The Second Mystery

Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery kept secret since the world began (Romans 16:25, NKJV).

There is an equation that underlies the essential nature of the Universe. It supersedes all physical laws, or rather, it is the foundation upon which all physical laws depend. It is this, the origin of everything is spiritual.

While this may sound like New Age spaghetti, it is really just a restatement of Genesis 1:1, in combination with John 4:24:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (Genesis 1:1, NKJV).

And...

“God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:24, NKJV).

Everything that can be conceived or experienced began in the Spiritual Realm, and is reflected, sometimes magnificently, most times, because of the Fall, poorly, in the Physical Realm.

This is not to imply that the Physical is inferior to the Spiritual, as some ancient heresies declare, but that without the Spiritual there can be no Physical.

This is further illustrated by “modern science” which has discovered that the primary material building blocks of Space and Time are nearly indistinguishable from the immaterial; that the smallest, most fundamental “things” in the Universe are virtually massless and dimensionless, and yet go into the making of everything that we regard as physically real.

Of course, the Book of Hebrews stated this long ago:

By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible. (Hebrews 11:3, NKJV).

Now, I mentioned in the previous post that the first mystery is sin, or, as the Bible refers to it: ...the mystery of lawlessness... (2 Thessalonians 2:7, NKJV). I regard sin as the “first” mystery simply because it is sin that colors everything we humans know, think, and think we know.

In short, it is sin that makes us ignorant of the true state of things. As a beloved brother in Christ once said, “sin makes us stupid.”

Because of the first mystery, our view of the second mystery is awash in ignorance. By this I mean that sin, our willful rebellion against God, blinds us to the truth of this “second” mystery – everything begins in the Spiritual Realm.

Sin is why we humans look at the inevitable and inescapable act Special Creation and bend over backwards to try to fit it into something purely Natural.

Sin is what birthed the absurd notion that everything came from a mindless, purposeless nothing that exploded the Universe into existence, as if that preposterous theory is proven in every day existence.

Sin is why we strive diligently to picture Existence without God, to assure ourselves through massive and inane repetition that we are the “natural” products of chance and time spun together by fortuitous mutation.

Sin is why we grit our teeth and sweat bullets to either deny the mystery (Spirit), and/or confine it to our own broken musings.

But the truth, that all things began in, and are sourced from, the Spiritual Realm, is what opens the door to the truth of God, and the fundamental truth of our own existence.

In our Fallenness, we can scarcely conceive of a state of conscious existence that is NOT material. Over time, the collective glimpses we have had of it have devolved into myth and magic, and have obscured the true nature of that realm from which “...we live and move and have our being...” (Acts 17:28, NKJV).

Because of this barrier to understanding, this blindness that comes from sin, we stumble and falter in significant areas of thought and action, looking for clues to fundamental questions whose answers are shouted moment by moment from the Throne of Heaven.

We are just too deaf to understand until our eyes and ears are opened by that act of God which makes us spiritually sensible again through faith in Christ, and we are made new, regenerated, and born again in the Spirit.

Once we see the truth, then the pieces of the mystery fall into place, and we comprehend that life, the surface of life that we experience every day, is merely the tip of the iceberg. There is much more.

Jesus summarizes it this way:

“Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? (Matthew 6:25, NKJV).

We are created, spiritual beings that cannot be uncreated. Once we come into existence we cannot go out of existence again... ever.

We have a body but are spirit.

And the Spiritual Laws that govern us are far more immutable than the Physical Laws that control the Cosmos.

Here then are some statements of truth that follow:

But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His. (Romans 8:9, NKJV).

Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh? (Galatians 3:3, NKJV).

I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. (Galatians 5:16, NKJV).

For we are the circumcision, who worship God in the Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh, (Philippians 3:3, NKJV).

“For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? (Matthew 16:26, NKJV).

“And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. (Matthew 10:28, NKJV).

This second mystery, that we are spiritual beings who are currently “dead” in trespasses and sins, is revealed indisputably in Scripture, and written large in our hearts by the search for the “meaning of life”.

It is revealed in our longing for something more, something beyond merely being born, living and dying.

It is shown in the soul-deep and inarticulate grief that assails us at the death of a loved one.

It is confirmed by the cry of the human soul that screams in guttural fury and ancient lament that this life cannot be all there is – there must be something... else.

And it is the basis by which we understand perhaps the greatest mystery of all...

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. (John 3:16, NKJV).