Finally the Whole Truth Comes Out

Ephesians 3:1-13
“Finally the Whole Truth Comes Out”

Everyone loves a good mystery. As often as not mystery is the fiction of choice when one is looking to lose oneself in a book for a brief time. Mystery is a reliable ingredient to ensure that movies don’t arrive too quickly on the New Releases shelf at Blockbuster. We love the mystery, the secret, at awards ceremonies and we all wait eagerly to learn whose name is enclosed in the envelope once it is opened—the mystery revealed.

But none of these uses of the word convey the primary meaning of mystery. The primary definition in Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary is a religious truth that one can know only by revelation…. The Oxford English Dictionary includes a very similar entry for the word. And that is much closer to the meaning Paul had in mind as he used the word mystery several times in his letter to the Ephesians. He meant something previously hidden that has now been revealed. He’d spent some time in ch.1 talking about the mystery of the gospel, and even more time in ch.2. Now as he opened ch.3 he began with a new thought, then quickly diverted back to the old one. For this reason, he wrote, vs.1; then he identified himself as a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of (the) Gentiles. And then he stopped, evidently not being convinced that the Ephesians fully understood why he was a prisoner on their behalf. So he wanted to take a moment to explain further before moving on. And that is our text for this morning. In Eph.3:2-13 Paul sought to expand our understanding the mystery of Christ by explaining it from two different vantage points.

The Revelation of the Mystery – 2-7

It is evident that some who were present in Ephesus, or at least some whom Paul expected to be reading this letter, were not acquainted with him even though he had spent three years teaching there (Act.20:31). He was assuming (2) that they knew the nature of his ministry among them, among the Gentiles. And from his own testimony in Act.21:27ff., it was precisely this ministry that landed him in prison in Jerusalem, then Caesarea, and finally Rome—the location from which he was writing this very letter.

Paul had received a special calling and he referred to it as a stewardship (2)—stewardship is defined as the management of someone else’s resources or property. Paul is just one of several such stewards, as he mentioned to the Corinthians (1.4:1), and the resources entrusted to them are the mysteries of God as he put it there (1Co.4:2)—or the mystery of Christ here (4), God’s grace (2) that is made available to both Gentiles and Jews in the gospel (6). But Paul had a special charge, a revelation from God (3) to focus on the Gentiles (8) in his proclamation of the mystery, his sharing of the gospel. This focus was part and parcel of his very conversion experience on the Damascus Road when Jesus first appeared to him, as he reported in his testimony before Agrippa in Act.26:16-18. He also spoke of it in ch.1 (12, 15-16) of his letter to the Galatians. But his moving through the theme of the mystery in both of the first two chapters of this letter to the Ephesians, is likely what he was referring to in that last phrase of vs.3 when he used the words, as I have written briefly.

So Paul was a steward of the mystery by God’s own purpose; and the one thing required of a steward, as he told the Corinthians (1.4:2), is to be found trustworthy. And his opening statement in this ch. confirmed that he was proving to be just that—in fact, he was even willing to go to jail for the gospel if necessary. Now, the interesting thing about this mystery is that it was not made known to previous generations of God’s people as it had now been revealed to the holy apostles and prophets by God’s Spirit (4-5). That word holy seems an odd way for Paul to refer to the apostles, since he is one. But he appears to be pointing out that he and the others have been set aside by God for the purpose of proclaiming the gospel, that they are holy in that way. The mystery itself, then, as we saw last week and now see again in vs.6, is that the Gentiles are included in the people of God together with Jews—Christ in you, the hope of glory, as Paul wrote to the Colossians (1:27). Vs.6 says: the Gentiles are fellow heirs with believing Jews. They are members of the same body. They are partakers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel—truly miraculous!

Paul’s privilege and responsibility as a minister—literally a servant, a deacon—of the gospel he views as a gift of God’s grace given by the working of (God’s) power (7). Paul is affirming here that his calling was as much an expression of God’s power as was his miraculous conversion. But he is also affirming that his continuation in that call, his carrying out of this apostolic ministry of proclaiming the mystery to the Gentiles, also requires ongoing working of God’s power. He said as much to the Colossians (1:29) when he wrote, “I toil, struggling with all his energy (namely, Christ’s energy) that he powerfully works within me.” O’Brien (239) summed up the passage thus far saying, “We therefore find in Ephesians 3:2-7 the recurring emphasis that everything Paul has become and achieved in his apostolic mission is ‘not his own doing, but the result of God’s grace—God’s choice of him, God’s call to him, God’s enabling power’.” (emphasis mine) Paul couldn’t take any credit for what God has purposed to do through him; all he could do was to be faithful to prove trustworthy. But what a temptation it must have been for him—what a temptation it still is for all of us—to take credit for what God does through us. And not just in ministry: I once heard a woman compliment another woman or her nose, and the other woman responded with an energetic, “Thank you,” as though she had made her nose herself, or had selected it to go with her outfit that day!

