The Mystery Revealed | Ephesians 3:1-13
It is a deep assumption among mankind, and has been for some time that “Knowledge is power.” That phrase, coined by multiple famous figures of history including Socrates, Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, and Albert Einstein, all reflect the age we live in: the age of Enlightenment, or the age of information. We live in an age where knowledge is the ultimate currency. It is assumed that if you know enough, you can do anything or be anything that you want.
We see this primarily in the fact that for decades now, your entrance ticket into the workforce—in order to get a good paying job that can support a family and middle class lifestyle—you must have a 4-year degree showing you have a certain level of knowledge. There is a base assumption that credentials are the currency for upward mobility. But in this new age of Artificial Intelligence, the landscape is completely leveled. If the industrial revolution made everyone artificially stronger and faster (machines/vehicles), the AI revolution is making everyone artificially intelligent.
So those of us who grew up in the age of Google, where every answer to every question was within reach, now we can know and digest information in an even faster and deeper way. Progress, right?!
And yet, even though we might appear smarter than ever, there are still deep and mysterious questions that no amount of information can answer. Because, I would argue, it reveals that our deepest problem is not actually lack of information, but a failure to perceive revelation.
Let me explain. Right now, you could use Google or ChatGPT and get the information to the question, “What happened at the Battle of Hastings in 1066?” But no amount of artificial intelligence or information will tell you if what happened there was good or bad, godly or wicked, wise or foolish. No amount of AI or data can replace the need for the virtue of wisdom. Because we are not just machines that need to be programmed a certain way, or animals that need to be trained, but humans made in the image of God.
Information, data is not the solution to our deepest problems, nor answers to our deepest questions. We are still plagued by incredibly deep and difficult mysteries that can not be answered in a satisfying way in some classroom or online. In our information age, we still ask questions like:
Why did that have to happen to me?
Why did I receive that diagnosis?
Why didn’t I get that promotion?
Why didn’t the treatment work?
Why didn’t that car stop at that red light?
All of those questions can be answered at one level. But the heart that asks those questions is not looking for information, but comfort for their suffering souls. When we ask those questions, data is not what we need, but hope—hope that there is a good and gracious God and that there is a reason for the suffering I experience and that there is a place and a people I can belong to who share in that hope and can encourage me and strengthen me as I fight the fight of faith. That’s what we need.
And my friends, that is what this text in Ephesians 3 is all about. So let’s turn to that word and see what our Lord has revealed to us through his holy and authoritative word.
Quick reminder that the chapters, verses, and chapter headings in your Bibles are not inspired. They are not original to Paul’s letters. They are helpful, certainly, for navigation and organizing our Bibles, and they generally do follow the overall structure and thought of the authors, but they are not inspired. Sometimes, I think, we move on to a new chapter and approach it as we do chapters in a novel—as if it is completely detached from the previous chapter. But remember, Paul is writing a letter, not a novel, so chapter 3 is connected and follows from the previous section, as well as the entire letter thus far.
We know this because Paul begins here in this new section by bridging back to the end of our chapter 2 when he says (3:1)...”for this reason”. What reason? That in Christ, that is in union with the risen Christ we celebrated and worshiped last week on Easter Sunday, in him we belong to a new people, a new building, a new community—Christ’s church. And in this divine community, we experience the blessing of the presence of our God. What a tremendous thought.
So with that as the foundation of Paul’s thought, he now begins to unpack more implications of what the church is, both its message and its purpose. And for Paul, a key category of the Christian faith is mystery. Throughout his letters, Paul uses that word translated as mystery no less than 21 times, 6 times in the letter of Ephesians, and of those 6 times in Ephesians, he uses 4 of them here in this passage. This is a significant category for Paul and a significant idea he means to communicate here in chapter 3.
As a friend of mine once said, “Mystery is a significant category of the Christian faith.” That statement was so unsettling to me. Why? Because knowledge is power, and lack of knowledge, ignorance, is weakness. We hate not knowing. We hate not being able to get our heads all the way around something. The thought of not knowing something is unsettling to us.
We could say something like, “If it doesn’t make sense to me, it can’t be true.” And if we’re honest, that’s a very arrogant claim. “If it doesn’t make sense to me, there is no possible way it can be true.” Really? Can you explain stoichiometry? I can’t (well, I asked ChatGPT to explain it to me like I’m 5…but that doesn’t mean I understand it!). But that doesn’t mean it can’t be true just because I don’t fully understand it.
But if there is something we don’t understand, it is our suffering. For Paul, he means to encourage the saints to understand that the suffering he experienced and was actively experiencing did not negate his ministry or the truth of the gospel. What we need most of all is not information from some AI language generator, but revelation from the almighty God who created heaven and earth! What we need is for the God who knows all things to graciously open his hand to us to speak to us and give us tangible truth that we can know for sure, even when circumstances cause everything to be foggiest around us. In fact, here is what I believe is Paul’s main burden in the wonderful and powerful text… Through the church, the message of Christ unifies and encourages suffering souls.
