It Is A Mystery. (Well, not anymore!)

Posted by Jim Hurtsellers on Jan 11, 2011 in Daily Bread | 1 comment

I love a mystery. Some of my favorite books are those “Who done its” but I have to be honest with you… I often have no clue “Who done it” until the last few pages. The funny thing is as bad as I am in solving the mysteries of the books I read, I am even more clueless when it comes to the really big mysteries in life. You know, like traffic lanes. The mystery is that every time I get in the “fast lane” it slows down. Then there is the mystery of my peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I never drop it in my kitchen. I always seem to drop it in the living room; often on the sofa. And hey, where exactly do socks go once you put them in the dryer? It is a mystery! I guess some things I’ll never know.

In today’s scripture the Apostle Paul reveals the mystery that must have seemed especially foreign to the Old Testament Jewish mind. In fact they were quite “clueless” about how God was going to include gentiles in the covenants He made with Israel. The Apostle Paul, reflecting on his mission of helping believing Jews and Gentiles accept each other as partners in God’s covenant of salvation, writes, “the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members of one body.” That the gentiles were to be saved was no mystery. The mystery was the divine purpose to make of Jew and Gentile a wholly new thing – the church, which is Christ’s body, brought into being by the Holy Spirit, and in which, the distinction of Jew and Gentile disappears. The Holy Spirit gave the details of the church concerning doctrine, position, work, destiny, etc, to the Apostle Paul and his fellow apostles. Mystery Revealed!

You know I really don’t feel so bad that I have to wait to I get to the last few pages of the book to understand the mystery. Not if you consider that the Apostle Paul did not reveal this mystery until sometime around 60 A.D. ; and how many years were the Jewish people waiting?