The Mystery of God - has been Revealed!

The concept is so simple, yet so evasive to the Church. God’s eternal plan. And the issue at hand is that the Gospel of reconciliation is not only about God allowing us into His kingdom, redeeming us to be His people, justifying us to enter boldly into His Presence, or adopting us as His children, all of which are true. But the mystery is greater. Jesus was made manifest to destroy the works of the devil, John made it clear.  But then most would add that Jesus also came to reveal the Father, both of which are true. Yet that is not the mystery of the Father, and if those two were the main themes, why did God add the book of Revelation as His means of unveiling our Lord Jesus Christ?

Unveiling, after all, is to reveal that which was hidden, and if that is true what is the value of the unveiling in the last book of the Scriptures if it is seen as an end-time plan? How is Jesus Christ revealed throughout the book as promised in Revelation 1:1?  So, to understand this – the revealing of God’s eternal mystery - we must follow Paul in Colossians Chapter 1:17-22, “He [Jesus] existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together. Christ is also the head of the church, which is his body. He is the beginning, supreme over all who rise from the dead. So he is first in everything.  For God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ, and through Him, God reconciled everything to Himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ’s blood on the cross. This includes you who were once far away from God … Yet now He has reconciled you to Himself through the death of Christ in His physical body. As a result, He has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before Him without a single fault.”

This perfectly describes what was said earlier. But look at where he went from here! “This message was kept secret for centuries and generations past, but now it has been revealed to God’s people. For God wanted them to know that the riches and glory of Christ are for you Gentiles, too. And this is the secret: CHRIST LIVES IN YOU. This gives you assurance of sharing his glory. So we tell others about Christ, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all the wisdom God has given us. We want to present them to God, perfect in their relationship to Christ.” (vs 26-28). 

This is key, God reconciled you not for you to be with Him, but for Him to inhabit you! Or, as AMPc put it, “To whom God was pleased to make known how great for the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ within and among you, the Hope of [realizing divine] glory.”  (vs 27). “Christ in you, the hope of glory!” But TPT captures the essence perfectly, “There is a divine mystery—a secret surprise that has been concealed from the world for generations, but now it’s being revealed, unfolded and manifested for every holy believer to experience. Living within you is the Christ who floods you with the expectation of glory! This mystery of Christ, embedded within us, becomes a heavenly treasure chest of hope filled with the riches of glory for his people, and God wants everyone to know it! Christ is our message! We preach to awaken hearts and bring every person into the full understanding of truth.”

The realisation that God is already inhabiting me, I am the temple of Holy Spirit. And corporately we are already part of Mt Zion, the New Jerusalem, and God already dwells among His people! No wonder John says “Greater is He that is in you than He that is in the world!” No wonder Paul continues that if we are in this divine marriage, unity with Christ, then as much as He is in me, I am seated in Him at the right hand of the Father, the place of highest authority in existence.

So, the mystery that God has come to inhabit us (as Jesus said He is the Temple) we must grasp that we are truly temples too, tabernacles housing the very life and spirit of the living God. So few realise the truth of God’s main purpose. Peter stated it very clearly, when we escape the corruptibleness of this world and focus on God, we become partakers of the divine nature, that in itself is immense. If God is manifesting more and more of Himself in me as part of whom I am becoming, it means that I am becoming divine. If the two will become one in marriage and we are the wife of God, then I am becoming like Him!

John makes this point clear - when Jesus returns we shall be like Him, not a little bit like Him, but like Him! We must raise our expectations of change as we are changed from glory to glory. If Enoch walked with God to a measure when God took Him, before Christ was made manifest, then surely in Christ, with Holy Spirit’s infilling, in God’s love, grace, and empowerment, we can become the same!

Pursue Him day after day. Be changed into the divine from glory to glory. Stay on track and in step with Holy Spirit all the time – then the Church will rediscover the truth concerning God’s eternal mystery and the book of Revelation will unfold the greatness of what He had done and we will live out of the eternal truth – Christ in us the hope of Glory!   

Blessings

Ben

Our thanks to Ben for this month's Blog contribution