This text, Ephesians 3:1–13 is about the grace of revelation. It is about what the cross of Christ which we celebrated last weekend accomplished, what has changed, and how God means to produce change throughout the globe. There is mystery in our world and Paul means to be clear about the various questions that arise from our various circumstances. There is wisdom and revelation available to you, and it comes to you purely by grace in Christ and in his saving acts towards you.
So what then is revealed? I think we can organize this text into 2 main mysteries that are revealed in this text: First, the mysterious message, and second the mysterious means.
The Mysterious Message
At the heart of the message given to Paul is grace. It is sovereign grace. What we have in God’s revelation is what we could not have learned on our own. We are helpless and blind. Recall how John wrote about the advent of Christ in John 1:14…
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
—John 1:14
This message, Paul says in Ephesians 3:2, is a gracious gift from the Lord that has been given to him for him to steward. And that verb translated as stewardship comes from the root word for managing a household—oikos. It’s a task given to those who are the heads of the household to manage and administer to the other family members for their good.
And throughout this text, Paul continues to recognize that the revelation of God to him is nothing but sheer grace.
(v. 2–3) assuming that you heard of the stewardship of God’s grace that was given to me for you, how the mystery was made known to me by revelation…
(v. 4–5) you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.
Paul wants to be crystal clear: all that he has and all that he knows did not come about from his own will. This is not some fanciful or pragmatic solution to a very real problem of division in the church. The cross of Christ and all its effects are not the musings of some theologian, but the outpouring of a gracious God through divine revelation.
So Paul has been given some message, some revelation from God that is unique and authoritative as it comes from the God who has so captured him, so imprisoned him, that he now recognizes that because he has this revelation, he has been made a minister, an intermediate, a messenger, a humble courier of the message that he has received. Well, what is the mysterious message that he has received? I think there are 2 parts to the message…
The Gospel of Christ
Paul begins this section with a solemn and emphatic declaration of himself…
For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus…
—Ephesians 3:1
The way Paul pens this is intentionally dramatic. It’s even more emphatic in the Greek. You could translate this even stronger—”even I, Paul…” He then invokes something known to the NT writers by placing two nouns side by side in apposition, two nouns referring to the same entity—here it is Paul and prisoner. Paul is not just addressing his current circumstance—namly he happens to be imprisoned at the time—but rather identifies fully with that imprisonment—”even I, Paul, a prisoner”. This is not just what is circumstantially happening to him, but is part of who he is.
And notice too who he identifies as his jailer—not Rome, but Christ. That shift totally reframes and recalibrates his identity and his purpose. He is not defined by his circumstance and his sufferings, he is defined by Christ. Christ is the cornerstone we read about in Ephesians 2, and is the center of everything that God is up to in his life and what God is up to in the entire world.
Remember Ephesians 1—God the Father, who created all things and sustains all things, has chosen for himself a people. And in Ephesians 2, we see that he has acted to make alive that people in Christ by the enlivening and power of the Holy Spirit, and to be witnesses to the glorious riches of his mercy towards us. That is his purpose and that is what he has done in Paul’s life—so Paul’s allegiances and loyalties and his very identity has been transformed from a child of wrath to a child of the Most High God, and is no longer a slave to sin because of the gospel of Christ.
Recall how Paul frames this to the church in Rome in Romans 6…
Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.
—Romans 6:16–19
Paul sees himself above all else as belonging to the Christ who changed everything. This is the foundational reality he is building off of. Christ is the “for this reason”. Christ is the center and cornerstone from all that he had said before. “When you read this” he says in v. 4—because he expects his letters to be read publicly to the gathered church—remember what Christ did to me and among you!
The reason this gospel message had been so mysterious is because for millenia, there had been a promise of one who would come to right all the wrongs. All the way back in the beginning, a promised offspring of the woman would come to crush the head of the serpent. To Abraham a seed was promised through whom all the nations on earth would be blessed. To Judah was promised a scepter that would never depart, to David was promised a king who would build a house for God’s name. And Isaiah promised a shoot that would come from the stump of Jesse, a servant of the Lord would come with the Spirit of the Lord resting on him and would take on the sins of the people and make the many righteous. All of that in type and in shadow, shrouded in mystery and begging the question “who is this promised one, and how will he fulfill this promise?”
And Paul says, “Christ Jesus, it is he!” He is the one all the law and the prophets pointed to, that he should suffer and enter into his glory. It is Christ and his cross that have effectuated cosmic change, “The Kingdom of God is at hand!” It is that Christ whom Paul is a prisoner of and of that gospel that he was made a herald and all of it by grace through faith so that Christ and Christ alone would receive all the glory.