We can’t take credit for the shape of our nose, or the height of our stature, or the quality of our gifts. That is God’s work. And so is the accomplishment of his purpose through those gifts. Paul was painfully aware of that fact. His gifts had once been used for his own purposes—he had persecuted the church, and that memory seems to have gnawed at him. We can see indications of that as me move into the next section of this very passage.

The Proclamation of the Mystery – 8-13

Paul is absolutely amazed that he is God’s appointed instrument for the task of proclaiming the unsearchable riches of Christ (8). He truly considers himself the very least of all the saints, likely due to his past. He even made up a new word to magnify his lowliness: it means least-er, or less than the least (O’Brien, 240). It is a comparative superlative—how does a superlative have a comparison? How can you be less than the least? That’s pretty lowly! But he meant it. He truly feels the weight of his persecution of the church, and this is not the only time he mentioned it. To the Corinthians (1.15:9) he called himself least among the apostles and in his letter to Timothy (1:15) he used the wording foremost of sinners.

But here that self-assessment is simply the backdrop of black velvet bringing out the vibrant colors in the diamond of God’s grace given to him in his privilege to preach to the Gentiles the lavish wealth of Christ. The word unsearchable (8) means impossible to comprehend. The value of the gospel is unfathomable. And this is now the third time in this passage that he has identified his calling to preach as a gift of God’s grace (2,7,8)—undeserved merit from God. His preaching is not merely the truth of Christ, central though that is; but it is also revelation—the bringing to light of the mystery long hidden in God (9). 

And there are three striking aspects of this mystery that emerge out of the next thee verses. First we see the purpose of the mystery in vs.10—and this is an amazing verse. Paul tells us that it is through the church—this ethnically diverse unity, this body of Christ—that the manifold wisdom of God—the many-sided, many-faceted, multi-colored wisdom of God—is made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. From 1:21 we know that these rulers and authorities include the angels of heaven, but from 6:12 we also know that they include the demons of hell. It is probably this latter group that Paul had most in view here; and what a comfort that must have been to the Ephesians who had no small amount of personal experience with spiritual battles against unseen forces. You can read about that in Act.19.

But more amazing yet, it is within the very existence of this diverse-yet-unified body that God has purposed to show his wisdom to these spiritual beings. Peter records (1.1:12) that angels long to look into the glories of salvation. And we could add from this passage that it is with good cause—they didn’t see it coming! The scope of redemption just wasn’t evident to previous ages. It had been kept hidden in God until it was made visible in the church— the ultimate reconciliation between God and people illustrated in this visible reconciliation between Jew and Gentile in the church. That is the purpose of mystery: the manifestation of God’s many-faceted wisdom in the church. Next, vs.11. we see the context of the mystery. This demonstration of God’s wisdom happened within the eternal purpose of God that he realized in Jesus. That eternal purpose was, is, the unification of all things under Christ’s headship—or perhaps better, the summing up or uniting of all things in Christ—as was mentioned back in ch.1, vss.9-10. These vss. are identified by many as the key verses of Ephesians in that they lay out the ultimate plan purpose of God in Christ. And it is not just the unification of Jew and Gentile to one another; it is the reconciliation of Jew and Gentile to God in Christ as an integral aspect and illustration of God’s plan to unite all things in Christ, with him as the head (1:22)—all things in heaven and on earth (1:10). This is looking forward finally to the kingdom of God where every knee bows and every tongue confesses Christ as Lord. It is also the time when creation itself no longer groans under the weight of sin, and where all opposing governments and authorities are once and for all subdued. This word mystery, which is so present in Paul’s writings—twenty-one of the twenty-seven times it appears in the NT—was also used to translate a particular word that appears nine times in the OT, all nine are in the prophecy of Daniel—eight of them in ch.2 alone. In that ch. Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, had a dream that troubled him deeply. And in order to be certain that his wise men would give him an accurate interpretation he wanted them not only to tell him the meaning of the dream, but first to tell him the content of the dream itself. Well, obviously they thought that was impossible, so Nebuchadnezzar was going to have them put to death. But Daniel volunteered to do what the king asked. He sought the prayers of his three friends for God to reveal to him the dream and its meaning. And God did so. It’s a lengthy passage, but it is worth hearing this morning. Listen, then, to Dan.2:31-45. … The mystery spoken of here in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream is the plan and purpose of God for the ages, and it reads very much like that plan and purpose is to unite all things in heaven and on earth, all government and authority, by means of one force the stone that shattered the image and then grew into a mountain that filled the whole earth; through the cornerstone as described here in Eph.2—through Christ. First we saw the purpose of the mystery (10), and this is now the context of the mystery (11).

