Verse 5.
2. In what one respect was it not understood previous to the days of the apostle?
"To wit, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, and fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel." Verse 6.
3. According to what was Paul made a minister of the gospel?
"Whereof I was made a minister, according to the gift of that grace of God which was given me according to the working of His power." Verse 7.
4. What estimate does he put upon himself?
"Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, was this grace given." Verse 8.
5. For what purpose was it given him?
"To preach unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ; and to make all men see what is the dispensation of the mystery." Verses 8, 9.
6. What does he again repeat concerning this mystery?
"Which for ages hath been hid in God who created all things." Verse 9.
7. But what was now God's intent in its fuller revelation?
"To the intent that now unto the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places might be made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God." Verse 10.
8. According to what is this intent?
"According to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord." Verse 11.
9. What assurance does this give to Paul, and what does he ask?
"In whom we have boldness and access in confidence through our faith in Him. Wherefore I ask that ye may not faint at my tribulations for you, which are your glory." Verses 12, 13.
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Notes
1. "The Gentiles."—It is a strange thing, in the light of such scriptures as this, that men will contend that God has one plan for the Jew and another for the Gentile, that He makes a difference between the two, that if He has the gospel for one, He has more than the gospel for the other, and that for the Jew He has a higher position in the closing days of the Christian dispensation than He has for the Gentile. There are promises and prophecies in the Old Testament concerning the Jews which are difficult to be understood. There are prophecies of the restoration of Israel which would seem to indicate that the Jews are to be restored again to their own land; but in the light of the clearer later revelation, all these things are plain. All the Old Testament prophecies may be classified under one of three heads: either they were fulfilled in the establishment of the Jews in their own land either before or after the Babylonian captivity; or they were typical prophecies, fulfilled in part to the Jews there, but to be fulfilled in the fullest sense with the true Israel of God under Christ; or they were conditional prophecies in which the Jews never met the conditions, and which, of course, God could not fulfil to them. See Jer. 18:7-10. But when our Lord Jesus Christ came, and was rejected of the Jews, there was a different régime in the carrying out of God's purpose. Not but that His purpose has been always the same, but the nation that was to hold together during all the centuries until the Messiah should appear had accomplished its end, and from that time on it must stand in the same relationship to Him as all other nations; and therefore all who come in from all other nations are of the Israel of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, both Jew and Gentile by faith,—the Gentile a fellow heir and fellow member of the body—the church—and a fellow partaker of all the promises in Christ Jesus. "And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise." Gal. 3:29. "For they are not all Israel, that are of Israel: neither, because they are Abraham's seed, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called. That is, it is not the children of the flesh that are children of God; but the children of the promise are reckoned for a seed." Rom. 9:6-8. In the gospel of Jesus Christ, in the fold of God, there is neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ is all in all.
2. "The working of His power."—It is God's power that the apostle magnifies, and the gift that was bestowed upon him as apostle and as a minister of God's grace was not because of Paul's achievement, but was wholly of God. So every disciple can say, for every child of His has been made a partaker of the grace given through Christ, and behind that grace and in its ministration all the power of God is pledged to His disciple.
3. "Who am less."—Note that the apostle's glory does not extend to himself. He is not saying, with the new-thought disciples of the present day, that "I am," and "I am power," "I am great," and "I am light," and "I am all that God is." Such words are blasphemous. The apostle Paul declared that he was less than the least of all saints, and yet to him God gave this great grace, and he magnifies the grace, and he magnifies the power of God. It would be a denial of God to do otherwise, and it would also be a denial of God to magnify himself.
4. "To preach."—The margin reads, "to bring good tidings unto the Gentiles;" in other words, to carry the gospel. He gives it another term here, "the unsearchable riches of Christ." That is what the gospel brings. There is absolutely no limit to its power, to its blessings. No word of inspiration places a limit upon it. It is able to save to the uttermost, and able to satisfy the hungriest soul. By the term "unsearchable" is not meant that which we can not search, but it means that which by all searching we can not fathom. We may find the riches, and we may enjoy them. So persons do in this world sometimes concerning the riches that perish; but sometimes those with vastly more than a competence, with wealth enough to enable them to live affluently until they die, yet are worrying because they know the limit of their wealth. The Christian need not have that worry; he may be so poor that he feels that he is less than the least, he may be so unworthy that he feels that he is not entitled to a farthing of God's wealth, but if he accept the gospel and have faith in the Master, there is no end to the riches to which faith opens the door, either in this world or in the world to come. It was these unsearchable riches of which the apostle is telling the story, and not only that, but to make all men see, or to bring to light to all men, the dispensation of the mystery.
5. "Which for ages hath been hid in God."—Even in those ages men learned of God, and learned of the exceeding riches of His grace. But when Christ the Son of God died, they saw more than had ever been comprehended before of the great love of God to men; and when He rose from the dead triumphant, there was revealed not only the love but the power. Even now in a sense they are hid in God, but he who by faith in Christ enters into the divine relationship finds there the hiding of His power. In God is he possessed of all the riches, and to all this the creative power of God is pledged.