That is what we’ve seen so far in this letter—Christ is the central focus of all of God’s saving works in the world. He informs and directs everything that Paul thinks and does. What about you? Last week Ryan asked the question of how does the resurrection of Christ effect you in your day to day life? Does that reality fundamentally change anything about you and your life? We often talk about gospel centrality—is Jesus central to your life? When you’re going through your day to day life, does what he did for you on the cross enter into the equation of your life? Is he simply the beginning of your Christian life, or does he permeate your life?
Do you know the unsearchable riches of Christ? Does the word of Christ dwell in you richly? Do you know his love for you? Do you know what he has done for him? It begins, as always, with Christ.
But there’s more to this message. Christ has been revealed, but there are earth-shaking effects of that message. The second component to this mysterious message is…
The Unity of All People
The effect of the gospel of Christ is a changed and united people. As we said a couple weeks ago, when the Spirit of God works through the message of the gospel, you are brought into the corporate or body of Christ. You belong to a people and to a community where you are known and your roots go deep. Herman Bavinck says…
The religious bond is the strongest form of all human community.
—Herman Bavinck
The Christian community goes deeper than any family bond, any social class, or any race. And for Paul’s readers, this point would have been the hardest to believe. Look again what he says in verse 6…
This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.
—Ephesians 3:6
This would be mind-boggling to the Jewish Christians. This was impossible to compute. It is difficult for us to understand how deep the divide was between the Jews and Gentiles. The divide was not purely a race divide (like white or black), nor merely a cultural divide, but a cultic, or religious divide. It was not just socially uncouth to interact with a Gentile, but unclean and a sin against a holy God!
But now, because of gospel, those who were far off (namely, the Gentiles) have been brought near. The mystery revealed is that the saving work of Jesus can unite those who seem impossible to unite. Those Gentiles, Paul says, are now fellow heirs, members of the same family and body, united to you like an arm to a body, and partakers of the same promise that has been preached to you. What has happened first to the Jews is now available to the Gentiles as well.
If the cross can overcome our sin against a holy God and reconcile us back to the Father, then surely the cross can overcome the sin and bitterness between two people, reconciling them back to one another. This gives hope to all who might feel relationally distant from others due to sin. You can forgive and reconcile one another, because in Christ, God has forgiven you and restored your relationship with me. That is one of the sweetest effects of the gospel message.
And this message was given to Paul for the very purpose to bring the gospel to the Gentiles. Recall how Luke narrates the conversion of Saul in Acts 9. After Christ confronts him on the road to Damascus, he is saved and blinded, and is brought to Damascus. The Lord comes to Ananias, telling him to go and find Paul and to lay hands on him and commission him. And when Ananias protests—I mean, Paul was one of the most famous persecutors of the early church—the Lord replies…
“Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.”
—Acts 9:15–16
This is Paul’s commission. He knows he is to bring the gospel of Christ to the whole Gentile world, and he knows that he will suffer for it. For Paul, sitting in a Roman prison cell, writing letters to the churches dispersed throughout the Ephesian region is not alarming or meaningless suffering—it is the Lord keeping his promises to him! And if he keeps his promises to him, then he will keep his promises to the Gentiles and to you.
And the fact that there are churches in Rome, and Ephesus, and Corinth, and in the regions of Galatia, Colossea, and Thessalonica…the Lord is keeping every promise he made to build his church, to make disciples of all nations, and to unite all things and all people in himself. Because that is the reality. The thing that unites Jew/Gentile, slave/free, male/female, and all who are here this morning, the thing that unites us all is the message of the saving work of Jesus Christ. The word of Christ is the soul of the church, and it gives life and light to all who come to it. It is the living water and the bread of life, that all who eat and drink will never go thirsty and will be satisfied.
So Paul has outlined the mysterious message that has now been revealed in Christ and to the Gentiles. But what is just as shocking about this revelation is how that message will go forth.
The Mysterious Means
Paul, of course, had been commissioned in a very direct and divine way. But is he the only one who is to herald this revealed mystery? No, what we see in this text is that the normal means of the gospel that changes lives is through the preaching of the word in the church.
Look again at Ephesians 3 starting in verse 8…
To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.
—Ephesians 3:8–10
The grace that has appeared in Christ and which makes alive rebels and sinners like you and like me, is now spreading throughout the world. The manifold, or varied, or omni-facted wisdom and glory and majesty of God that can actually change people from dead to life, from sinner to saint, from strangers to son has appeared and is diffusing throughout all the world through the witness of the church. That’s what’s happening this morning throughout all the world—the manifold wisdom of God is being made known to all people.