Third, then, vs.12, we see a dramatic, present result of the mystery: access to God. We looked into the word a bit last week because it appeared first back in 2:18, but here in ch.3 Paul mentions that we not only have access to God, but we have it with boldness and confidence through our faith in him. Boldness suggests the idea of unrestricted speech—before God! How is that possible?! We have a hard time being bold before people we respect, how are we to be bold before God? Speaking more specifically of prayer, the writer of Hebrews (4:16) told us to draw near to the throne of God with confidence, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in time of need. And the word translated confidence there is actually the same one rendered as boldness here in vs.12. Thus, one prominent, current result of the mystery applied to us Gentiles is that we have this bold, confident access to God by our faith.

Conclusion

This, then, all that we have covered this morning, is the stewardship of God grace that was revealed to Paul to proclaim to the Gentiles. It is the revelation and proclamation of the mystery of Christ—the subject which he momentarily postponed his prayer to clarify. And it is for this reason that Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of the Gentiles, wanted to pray for the Ephesians.

None of us like to be the cause of suffering in another’s life. We go out of our way, in fact, to avoid it—even for personal reasons. We just don’t want to carry the burden of knowing that we’re burdening someone else; it’s part of that quality of self-sufficiency that doesn’t like to admit any need, that we mentioned back in ch.2. Some time ago my mother down in Georgia had surgery which required a brief period of inactivity to facilitate recovery. I happened to be in Atlanta for a conference at that time, so I decided to drive the couple hours to their home to see her. I still remember her being apologetic for not being able to fix me something to eat or drink during the brief window of time I was able to be there. She was trouble that her recovery from surgery had saddled me with the burden of having to forfeit my right to a mid-afternoon snack provided by her! 

Even in the smallest of ways and for the greatest of reasons, we just don’t like to be the source of burden to anyone else. Paul was in prison for preaching the mystery of Christ to the Gentiles. You can read more about that in Act.20-28. As a prisoner for their sake (1) he was about to pray that they would really get it—that they’d grasp and experience the full extent of the meaning of their inclusion in Christ. But then he stopped short. He needed, first, to make sure they understood at least the basics of the mystery—which were glorious enough that he didn’t mind at all the suffering and imprisonment that it cost him to bring it to them. In fact, he told the Colossians (1:24) that he rejoices in the sufferings that come with his proclamation of the mystery! Now here in vs.13 he’s asking them not to be discouraged either—not discouraged, even though they knew that it was because of his preaching to them that he is writing them from prison! And they shouldn’t be discouraged, Paul wrote (13), because his suffering is actually their glory—their eternal salvation has resulted from the same action that landed him in prison. In other words, Paul is saying, “Imprisonment is well worth it!” He values the gospel so highly that prison was not too great a price to pay for preaching it! But even more amazing, I believe: he wanted the Ephesians to value the gospel so highly that his imprisonment, his suffering that resulted directly from bringing it to them, would not diminish the joy of their experience of it.

My friends, there is a question here that is crying out for an answer not just from Paul and the Ephesians, but from each of us: Do we love the gospel in this way? Are we so captivated by the loving and merciful grace of God that no amount of suffering on our part, or on the part of any other, could steal us away from it? Are we so overwhelmed by the wisdom of God made known in the revelation of the mystery that no level of hardship could distract us from it? Are we so satisfied in our relationship with God that no threat could drive us away from it?

Pliny was and early second century Roman Governor in the region of Asia Minor where Ephesus was located. He was so puzzled by the Christians brought before him for trial that he wrote a letter to the Emperor Trajan (AD 98-117) asking for advice. This is one account he shared involving a certain unknown Christian who was brought before him. Pliny found little fault in him but sought to silence him with threats: “I will banish thee,” he said. But the Christian’s reply was, “Thou canst not, for all the world is my Father’s house.” 

“Then I will slay thee,” said the Governor. 

“Thou canst not,” answered the Christian, “for my life is hid with Christ in God.”

“I will take away thy possessions,” continued Pliny. 

“Thou canst not, for my treasure is in heaven.”

“I will drive thee away from man and thou shalt have no friend left,” was his final threat. 

But the steady reply was once more, “Thou canst not, for I have an unseen Friend from Whom thou art not able to separate me.”

Could this be our testimony—yours and mine? Are we so satisfied in Christ that all else could be removed from us and our satisfaction would remain? The writer of Hebrews (10:32-36) recorded that his people joyfully accepted the confiscation of their property because they knew they had a better and lasting possession. So he urged them not to throw away their confidence, their boldness (35) before God—same word as here (12)—by approaching life any differently.

Is the mystery of the gospel your glory, no matter the cost?