Mystery. Ancient secrets. These words conjure up intense sparks of interest and controversy. Everyone wants to be the detective who uncovers the secret and the sage who understands it. Whether we prefer Sherlock Holmes or Indianna Jones doesn’t matter, we all share a common curiosity to be the first to know the sapiential truth of life. Perhaps that’s why Paul employes the word for secret five times in this chapter alone. Do you want to know a secret that been hidden for the aeons in God? Then read on!

Paul amps up the excitement of his epistle with phrases like, “by revelation the divine secret was made known to me”, “understand my insight into the secret of Christ”, “this secret was not disclosed to former generations” and “God’s secret plan”. Paul tells us that this secret was the entire reason he was recruited by the Messiah to be an apostle.

The mystery is revealed to God’s holy apostles and prophets by the Holy Spirit so that through the church God’s multifaceted wisdom may be known. Due to the revealing of this secret we have confident access to God, boldness in living for him, and a heart that doesn’t lose strength. So what is this secret that was kept from the creation of the world, this mystery that Paul revealed to his readers and, perhaps just as imortantly, to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms?

What the Jews – and the rest of the world – believed about God was entirely wrong. YHWH wasn’t just the God and savior of Israel, but was always interested in being the God and savior of the world! When Jesus was raised to life from the grave he became the savior of all the Israelites who had put their faith in the future Messiah AND of all the people who later would trust in him alone, including Gentiles! I admit this seems a little basic to us 2,000 years later and isn’t such a great mystery, but to the world at the time, including the realm of the fallen angels, this was a huge revelation.

When it comes to the topic of salvation we all have a tendency to think about what it means to us, which is fine because it means a lot. As Paul has already disclosed, we were not a part of the providentially chosen race, we are not Israelites, and in fact we were as far from God as a people could be. In the midst of that desperate place where we followed the path forged for us by the devil himself, dead to God, the Father entered and found us and stole us away to give us a new calling and a new life. But imagine what this revelation meant to everyone else.

We often forget that we are involved in a war between kingdoms, that of YHWH and that of Lucifer. Sometimes we are frustrated with the way God reveals truth to us. It’s never the whole picture, even when we examine both Testaments. There are so many questions we do not have answers to. Have we ever stopped to think that perhaps we do not have a need to know? That there are some truths God keeps to himself for later revelation in order to win the spiritual war that rages around us? Now imagine an unholy spirit that has been sowing seeds of sin and discontent among the Gentiles for millenia. There is rarely any challenge to his authority. God has his people, and Lucifer has the rest of the world. The war was against Israel and God, easy to understand and easy to fight. Suddenly everything changes.

The Messiah comes way earlier than expected. They may not have known exactly when Judgment Day would take place, but they knew enough that the time had not yet come. Demon’s constantly asked Jesus what he was doing on Earth. The scrambled for strategy. The Messiah was human, weak, ready to be killed. The never saw the ressurection coming, and they had no inkling that God was making a play for the salvation of all mankind. For this reason the world plunged into the spiritual war, which is why Paul will tell us later how to prepare for that war.