6. "To the intent."—The Christian is not working out his problem here for himself alone. The apostle opens a far larger view than this. God's character in the universe is at stake, and there are other worlds watching this little world as it passes through the great problem of sin, so in the working out of this problem it is God's purpose that the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places might see and know through the church the manifold wisdom of God. God is making experiments in this laboratory of the gospel upon human hearts,—not experiments that are bound nine thousand to one to go wrong, as do the experiments of the human scientist before he succeeds, but experiments every one of which is bound to go right if the subject upon which he is working is submissive. In the experiments of the human the will of the subject is not taken into consideration at all. In the laboratory of the chemist, or in the dissecting room of the vivisectionist, there must be no will to oppose the researches of the scientist; but in God's great laboratory the human will must be taken into account, and even the greatness of God will not step over the circle of freedom which He has drawn around the human. If, however, man will but yield to the eternal purpose, there will be wrought out in him the marvellous working of God triumphant over all sin and over all the effects of sin; for it is His purpose to take of the poor, weakened, wretched, deformed, distorted children of earth, made all they are that is bad by sin, and make them "to the praise of the glory of His grace" through Jesus Christ, and the righteousness of God which He places upon them, and the creative power inwrought in a new being born from above; and that in this work all the heavenly principalities and powers will see the manifold wisdom of God. As another has wonderfully said: "The Lord Jesus is making experiments on human hearts through the exhibition of His mercy and abundant grace. He is effecting transformations so amazing that Satan, with all his triumphant boasting, with all his confederacy of evil united against God and the laws of His government, stands viewing them as a fortress impregnable to his sophistries and delusions. They are to him an incomprehensible mystery. The angels of God, seraphim and cherubim, the powers commissioned to coöperate with human agencies, look on with astonishment and joy that fallen men, once children of wrath, are through the training of Christ developing characters after the divine similitude, to be sons and daughters of God, to act an important part in the occupations and pleasures of heaven."
7. "According to the eternal purpose."—Literally, according to the purpose of the ages; and this purpose of the ages, we are told, was purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord. The infinite God foresaw all of the things which would arise, the rebellion which would enter His empire, the steps which would and must be necessary in order to convince men, in spite of every misrepresentation of His character, that God is love; and all these various steps were marked off in the history of this world; the antediluvian age and its climax in rebellion; the purpose of the call of Abraham, and the segregation of the families through which the seed was to come; the calling of a people out from Egypt into the promised land, there, notwithstanding all their rebellion, to be held through all the years till the Son of God was born of a woman; what is commonly called the Christian age, in which the gospel should be preached to all the world and to every nation, with no people or center chosen for the manifestation of God's glory, this to terminate with the judgment, and finally the restoration of all things promised by His holy prophets. Thus we have the antediluvian age, the patriarchal age, the Levitical age, the Christian age, the judgment period of one thousand years, and the eternal age of ages. These were constituted in the beginning, and throughout all this great purpose God has been working out the successive revelations of the mystery. Seemingly every age has ended in defeat of God's plan. Looking at it from the purely human standpoint, it would seem utterly hopeless, but faith in God has grasped the unseen things and triumphed. With this thought in mind we can better understand Heb. 11:3: "By faith we understand that the worlds [literally, ages] have been framed by the word of God, so that what is seen hath not been made out of things which appear." Rotherham renders: "By faith we understand the ages to have been fitted together by declaration of God, to the end that not out of things appearing should that which is seen have come into existence." This is much more a literal translation than our common versions. Upon the original word aion—"age"—from which "ages" comes, he has this to say: "The first thing to note is that the idea of an age is one of comparatively slow growth. The Biblical parent of the Greek aion is the Hebrew olam, and the root conception of olam is concealed duration. . . . The second thing to observe is that duration does not fall into ages until it acquires character, and there is a transition of the times from one character into another. . . . The fourth point of importance is that only as a change of age is supernaturally superinduced can we assume to characterize and begin age as a divine dispensation."
All of this, but dimly suggested in the pre-advent days, was clearly manifest in the days of the apostle. The antediluvian age was clearly marked by divine plan and interference. So also was the patriarchal age, and so also the Levitical, by its priesthood, and likewise the Christian age. When the antediluvian age ended, it would seem as tho God's plan were utterly thwarted; and yet faith said that out of the things not seen God would make to appear the things which He had promised. When the patriarchal age ended, the descendants of Abraham to whom the promise came were in sore bondage to the mightiest power that earth knew, and were there a nation of slaves; yet faith said that out of the things not seen God would bring the promises to the fathers. When the Levitical age ended, the very Prince of Life Himself had died upon the cross, and was locked in the stone sepulcher and sealed with a Roman seal; yet faith said, even in the one who died beside Him on the cross, that not out of things appearing should that which is seen have come into existence. From the very death God brought life, and through that death salvation to all His children. So the present age will seem to end in world triumph. Apostasy, which has reared its head in more or less limited success in the past ages, will in the last days sing, "I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow," and shall dare to say, "I am; and there is none beside me." But the very triumph of apostasy is the prelude to its destruction; and then shall appear the Lord Jesus Christ to bring to naught the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence. So it will be at the close of the judgment age of the one thousand years. Satan, with all his hosts of wickedness which are raised from the dead, will think that he is able to take the mighty seat of God which has descended upon a desolated earth; but the glory of God will destroy sin and all identified with sin, and the eternal age of the ages which the people of God have seen by faith shall begin its glorious cycles, nevermore to know sin or death.
8. "In whom we have boldness."—We do not wonder, as the apostle surveyed the great eternal purpose of God, that he could have boldness in believing in our Lord Jesus Christ. Surrounding circumstances might be all against him. The weakness of the flesh itself might be paramount. Before him waited the Roman dungeon and the headsman's block. He had himself seen in vision the long desolating power of the Papacy, but beyond all this he saw the glorious triumph of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Truly he had boldness, truly he had faith in Him, and in the light of all this he could earnestly ask that others looking upon him and upon his persecutions might not faint at his tribulations, which were for their glory after all, because through those very things Paul had brought the gospel to them, the gospel which would result, if they held fast, in their eternal salvation.
