Christ Kirk DC 2025

The Mystery of the Gentiles

Introduction

In Pauline terms, a mystery is not something that is hidden away from sight. Rather, a mystery is something that was for long ages hidden away, but which was now revealed in the new covenant. It is now out in plain sight, out in the open. The apostle does not say “there is still a secret hidden somewhere around here.” Rather he says, having taken the lid off the box, “this was the secret for so long.” Of course when a secret is revealed like this, it is no longer a secret . . . but it is still called the secret. It used to be the secret, but now it is the secret revealed. Here is the secret can be synonymous with here is the secret revealed. 

The Text

“For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles, If ye have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which is given me to you-ward: How that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery; (as I wrote afore in few words, Whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ) Which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit; That the Gentiles should be fellowheirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel” (Ephesians 3:1–6).

Summary of the Text

So Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles (Rom. 11:13), and this was a mission that was more than a little bit controversial. His commitment to this mission symbolized by “the middle wall of partition being torn down” was why he was a prisoner. His imprisonment was for the sake of the Gentiles (v. 1). In Acts, when he was giving his testimony to a very surly crowd, they listened to him carefully right up to the point when he said the word Gentiles. Then they erupted again (Acts 22:22).

But he had been entrusted with the task of communicating the grace of God to those Gentiles, which the Ephesians had all heard about (v. 2). The mystery surrounding all of this had been given to Paul in a revelation, which Paul had written about to them earlier (v. 3). Perhaps he had written another letter, but quite possibly he is referring to the first few chapters of Ephesians. The theme of the first part of the book is certainly on point, and that would be consistent with his theme here, and so that is how I suggest we take it. More on what this word mystery means shortly.

When they read what he had written, they would then come to understand Paul’s knowledge of this mystery, which he here calls the “mystery of Christ” (v. 4). This mystery was hidden from the sons of men for “long ages” he says (v. 5), but now, now in the age of the gospel, the Holy Spirit has made this mystery known to the Lord’s holy apostles and prophets.

And so what is that mystery? It is that Gentiles should be heirs together with the Jews, members of the same body, and partakers of God’s promise in Christ through the gospel (v. 6). It is the unification of Jew and Gentile into one new man, that new man being called Christian.

The Olive Tree

In Romans 11, Paul speaks of the covenant people of God under the figure of an olive tree. This is how he writes of the transition between the old covenant and the new. We have one tree straddling the two covenant eras. The roots go deep, all the way back to Abraham.

We do not have an OT tree and a NT tree. He does not give us the olive tree of the Jews and the newly-planted apricot tree of the Gentiles. God does not plant a new kind of tree alongside the old one. He does not abandon the old fruit and start farming something else. The root is always Abraham.

There are some significant actions taken in this transition, but they are the actions of pruning and grafting. They are actions performed on the one tree, not actions that indicate a transfer from olive farming to apricot farming. Unbelieving Jews were cut out of the olive tree, and believing Gentiles, from wild olive tree stock, were grafted in.

This theological position is called supercessionism, and it is frequently expressed by the saying that the church is Israel now. All the promises given in the Old Testament are promises that the church has inherited. I take the point, and agree with it, but I think it would be better to say that Israel has been universalized, and that Israel is the church now—and that Israel is identified through the Christ. Unbelieving Jews who have not yet believed in Christ have been estranged from their own identity in some sense.   

In addition to all of that, as a means of keeping the Gentiles from becoming conceited and falling into the same trap that the unbelieving Jews had fallen into, Paul promised that a day was coming when the branches that had been cut out because of their unbelief would be grafted back in again. If the wild olive branches of Gentile stock could be successfully grafted in, then how much more would it be possible to graft the cultivated branches back in?

And so this brings us to a further distinction. I mentioned supercessionism a few moments ago. This position can be divided into two camps—the first is hard supercessionism, which is the view that the church has replaced ethnic Israel entirely, and Jews today are no more theologically significant that any other tribe—Laplanders, or Navajo, or Swedes. Then there is soft supercessionism, the view I take and which I urge upon you as the classic Reformed understanding. This is the view that in Romans 11 Paul predicts a glorious return of the Jews to Christ, and that this event will be the catalyst for the conversion of the whole world.   

This Mystery as Purloined Letter

Edgar Allen Poe once wrote a short story, a detective story, called The Purloined Letter. Now it might seem to you as though I am abruptly changing the subject, but not really. A criminal who knew that his apartment was going to be searched in pursuit of a sensitive letter that he was using for purposes of blackmail had the wit to hide the letter in plain sight.

God did something very similar when He wrapped this mystery up in layer upon layer of obviousness.

It is astonishing how powerful our religious preconceptions can be. We have very settled notions of what God can and cannot do. But when we try to predict what God is going to do, we usually are very wide of the mark. Having the Almighty God, the one who spoke the galaxies into existence, become a human being, starting out as a single cell, seems to us to be more than a little bit . . . irreverent.

And once He became a man, the obvious thing to us was that He needed to be made a king. The idea that He would be flogged and crucified did not enter our heads. Jesus could even tell His disciples flat out what was going to happen.

And they still didn’t know. They were not outside tomb on Sunday morning, checking their watches saying, “Any moment now.”

And this mystery of the Gentiles . . . it is the same kind of thing. It was a true mystery, set out for us in plain sight.