The Ultimate Mystery

...and for me, that utterance may be given to me, that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel, (Ephesians 6:19, NKJV).

There is an ineffable elegance and beauty to majestic and noble simplicity; the perfect comprehension of a sphere; the unconditional love of a child; the symphonic precision of a heart-stirring landscape.

These are things that need no verbal elaboration for these are so obviously “there”, that once perceived in and of themselves, like brilliant music, they become part of us, almost like food, but nourishing a different aspect of our being.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ surpasses any and all such constructs, not only in what is is, but in what it does, and it comes to us from the heart and mind of God Himself, the Eternal Author of All That Is.

Yet it is, and always will be, a mystery, in the sense that it can only be perceived for what it is by those whose eyes and understanding have been opened by the Spirit of God. To those who remain blinded in their natural, rebellious state, it is foolishness or worse.

I say this from personal experience, having transitioned, by the grace of God, from ignorance to enlightenment, from death to life, and my former view of the gospel was that it was a fairy tale for idiots.

Like the two prior mysteries, sin and the spiritual origin of everything, the mystery of the gospel has a profound impact on everything you can think of, on everything that exists, or will exist.

It is that which makes redemption possible, and without which all of Creation would be inevitably and eternally destroyed.

We are instructed from Scripture that Christ's substitutionary and atoning death for sin was known from before the foundation of the world. It was a plan formulated (if such an implied step-by-step process can be applied to Omniscience) in the eternal Counsels of the Godhead before there was ever anything other than the Triune God. And it is an event woven inextricably into every moment and iota of space and time from the first instant of Creation stretching onward into eternity.

It is a mystery that is informed by, and informs, all the other mysteries, a kind of unapproachable light that gives substance and illumination to all the rest:

The mystery of the Kingdom of God and Heaven;

Of the partial blindness of Israel;

Of God Himself;

Of the Rapture of the Church;

Of God's will;

Of Christ;

Of the Sonship of Christ;

Of the fellowship of faith;

Of Christ and the church;

Of Christ within us;

Of faith itself;

Of godliness;

and even the mystery of lawlessness.

(Mt 13:11; Ro 11:25; 1Co 2:7; 15:51; Eph 1:9; 3:4,9; 5:32; Col 1:26,27; 2:2; 2Th 2:7; 1Ti 3:9,16).

It is the gospel which makes all the other divine mysteries sensible in the literal meaning of that word, and it is the gospel that is the ultimate revelation of all the others.

Christ, the Son of God, became a Man.

He died for us.

He rose to life again on the third day.

Through faith in Him, because He lives, we will live also - forever in fullness of joy.

A billion more words could be written about this gospel, this “good news”, but the essence of it is the epitome of elegance and majestic simplicity: our King accomplished for us what we could never accomplish for ourselves: escape from the unrelenting punishment of sin.

He took upon Himself that which would destroy us eternally, so by His death, He conquered death.

This death in view is not the cessation of consciousness that we might want it to be, but the eternal separation of life from light and goodness, from joy and love. The death that He took upon Himself on our behalf was not only the dissolution of the bonds between the body and our spiritual essence, but the dissolution of the bonds between the spirit and her source: God.

By definition, separation from God is that unthinkable state of being we call eternal punishment in Hell, described by Christ Himself as everlasting and searing fire, and intimate, personal and inescapable torment.

Nothing worse can possibly be conceived.

There is nothing better than to be given the means of escape from that destiny, and not merely escape, but the bestowal of all that is diametrically the opposite of Hell: eternal life in Heaven.

This is the mystery of mysteries: the gospel of Jesus Christ.

To the blinded world it is the depths of foolishness. To those who believe it is Life itself.

And even these ramifications are part and parcel of the mystery.

The “what” of the gospel is plainly revealed in the Bible. Surprisingly, so is the “why” of it, originating from the very character and essential nature of God.

God is love.

God is gracious.

Thus he provides for us a just escape from His righteous judgment against sin.

He ordained that the wages of sin is death. He poured out upon His beloved Son the death that we deserve, knowing that death could not hold Him because He was without sin.

He condemned us all in Adam, so He could pardon us all through faith in Christ. Without the first, the second would be impossible.

Without the Son, there would be no hope.

Without the mystery of the gospel, it would be infinitely better never to have been born, for once born in the flesh, the death sentence of Hell, without the hope of the gospel, would be inevitable.

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).

The First Mystery

But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory, (1 Corinthians 2:7, NKJV).

In Greek, the root of the word translated “mystery” means to “shut the mouth”. It's not so much a matter of esoteric, unfathomable knowledge as a reference to something once hidden now being revealed.

That's an important distinction, because there are plenty of religions out there that claim to possess “special information” that only true initiates can obtain or understand. Biblical Christianity is nothing like that at all.

Jesus, our founder, spoke and taught nothing “in a corner”, but proclaimed His truth openly and without any attempt to obfuscate or tantalize.

This is not to say that complete understanding of His doctrine comes without a price, nor is it to deny that he often spoke in parables and analogies, but the price of understanding is something completely unexpected and rather astonishing: accept the free gift of salvation and His Spirit will give you comprehension of, at least, the “what” of things, if not always the “why”.

Until then, the truths of the Bible will remain largely unpeeled.

