Ephesians 3:1-12; Clearing up THAT mystery!

"This is the reason that I Paul am a prisoner for Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles— 2 for surely you have already heard of the commission of God’s grace that was given me for you, 3 and how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I wrote above in a few words, 4 a reading of which will enable you to perceive my understanding of the mystery of Christ. 5 In former generations this mystery was not made known to humankind, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit: 6 that is, the Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. 7 Of this gospel I have become a servant according to the gift of God’s grace that was given me by the working of his power. 8 Although I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to me to bring to the Gentiles the news of the boundless riches of Christ, 9 and to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; 10 so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. 11 This was in accordance with the eternal purpose that he has carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord, 12 in whom we have access to God in boldness and confidence through faith in him."

I. Introduction

The clearest argument to me that the Letter to the Ephesians cannot have been written by the Apostle Paul is because of the florid and unnecessary words, many of which attempt to imitate Paul, in this letter. Our passage today is a good example of this practice. Rather than the tight, emotionally-charged, intellectually acute and precise language of Paul, this passage wanders, piling up genitives (possessives in Greek--vv. 7-8) and using unncecessary and unclear repetitions (rulers and authorities--v.10). The attempts to use sophisticated literary conventions, such as alliteration (in vv. 6,12 in Greek), are catchy, though this is not something that the "genuine" Paul does much of in the other letters. In short, the author bloviates. Instead of fecund facundity, the author commits the penalty of literary piling-on, for which he should be penalized 15 yards with a loss of down.

Some people, however, seem to find comfort and even inspiration in the piling up of words; I think it simply reflects a lack of literary imagination. In short, what the author is trying to do here is restate his claim for apostolic authority and to play briefly with the word mysterion ("mystery"), which is nothing other than God's plan to make Gentiles full participants (the three alliterative words in v. 6 say it more completely) in the Gospel. Rather than glazing your and my eyes with statements about the wonder of it all, I would like to devote this essay to the way the word mysterion is used in the NT, with special emphasis on the 21 uses of the word in Paul or letters attributed to Paul. In this study I will be relying on the long note in Bauer Arndt Gingrich A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature at 531-32 (1957).

II. The Mystery--Clearing it Up

The word "mystery," in the ancient world, meant primiary the secret teachings contained within the so-called "Mystery Cults" of Greek/Egyptian or Persian deities. Christian literature, in contrast, used the word to describe the secret thoughts or plans of God which have been hidden from human reason and must be revealed to special people in order to be clear to the rest of us.

Ths word only appears in one context in the Gospels, where Jesus says to his disciples, who have asked for an explanation of parables: "to you the mystery of the Kingdom of Heaven is given, but to those outside it is in parables" (Mk. 4:11; Mt. 13:11; Lk 8:10). The fact that the Gospel authors hardly used the word might be indicative of two things: (1) that they, as Jewish authors, were not as familiar with the Greek-oriented mystery cults as the more worldly-wise and traveled Paul; or (2) that they did know about these cults and wanted to separate the Christian movement from possible confusion with these popular religions--by avoiding the term. Yet, as we saw in the Gospel lesson for today, Matthew sympathetically uses the term magos (i.e., "magus" or "magician") in portraying the Epiphany visitors to Jesus.

In literature attributed to Paul, as mentioned above, the word mysterion appears 21 times. It can be a secret too profound for human understanding, such as the "mystery" of God's partial hardening of Israel in Rom. 11:25 or the transformation of Christians at the parousia in I Cor. 15:51. I love the latter passage, since whenever I read it I hear the recititative before the aria "The Trumpet Shall Sound" in Handel's Messiah. In Colossians, Christ can be spoken of as "God's secret" or "mystery" (2:2) who was hidden ages ago (1:26) but now is gloriously revealed among the Gentiles. The Gentiles are those to whom the "mystery" of Christ is proclaimed (Col. 4:3). The plural is used to denote Christian preaching by the apostles and teachers in the expression "stewards of the mysteries of God" (I Cor. 4:1). Not all Christians are capable of understanding all the mysteries. For example, the one who speaks in tongues "utters mysteries in the Spirit" which s/he alone shares with God (I Cor. 14:2). Even fellow Christians might not understand this language. Paul can contrast the great joy of knowing all mysteries (I Cor. 13:2) with the greater joy of the virtue of love. And the spirit-filled apostle can say that the highest stage of Christian knowledge is revealed only to the "perfect": "We speak the wisdom of God in the form of a mystery" (I Cor. 2:7).

The word also predominates in Ephesians though its meaning here is quite constricted. That is, it doesn't have the fulness of the Pauline use of the term. We have the "mystery of his will" (1:9) or the mystery of Christ (3:4) or of the Gospel (6:19), but in every instance in Ephesians it means the acceptance of the Gentiles as Christians. A unique "great mystery" is revealed in 5:32, where the relation between Christ and the Church is mentioned--which marriage is supposed to symbolize.

Conclusion

Thus, the concept of mystery in the NT should now be demystified, even if its linguistic field in Ephesians 3 is pretty limited. The availabilty of the Gospel to the Gentiles, however, was a big issue, a very big issue, to the earliest Christians. Indeed, most of us would never have a share in the Gospel if it was not for the revelation of this "mystery." And that is a good thing to celebrate on this Epiphany Sunday.

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