Thomas Schreiner describes this well when he says…
The church enshrined God’s plan for history, revealing to all creation the wisdom and depth of God’s saving plan. The church is the locus of God’s glory, the theater in which he displays his grace and love. The church features God’s wisdom, declaring to the whole universe that the outworking of history is not arbitrary but rather fulfills God’s plan.
—Thomas Schreiner
What was hinted at in the OT in the tabernacle and temple is fulfilled in the church. This is not a distraction from God’s plan, but rather this has been the plan from the beginning. The church—what Paul calls the Holy Temple in Ephesians 2—is where God’s presence manifests. God himself appears in our midst! And this building has a purpose. It is not a multi-purpose space like this one—sometimes a gym, sometimes a theatre, sometimes a classroom, sometimes a church. No, the church exists for the one single purpose: to host the white hot worship of the people of God, to proclaim his deeds to one another through his word, and the herald that manifold wisdom to the world as witnesses.
J.I. Packer defines the church this way…
Essentially, the church is, was, and always will be a single worshiping community, permanently gathered in the true sanctuary which is the heavenly Jerusalem, the place of God’s presence. Here all who are alive in Christ, the physically living with the physically dead (i.e., the church militant with the church triumphant) worship continually. In the world, however, this one church appears in the form of local congregations, each one called to fulfill the role of being a microcosm (a small-scale representative sample) of the church as a whole.
—J.I. Packer
It is through the church—through local expressions like this one—that all nations on earth are blessed. This has always been the plan from the beginning. What we read about in Genesis with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they were the means by which God was going to extend his blessings to the nations, but was limited to that family and that region of the world. But now the church is now the means by which the covenantal blessing spreads throughout the world—but it is not the church itself that does this, not through its programs or its political prestige or power, but because of its message. It’s the message of Christ, and that’s why it’s a blessing!
The kingdom of God, secured by the blood of Christ is spread on earth through the preaching of his word, manifesting in the gifts of the Spirit, and the transformation of lives and the unity of his people. That is the effect of the revealed mystery in this world, and it’s what makes it possible for people like you and me to hear and respond to the message of Christ. I pray that that is your view of the church, and it is our deep desire that that is your experience of this church as long as you are with us—the saving message of the gospel is proclaimed, loved, treasured, and applied to everyday life.
But one more thing. And maybe you noticed this already, but did you see what is the fuel, the catalyst that spreads this message and brings this message to the ends of the world? What advances this message? We see it again, in the man who holds the pen writing this letter—a prisoner suffering on behalf of the ones he loves and cares for.
Suffering brackets this entire section—his imprisonment in v. 1 and his suffering in v. 13. Paul had been imprisoned for 3 years in Rome and had suffered greatly throughout his ministry—his ministry that was directed to the Gentiles. And he knows this, and the Gentiles know it. He is suffering for them and on their behalf. But Paul sees his suffering as a part of God’s sovereign plan and it is his joy in his suffering that ought to encourage his readers. Paul, whose circumstances would seem like he should be the one receiving some encouragement, ends this section with his only command to the saints in v. 13: do not lose heart—another translation, do not be discouraged.
In God’s sovereign and mysterious plan, suffering is the way the church advances. The early church, as it spread throughout the Roman Empire and across the globe, experienced this in a way we never have. And yet, even in their suffering, they advanced. Early Church Father Tertullian penned this about his persecutors in the pagan African city of Carthage…
But nothing whatever is accomplished by your cruelties, each more exquisite than the last. It is the bait that wins men for our school. We multiply whenever we are mown down by you; the blood of Christians is seed.
—Tertullian
Paul trusts that God’s purposes are being fulfilled in and through his suffering. That is a faith-filled view of suffering—one that does not come naturally to any of us. How could this suffering be for my good?
How could that diagnosis be for my good? I can’t understand it. How could the sudden death of my loved one be for my good? I can’t fathom it. How could our marriage problems or our financial problems or my job problems be for my good? It just doesn’t compute.
What we need when we look on our suffering is eyes that see through the mystery of why and see with clarity the revealed who. We belong to a savior—but not just any savior, a crucified savior. He is not just a lamb, but is a slain lamb. When you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you need not fear evil, for your God is with you. And not standing above you, watching you struggle through, hoping you’ll find your way on your own. No, he is there walking in the valley with you because he has walked that same path before. And he did not just experience suffering, he conquered it. He conquered sin and death so that your suffering does not have the final word.
So my friends, do not lose heart, do not be discouraged. Your suffering is not in vain. Everything you experience is being worked for you good, and it is through your suffering that God gets glory. It is the suffering and triumphant Christ that calls us and unites us, and it is the same Christ who will keep us. Praise God, for he has done marvelous things.