What’s Your Favorite Mystery?

Photo by the Manhattan Rare Book Company

Do you enjoy mysteries? I do. Whether it’s in a paperback or on Netflix, I like to see if I can solve the mystery before it is revealed. I have a favorite mystery, but you’ll have to figure out what it is. (Just keep reading.)

Edgar Allen Poe gave us what we would consider the modern mystery (which was The Murders in the Rue Morgue, 1841), but people’s fascination with mysteries is a lot older than that. We are drawn to mystery.

Consider the mystery religions that made the rounds from around 300 B.C. to 500 A.D. Why were they called mystery religions? Because it was a mystery what they did! We know little of what they did because of the strict secrecy imposed on those initiated into the cultic practice. Yet, it’s that very secrecy that drew many people into it.

Take Gnosticism, a philosophy that plagued the early church, a false teaching that both Paul and John spoke against. Gnosticism was not a part of the mystery religions, but there was an element of a mystery around it that generated a spiritual pride. The very word Gnosticism is tied to the word knowledge, and Gnostics prided themselves in having this special knowledge that not everyone else got. They had the inside information that normal yahoos didn’t understand.

In the first century, when culture was fascinated with mystery, Paul wrote,

“I have become its servant, according to God’s commission that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints” (Col. 1:25-26).

Paul was not jumping on culture’s bandwagon and promoting a mystery that only special people—the saints—could understand. But he was talking about a mystery that no one would have figured out on their own. For example, when the prophet Daniel referred to a mystery, he was talking about something that could not be understood apart from divine revelation (see Dan. 2). If God didn’t reveal the mystery, no amount of smarts would figure it out. And that’s the way Paul was using the word mystery. Let’s see what Paul’s mystery was.

“God wanted to make known among the Gentiles the glorious wealth of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (v. 27).

There it is. “Christ in you.” The mystery is that Christ is in you. Part of this mystery is that the salvation that comes through Jesus Christ was available to the Gentiles. God’s salvation was not limited to the Jews. This was not the idea of the Jews; the bulk of them liked being God’s chosen people and keeping that relationship with God to themselves. But Jesus is for all people! No one saw this coming, but God gloriously made this truth known. Christ was with the Gentiles who looked to Him, even as He was with the Jews who looked to Him.

But there’s another part of this truth that no one would have figured out on their own. It was a mystery until God made it known: For the follower of Christ, Christ is in you. He is not merely watching you. He is not nearby. He is dwelling inside you!

“Now if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit gives life because of righteousness” (Rom. 8:10).

“I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).

“That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith” (Eph. 3:17)

Don’t read past that without pondering the richness of that statement. The sovereign, all-powerful God of the universe calls you His child and chooses to live in you through the presence of His Holy Spirt. God Himself is with you and in you!

Who would’ve thunk it? Who would’ve thought such a glorious truth could be possible?! Yet this is the very truth God has revealed. And now that it is revealed, it is not to remain a mystery. This “mystery” is nothing to keep to ourselves.

“Sing to the Lord, bless his name; proclaim his salvation from day to day. Declare his glory among the nations, his wondrous works among all peoples” (Ps. 96:2-3).

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This post supports the study “Growing in Christ” in Bible Studies for Life and YOU.