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CHAPTER XII.

THE SECRET OF THE AGES.

Verses 2–13 are in form a parenthesis. They interrupt the prayer which appears to be commencing in the first verse and is not resumed until verse 14. This intervening period is parenthetical, however, in appearance more than in reality. The matter it contains is so weighty and so essential to the argument and structure of the epistle, that it is impossible to treat it as a mere aside. The writer intends, at the pause which occurs after the paragraph just concluded (ii. 22), to interpose a few words of prayer 156 before passing on to the next topic. But in the act of doing so, this subject of which his mind is full—viz., that of his own relation to God’s great purpose for mankind—forces itself upon him; and the prayer that was on his lips is pent up for a few moments longer, until it flows forth again, in richer measure, in verses 14–19.

Like chapter i. 3–14, this passage is an extreme instance of St Paul’s amorphous style. His sentences are not composed; they are spun in a continuous thread, an endless chain of prepositional, participial, and relative adjuncts. They grow under our eyes like living things, putting forth new processes every moment, now in this and now in that direction. Within the main parenthesis we soon come upon another parenthesis including verses 3b and 4 (“as I wrote afore,” etc.); and at several points the grammatical connexion is uncertain. In its general scope, this intricate sentence resolves itself into a statement of what God has wrought in the apostle toward the accomplishment of His great plan. It thus completes the exposition given already of that which God wrought in Christ for the Church, and that which He has wrought through Christ in Gentile believers in fulfilment of the same end.

Verses 1–9 speak (1) of the mystery itself—God’s gracious intention toward the human race, unknown in earlier times; and (2) of the man to whom, above others, it was given to make known the secret.

I. The mystery is defined twice over. First, it consists in the fact that “in Christ Jesus through the gospel the Gentiles are co-heirs and co-incorporate and co-partners in the promise” (ver. 6); and secondly, it 157 is “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (ver. 8). The latter phrase gathers to a point what is diversely expressed in the former.

Christ is, to St Paul, the centre and the sum of the mysteries of Divine truth, of the whole enigma of existence. In the parallel epistle he calls Him “the mystery of God—in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden” (Col. ii. 2, 3: R.V.). The mystery of God, discovered in Christ, was hidden out of the sight and reach of previous times. Now, by the preaching of the gospel, it is made the common property of mankind (Col. i. 25–28).

In close connexion with these statements, St Paul speaks there, as he does here, of his own heavy sufferings endured on this account and the joy they gave him. He is the instrument of a glorious purpose worthy of God; he is the mouthpiece of a revelation waiting to be spoken since the world began, that is addressed to all mankind and interests heaven along with earth. The greatness of his office is commensurate with the greatness of the truth given him to announce.

The mystery, as we have said, consists in Christ. This we learned from chapter i. 4, 5, and 9, 10. In Christ the Eternal lodged His purpose and laid His plans for the world. It is His fulness that the fulness of the times dispenses. The Old Testament, the reservoir of previous revelation, had Him for its close-kept secret, “held in silence through eternal times” (Rom. xvi. 25–27). The drift of its prophecies, the focus of its converging lights, the veiled magnet towards which its spiritual indications pointed, was “Christ.” He “was the spiritual rock that followed” Israel in its wanderings, from whose springs the people drank, 158 as it answered to the touch of one and now another of the holy men of old. The revelation of Jesus Christ gives unity, substance, and meaning to the history of Israel, which is otherwise a pathway without goal, a problem without solution. Priest and prophet, law and sacrifice; the kingly Son of David, and the suffering Servant of Jehovah; the Seed of the woman with bruised foot bruising the serpent’s head; the Lord whom His people seek, suddenly coming to His temple; the Stone hewn from the mountains without hands, that grows till it fills the earth—the manifold representations of Israel’s ideal, centre in the Lord Jesus Christ. The lines of the great figure drawn on the canvas of prophecy—disconnected as they seemed and without a plan, giving rise to a thousand dreams and speculations—are filled out and drawn into shape and take life and substance in Him. They are found to be parts of a consistent whole, sketches and studies of this fragment or of that belonging to the consummate Person and the comprehensive plan manifest in the revelation of Jesus Christ.

But while Christ gathers into Himself the accumulated wealth of former revelation, His fulness is not measured thereby or exhausted. He solves the problems of the past; He unseals the ancient mysteries. But He creates new and deeper problems, some explained in the continued teaching of His Spirit and His providence, others that remain, or emerge from time to time to tax the faith and understanding of His Church. There are the mysteries surrounding His own Person, with which the Greek Church struggled long—His eternal Sonship, His pre-incarnate relation to mankind and the creatures, the final outcome of the mediatorial reign and its subordination to the absolute sovereignty 159 of God. These depths St Paul sounded with his plummet; but he found them unfathomable. Theological science has explored and defined them, and illuminated them on many sides, but cannot reach to their inmost mystery. Then there is the problem of the atonement, with all the cognate difficulties touching the origin of sin, its heredity and its personal guilt, touching the adjustment of law and grace, the method of justification, the extent and efficacy of Christ’s redeeming work, touching the future destiny and eternal state of souls. Another class of questions largely occupies the minds of thoughtful men to-day. They are studying the relation of Christ and His Church to nature and the outward world, the bearings of Christian truth upon social conditions, the working of the Spirit of God in communities, and the place of man’s collective life in the progress and upbuilding of the kingdom of Christ.

