If we find a tour through the human body breathtaking and mind-boggling, what can we do with these four mysteries but fall down and worship!
THE INCARNATION BODY
The mystery of the incarnation body of Christ is spoken of in poetic symmetry, “And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory” (1 Tim. 3:16).
Who of us can understand the wonder of it? The God of whom it is stated, “Will God indeed dwell on the earth? behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain Thee…” (1 Ki. 8:27) took up residence in a body. How could the little Babe upheld in the arms of a young virgin be upholding all things by the word of His power? Great indeed is the mystery.
Yet Paul, seemingly alluding to Bethel, “the house of God” with its pillar and angels and revelation of God in glory, tells Timothy that occupation with the Man Christ Jesus is the true secret to being transformed to be like Him.
THE MYSTICAL BODY
The link between Christ and His Church is so intimate that Paul, by the Spirit’s inspiration, uses the relationship between a body and its head to show the organic oneness, and between a man and woman in marriage to show the bond of love as the secret of that oneness. “For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and He is the saviour of the body…He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church…For this cause shall a man…be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church” (Eph. 5:23-32).
THE UNIFIED BODY
Unless we were Jewish believers of the first century, we could hardly register the shock they would, when hearing Paul expound his “knowledge in the mystery of Christ.” What was it? “That the Gentiles should be fellowheirs, and of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ by the gospel” (Eph. 3:6).
It was not a mystery that Gentiles could be saved. There were many examples in the Old Testament of that: Rahab, Ruth, Uriah, to name a few. But what happened in the house of Cornelius was revolutionary. Until that occasion, Gentiles came in through the back door, so to speak, as proselytes to the Jewish faith. Now the Cross had leveled the ground. The middle wall of partition had been demolished, the enmity abolished (Eph. 2:14-15), and far-off Gentiles and nearby Jews who believe have equal “access by one Spirit unto the Father” (Eph. 2:18). We also have the same citizenship, foundation, and habitation (vv. 19-22). Like Solomon’s temple, with “Jewish” stones and “Gentile” timbers, today Jews and Gentiles, “fitly framed together,” grow “unto a holy temple in the Lord” (v. 21).
This is “the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to His saints: 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” (Col. 1:26-27).
THE GLORIFIED BODY
“Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye…the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed” (1 Cor. 15:51-52).
If it is a great wonder that Christ came to us in the lowly garb of a human body, and is linked with us as Head to body in the Church, and is now in us, the hope of glory among the Gentiles, then who can anticipate the unfettered joy when “we shall be like Him”? Then shall the sons of Adam truly be manifested as the sons of God (Rom. 8:19).