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merit or works, and indeed goes against the whole tenor of Scripture on this subject. If
anyone cites Matt. 24: 13, then the context and time setting must be carefully studied.
The verse cannot be properly understood if this is not done and in any case Scripture
cannot contradict Scripture.
Paul realized his special calling and its significance. He knew that he had been
divinely called to discharge a special stewardship of truth that was entirely new, for up to
this point God had hid it in Himself (Eph. 3: 9) from all previous times and generations
of people (Col. 1: 26). It was a calling associated with riches of grace and glory beyond
imagination and all this was principally for those who from a spiritual standpoint had
been outcasts, Godless, Christless and hopeless (Eph. 2: 11-13). This stewardship or
`dispensation' had been a `mystery' or secret because of the fact that God had hidden it,
not even in the Scriptures where searching might have discovered it, but in Himself. And
if God hides in this way, who can find, until He chooses to reveal? Yet how many
profess to find this secret in the O.T. or in Scriptures written earlier than the prison
epistles of Paul! This surely must be unbelief and deception, yet it often poses as
spirituality! The Apostle had faithfully ministered all through the period covered by the
Acts of the Apostles, but he never once described this ministry as God's secret which he
was making known for the first time. Rather he insisted that all of it accorded with and
went no further than Moses and the Prophets, i.e. the Old Testament (Acts 26: 22, 23).
Therefore this early ministry of his could not have described as a `mystery', something
Divinely hidden, but was one of revelation since the Pentateuch and the Prophets had
declared it.
It would be a good thing in our Bible study to contrast the secret of Ephesians 3: and
Colossians 1: with truth which has never been hidden, such as the condition of man as a
sinner and the only remedy for it, God's salvation. Or the fact that from Abraham
onwards God had Gentile blessing in mind all the while, even though for a long time He
concentrated on Israel, preparing them as a channel of truth to reach the whole world.
Those who imagine this great `secret' is made known in the gospel of grace, or in Gentile
blessing with Israel, have surely not gripped just what the `mystery' really is, for both
these things were never hidden. One almost gets tired of reading this sort of explanation
of the Mystery in expositions of Ephesians and Colossians, the writers apparently being
unable to see that they are making the Word of God contradict itself.
The Apostle now enlarges on this special ministry which Christ had given him relating
to the church which is His Body:
". . . . . His Body's sake, which is the church, whereof I was made a minister, according
to the dispensation (stewardship) of God which was given me to you-ward, to fulfil the
word of God, even the mystery (secret) which hath been hid from all ages and
generations, but now hath it been manifested to His saints, to whom God was pleased to
make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery (secret) among the Gentiles,
which is Christ in you, the hope of glory" (1: 24-27 R.V.).
This revelation and stewardship was given to Paul alone. There is no hint by any
other N.T. writer that they had received such a commission from the ascended Christ, nor
do they claim to reveal any such Divine secrets. They were appointed to serve elsewhere