For such inquiries the Spirit of wisdom and revelation is given to those who humbly seek His light. He is given afresh in every age. Out of Christ’s unsearchable riches ever-new resources are forthcoming at His Church’s need, new treasures lying hidden in the old for him who can extract them. But His riches, however far they are investigated, remain unsearchable, and inexhaustible however largely drawn upon. God’s ways may be tracked further and further in each generation; they will remain to the end, as they were to the mind of Paul at the limit of his bold researches, “past finding out.” The inspired apostle confesses himself a child in Divine learning: “We know in part,” he says, “we prophesy in part.” Oh the depths of “hidden wisdom” unimagined now, that are in store for us in Christ, “foreordained before the worlds unto our glory!”

160 The particular aspect of the mystery of Christ with which the apostle is concerned, is that of His relationship to the Gentile world. “The grace of God,” he says in verse 2, “was given me for you.” Such is “the dispensation” in which God is now engaged. Upon this lavish and undreamed-of scale He is dealing forth salvation to men. St Paul describes this revelation of God’s goodness to the Gentiles by three parallel but distinct terms in verse 6. They “are fellow-heirs”—a word that carries us back to chapter i. 11–13, and assures the Gentile readers of their final redemption and heavenly glory.⁹²⁹²   See Gal. iii. 7, v. 5; Rom. viii. 14–25; 1 Peter i. 4, 5. They “are of the same body”—which sums up all that we have learnt from chapter ii. 11–22. And they “are fellow-partakers of the promise”—receiving upon a footing of equal privilege with Jewish believers the gift of the Spirit and the blessings promised to Israel in the Messianic kingdom.

In virtue of the dispensation committed to him, St Paul formally proclaims the incorporation of the Gentiles into the body of Christ, their investiture with the franchise of faith. The forgiveness of sins is theirs, the light of God’s smile, the breath of His Spirit, the worship and fellowship of His Church, the tasks and honours of His service. The incarnation of Christ is theirs; His life, teaching, and miracles; His cross is theirs, His resurrection and ascension, and His second coming, and the glories of His heavenly kingdom—all made their own on the bare condition of a penitent and obedient faith. The past is theirs—is ours, along with the present and the future. The God of Israel is our God. Abraham is our father, though his sons after the flesh acknowledge us not. Their prophets 161 prophesied of the grace that should come unto us. Their poets sing the songs of Zion to Gentile peoples in a hundred tongues. They lead our prayers and praises. In their words we find expression for our heart-griefs and joys. At the wedding-feast or by the grave-side, amidst “the multitude that keep holy day” and in “dry lands” where the soul thirsts for God’s ordinances, we carry the Psalmists with us and the teachers of Israel.

What a boundless wealth we Gentiles, taught by Jesus Christ, have discovered in the Jewish Bible! When will the Jewish people understand that their greatness is in Him, that the light which lightens the Gentiles is their true glory? When will they accept their part in the riches of which they have made all the world partakers? The mystery of our participation in their Christ has now been “revealed to the sons of men” long enough. Is it not time that they themselves should see it, that the veil should be lifted from the heart of Israel? The disclosure was in the first instance so astounding, so contrary to their cherished expectations, that one can scarcely wonder if it was at first rejected. But God the King of the ages has been asserting and re-asserting the fact in the course of history ever since. How vain to fight against Him! how useless to deny the victory of the Nazarene!

II. But there was in Israel an election of grace,—men of unveiled heart to whom the mystery of ages was disclosed. “The secret of Jehovah is with them that fear Him, and He will show them His covenant.” Such is the rule of revelation. To the like effect Christ said: “The pure in heart shall see God. He that willeth to do His will shall know of the doctrine.”

The light of God’s universal love had come into the 162 world; but where it fell on cold or impure hearts, it shone in vain. The mystery “was made manifest to His saints,” writes the apostle in Colossians i. 26. So in this passage: “revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit.” The pure eye sees the true light. This was the condition which made it possible for Paul himself and his partners in the gospel to be the bearers of this august revelation. It needed sincere and devoted men, willing to be taught of God, willing to surrender every prejudice and the preconceptions of flesh and blood, in order to receive and convey to the world thoughts of God so much larger and loftier than the thoughts of men. To such men—true disciples, loyal at all costs to God and truth, holy and humble of heart—Jesus Christ gave His great commission and bade them “go and make disciples of all the nations.”

The secret was further disclosed to Peter, when he was taught at the house of Cornelius “not to call any man common or unclean.” He saw, and the Church of Jerusalem saw and confessed that God “gave the like gift” to uncircumcised Gentiles as to themselves and had “purified their hearts by faith.” Many prophetic voices, unrecorded, confirmed this revelation. Of all this Paul is thinking here. It is to his predecessors in the knowledge of the truth rather than to himself that he refers when he speaks of “holy apostles and prophets” in verse 5. His readers would naturally turn to them in coming to this plural expression. The original apostles of Jesus and witnesses of His truth first attested the doctrine of universal grace; and that they did so was a fact of vital importance to Paul and the Gentile Church. The significance of this fact is shown by the stress which is laid upon it and the 163 prominence given to it in the narrative of the Acts of the Apostles.