I can attest to this fact, personally. At one time in my life, for the majority of my life, I was rabidly anti-Christian. Any mention of it or its teachings evoked an eruption of volcanic disdain and hostility. I was an adherent of the John Lennon socialist worldview, with my mantra being “Imagine”.

Imagine there is no heaven

It's easy if you try

No hell below us

Above us only sky

Imagine all the people

Living for today

Imagine there's no countries

It isn't hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion, too

I can still hear the haunting, whiny, self-serving melody as I now contemplate the vacuity of those words I once held in such high esteem.

I look back and think, Imagine how utterly childish to ascribe to religion that for which human beings are themselves the source. Violence, death and mayhem are uniquely human characteristics entirely apart from what Lennon thought of as religion.

In fact, of all the restraining impulses of human evil, religion is by far the most effective. Does that mean that it has not been corrupted and bent to align with natural human depravity? Of course not. We humans can, and do, make a horrific mess of most things we touch. But that does not make the thing itself evil; it illuminates our own tendency to evil. It's what we do.

And therein lies the first Christian Mystery; human sinfulness and God's response.

If you have never heard or read the following idea, you are either a newcomer to the planet, or have been sheltered from the inanity of academically motivated wishful thinking. It's this: every day and every way we're getting better and better.

More broadly, this is couched in terms of “human advancement” or the “march of civilization.” It is all smoke and vapor. Even the most cursory examination of individual or corporate history disproves this doggerel instantly.

Take the individual facts first. As you and I age, we get worse, not better. We are slower, more forgetful, weaker, more vulnerable, more hardened in our bad habits, and altogether and inevitably on the way to decay and death. If that is your definition of better, then I don't think that word means what you think it means.

Corporately, we, as a species of animal on this world, are constantly devising new and more efficient ways to cause more death and destruction. In my lifetime alone, humanity has perfected the means to destroy the entire world. And while that may indicate a kind of improvement of sorts, at least in efficiency and comprehensiveness, it is in no way “better”.

Christianity explains this obviously deteriorating condition in one word: sin. And that word opens up an entire realm of discussion, dissension and discord.

Sin is a byproduct of free moral agency; the ability to choose. It is an attribute of God Himself, and He bestowed it upon us as a gift, part of what makes us His image-bearers. As a purely intellectual exercise, I can imagine that this was itself a choice on His part. He could have made us automatons or marionettes, bound by programming or metaphysical strings, compelled to behave in ways entirely acceptable to the Manufacturer.

The issue with that course of action, however, is almost immediately obvious. How could puppets have any kind of sincere or real relationship, either with each other, or with the Puppeteer? Every action would actually originate from the Programmer Himself, and not from the thing programmed. For an interpersonal relationship to have any meaning at all, it would have to be voluntary and come from all the individuals involved. There is nothing at all satisfying to a being of any depth in compelled interaction. Even for the most base human, such an arrangement would grow stale and empty and dull over time – no surprises, no joy, no anything.

So the what of it is this: God made us in His image even though He knew beforehand that we would rebel in sin. All the misery encompassed in human history; the bloodshed, the pain, the horror, is a result of this marvelous gift of free will.

He did this, I believe the Bible teaches, because He desired true fellowship with us. That we have abused this gift is, from our sinful perspective, as natural as breathing, but is it? Is it natural for the recipient of a good gift to immediately throw it back in the face of a beloved and benevolent Giver?

There is something about us humans, something illogical and ruthless, that holds generosity and goodness in contempt... unless it comes from us. Perhaps, it is a desire to be worshipped like God desires to be worshipped. Or gratitude perverted into pride, as if we deserved the thing given.

And if we are not worshipped in the manner we believe we are entitled, we become petulant and rebellious. We enter into the realm of sin, as our forefather Adam did in the Garden. We figuratively poke our finger in the eye of our Creator, spit in His face, stick out our tongue, and do what is right in our own eyes.

The result: unmitigated chaos and heartbreak. We corrupt and pervert what is good and turn it into what is vile and perverse, and we spend lifetimes justifying our blatant selfishness and lust, excusing our “mistakes”, supported by a world equally hostile to God.

"It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare." - C.S. Lewis

And God's response to this purposeless and ghastly rebellion? An extravagant, unmerited, and irrevocable desire to forgive.

If our inherent sin is a mystery, then our Creator's willingness to forgive that sin through means that we could never imagine (the substitutionary death of His Son), is a mystery so transcendent in nature that to contemplate it in it's rawest, most blindingly radiant form, is to be changed by it into something worth forgiving.

"To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you. This is hard. It is perhaps not so hard to forgive a single great injury. But to forgive the incessant provocations of daily life -- to keep on forgiving the bossy mother-in-law, the bullying husband, the nagging wife, the selfish daughter, the deceitful son -- how can we do it? Only, I think, by remembering where we stand, by meaning our words when we say our prayers each night 'forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us.' We are offered forgiveness on no other terms. To refuse is to refuse God's mercy for ourselves."

God made creatures capable of rebelling against His perfect moral law. He did so out of love. Our rebellion did not surprise Him. He knew that we would Fall in sin before our creation, but he created us anyway.

Why? Well that is the crux of the mystery.

At least in part, I believe the answer lies in the fact that our destiny, once we pass through the gauntlet of His forgiveness, is more glorious than we can possibly conceive.

But as it is written: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.” (1 Corinthians 2:9, NKJV).