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"The gospel of God . . . . . concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made
of the seed of David according to the flesh; and declared to be the Son of God with
power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead."
The Lord Jesus was vindicated in the spiritual realm--specially in resurrection. He
was `seen of angels'. Angels rendered praise at His birth; they appeared to strengthen
Him in Gethsemane and after His resurrection they were at the empty tomb and finally at
His Ascension (Acts 1: 10, 11). They were never able to see God in His essential nature
as spirit.
Christ was `preached among the nations, believed on in the world, received up in
glory' (I Tim. 3: 16). The failure of Israel was overruled by the Lord for the gospel
to spread over the then known world, and in this the ministry of the Apostle Paul was
pre-eminent. The verse fittingly closes with the triumphant return of the Lord to the
glory that was previously His:
"And now, O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own self with the glory which I had
with Thee before the world was" (John 17: 5).
And the Ascension records the answer to this prayer. He was `received up in glory'.
Glory is a place--evidently associated with the `right hand of God', the highest of all
heights and it is this exalted sphere where the Saviour is now seated and the church which
is His Body is seen to be seated with Him (Eph. 2: 6).
Many expositors have felt that in the verses of I Timothy that we have been
considering, we have the outline of an early Christian hymn. The short unconnected
sentences with the words similarly arranged, and the number of syllables almost equal
and the ideas antithetically related, are characteristic of such a hymn. The clauses stand
in parallelism; each two are connected as a pair turning on the opposition of heaven to
earth: flesh and spirit, angels and Gentiles, world and glory, and there is a
correspondence between the first and the last `manifested in the flesh, . . . . . received up
in glory'.
Whether this is a primitive hymn or not, one thing is certain, namely that at the
beginning and end of the epistle we have `God invisible' and in the middle, "God
manifest":
A | 1: 17. The King immortal, invisible.
B | 3: 16. Christ Jesus, Who is God, manifest in the flesh.
A | 6: 15, 16. King of kings . . . Whom no man hath seen or can see.
We should note that the `Mystery of godliness' is in direct opposition to the `mystery
of iniquity' (II Thess. 2: 7) and both find their expression in a person (1) the Lord Jesus
Christ and (2) the man of sin, the son of perdition, energized by Satan, and both represent
a climax of revelation of these two opposing forces. Let us never forget that Christ is
Himself the Mystery (secret) of God (Col. 2: 2 R.V.)--Who later became `manifest in the
flesh'.