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#14.
Galatians 3: 8.
pp. 218, 219
"And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen
through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee
shall all nations be blessed" (Gal. 3: 8).
We have only to read this passage in Galatians to be sure that the inclusion of the
Gentile in the blessings of the gospel and the promises of Abraham is no "mystery".
Quite a number of objections to the truth of the mystery, however, have arisen out of this
misconception. We are glad, therefore, to be able to quote from a letter received from a
reader the following testimony:
"I might add my testimony to the many others that the particular Scriptures
which more than any others opened my eyes to the Dispensation of the Mystery are:
Gen. 12: 1-3, and Eph. 3: 2-7. When the Holy Spirit opened my eyes to the fact that
salvation for the Gentiles was included in God's programme as given to Abraham, as
such was no new revelation given to Paul, then I saw that Paul's ministry must be
something beside that given to Abraham and his seed."
"If this can be of any help in your articles on `When the Commandment Came' I
should be glad to have you use it."
The same misunderstanding is at the bottom of the criticism which has been made of
our attitude to Romans. Because we believe and teach that the dispensation of the
Mystery finds no exposition outside Paul's prison epistles, we have been criticized as
self-contradictory for turning back to the Epistle to the Romans. We find in Romans the
gospel of the grace of God. This gospel, as our brother says, was not a new revelation
given to Paul, for its basic teaching of "justification by faith" was to be found in "the law
and the prophets" (Gen. 15: 6 and Hab. 2: 4), but it is carried over into the dispensation
of the Mystery (Phil. 3: 9). The revelation that is found in Eph. 3: 2-7 speaks of a
calling and constitution, and not the initial message of free salvation, that is the great
distinguishing feature of the apostle's prison ministry.
In bringing this series of articles of personal testimony to a close, we should like to
express the gratitude that many readers have felt and passed on, to all those
fellow-members, who out of their varied experiences of the illuminating power of God,
have given encouragement to others by allowing us to use their written witness.
We shall be wise if we learn one lesson well--that, just as God has spoken in the past
and sundry times and in divers manners, so to-day He is pleased to use a variety of
passages of Scripture, some of them to us most unlikely, in carrying conviction to the
seeking soul. Let us all be thankful that the commandment "came", whatever may have
been its particular form.