The apostle frequently alludes to revelations made to himself; he never claims that this chief matter was revealed personally to himself. It was an open secret when Saul entered the Church. “Whereof,” he says, in verse 7, “I became minister”; again, “to me was this grace given, to preach to the Gentiles Christ’s unsearchable riches.” The leaders of the Jewish Christian Church knew well that their message was meant for all the world. But the abstract knowledge of a truth is one thing; the practical power to realize it is another. Until the new apostle came upon the field, there was no man ready for this great task and equal to it. It was at this crisis that Paul was raised up. Then “it pleased God to reveal His Son” in him, that he might “preach Him among the Gentiles.”

The effect of this summons upon Paul himself was overwhelming, and continued to be so till the end of life. The immense favour humbles him to the dust. He strains language, heaping comparative upon superlative, to describe his astonishment as the import of his mission unfolds itself: “To me, less than the least of all the saints, was this grace given.” That Saul the Pharisee and the persecutor, the most unworthy and most unlikely of men, should be the chosen vessel to bear Christ’s riches to the Gentile world, how shall he sufficiently give thanks for this! how express his wonder at the unfathomable wisdom and goodness that the choice displays in the mind of God! But we can see well that this choice was precisely the fittest. A Hebrew of the Hebrews, steeped in Jewish traditions and glorying in his sacred ancestry, none knew better 164 than the apostle Paul how rich were the treasures stored in the house of Abraham that he had to make over to the Gentiles. A true son of that house, he was the fittest to lead in the aliens, to show them its precious things and make them at home within its walls.

To himself the office was an unceasing delight. The universalism of the gospel—a commonplace of our modern rhetoric—had burst upon his mind in its unspoilt freshness and undimmed splendour. He is sailing out into an undiscovered ocean, with a boundless horizon. A new heaven and earth are opened to him in the revelation that the Gentiles are partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus. He is entranced, as he writes, with the largeness of the Divine purpose, with the magnificent sweep and scope of the designs of grace. These verses give us the warm and genuine impression made upon the hearts of its first recipients by the disclosure of the universal destination of the gospel of Christ.

St Paul’s work, in carrying out the dispensation of this mystery, was twofold. It was both external and internal. He was a “herald and apostle”; he was also “teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth” (1 Tim. ii. 7). He had in the former capacity to carry the good tidings from one end to the other of the Roman empire, to spread it abroad as far as his feet could travel and his voice reach, and thus “to fulfil the gospel of Christ.” But there was another, mental task, as necessary and still more difficult, which likewise fell to his lot. He had to think out the gospel. It was his office to unfold and apply it to the wants of a new world, to solve by its aid the problems that confronted him as evangelist and pastor,—questions that contained the seed and beginning of the intellectual difficulties of the Church in future times. He had to 165 free the gospel from the swaddling-bands of Judaism, to emancipate the spirit from the letter of a mechanical and legal interpretation. On the other hand, he had equally to guard the truth as it is in Jesus from the dissolving influences of Gentile scepticism and theosophy. Fighting his way through fierce and incessant opposition on both sides, the apostle Paul led the mind of the Church onwards and guides it still in the faith and knowledge of the Son of God. These noble epistles are the fruit and record of St Paul’s theological work. Through them he has left a deeper mark on the conscience of the world than any one man besides, except the Master of truth who was more than man.

The apostle was not unaware of the vast influence he now possessed, and that must accrue to him in the future from the transcendent interest of the doctrines committed to his charge. There is no false modesty about this splendidly gifted man. It is his not only to “preach to the Gentiles the good news of Christ’s unsearchable riches”; but more than that, “to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery that has been hidden away from the ages in God who created all things.” The great secret was out while Saul of Tarsus was still a persecutor and blasphemer. But as to the management and dispensation of the mystery, the practical handling of it, as to the mode and way in which God would convey and apply it to the world at large, and as to the bearings and consequences of this momentous truth,—the apostle Paul, and no one but he, had all this to expound and set in order. He was, in fact, the architect of Christian doctrine.

Theologically, Peter and John himself were Paul’s debtors; and are included amongst the “all men” of verse 9 (if this reading of the text is correct). St John 166 had, it is true, a more direct intuition into the mind of Christ and rose to an even loftier height of contemplation; but the labours and the logic of St Paul provided the field into which he entered in his ripe old age spent at Ephesus. John, who absorbed and assimilated everything that belonged to Christ and found for everything its principle and centre in the Master of his youth—“the way, the truth, and the life”—passed through the school of Paul. With the rest, he learnt through the new apostle to see more perfectly “what is the dispensation of the mystery hidden from the ages in God.”

Well persuaded is our apostle that all readers of this letter in the Asian towns, if they have not known it before, will now “perceive” his “understanding in the mystery of Christ.” All ages have discerned it since. And the ages to come will measure its value better than we can do now.