The revelation of the mystery.
It was the high distinction of the Apostle Paul that to him, and not to any one of the twelve apostles, was committed the revelation of a great mystery. Ten times is this mystery named in his Epistles. It is called significantly "his gospel;" for which he was, indeed, an ambassador in bonds; but a gospel even more gloriously practical than it was speculative in its tendency and character. It was a revealed secret, "hid from generations"—indeed, hid "from the foundation of the world;" a matter, not indeed unknowable, but simply unknown till it came to light through the revelation of this last apostle.
I. THERE IS A TIME WHEN THE WORLD IS NOT READY FOR GOD'S MYSTERIES. The Divine purpose might be defeated by a premature disclosure to minds untrained for their reception. The presence of mysteries is a sort of moral training for man, in so far as it stimulates a sort of sober and devout inquisitiveness in minds blunted by sin, while reason needs likewise to be humbled under a sense of the necessity of illumination from on high. While we sit under the solemn shadows of Divine mysteries, we feel the need of lifting up our mantled eyeballs to the great Father of lights.
II. THE MYSTERY DOES NOT COME WITHOUT DUE PREPARATION HAVING BEEN MADE FOR IT. Not only is the New Testament contained in the Old, but the whole pre-Christian period is one long preparation for the coming of Christ. Not only the types and prophecies of the Mosaic dispensation, but the whole history of the world, with all the marvelously intricate movements of providence, had a certain Christward tendency and leaning, as if to prepare the way for him who was the end of the Law, the turning-point between the old and the new time, "the pivot on which the entire plan of God moves." Thus we find "the Incarnation to be the center of gravity to the world's great movements."
III. BUT THE MYSTERY OF THE GOSPEL WHICH THE APOSTLE MADE KNOWN WAS A VERY LARGE AND INCLUSIVE THING, EMBRACING JEW AND GENTILE, HEAVEN AND EARTH, IN ITS FULL AND GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT. Sometimes it appears as if it meant only Christ: "To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Colossians 1:27). Sometimes it appears as if it included nothing but the reception of the Gentiles into the Christian Church upon conditions of perfect equality with the Jews: "The mystery of Christ, which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit; that the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel" (Ephesians 3:4-6). It was no mystery to pre-Christian ages that the Gentiles would be afterwards included in the Christian Church—for the prophetic Scriptures are full of the subject; but it was never known till after the day of Pentecost that the theocracy itself was to be abolished, and that a new dispensation was to be established, under which the old distinction of Jew and Gentile was to be abolished. Sometimes it appears as if it meant a Divine purpose or plan, with Christ for its Center, stretching out over the whole length of the Christian dispensation, and finally re-collecting into one "things on earth" and "things in heaven" (Ephesians 1:9, Ephesians 1:10). In fact, it means all three things; for the Divine plan for "the summing up" of all things included, as one of its earliest and most momentous facts, the inclusion of the Gentiles in the Church, and Jesus Christ as the very Center of the whole Divine dispensation, to whom shall be "the gathering of the people" in all ages of the world. This is the mystery of the gospel: not the Church, as some say, restricting the term to believers of the Christian dispensation; for it was by the Church the mystery was to be made known: "To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God" (Ephesians 3:10). Yet the Church was included in this glorious mystery of God, as the form in which there should be the final "summing up" of all things in heaven and in earth.—T.C.