I Tim. 3:16:—“And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness.”
“CONFESSEDLY great,” says Paul, “is the mystery of piety.” This does not mean that piety is exceedingly “mysterious.” There is no “mystery” in piety as such. As Paul means it here it rests simply, objectively on the great fact, subjectively on the hearty conviction that God was in Christ reconciling the world with Himself. The word “mystery,” in the usage of Paul, does not imply inherent incomprehensibility, but only actual inaccessibility to the natural inquisition of men. Whatever is known by revelation rather than by unaided reason, is, in his usage, a “mystery”; and the employment of the word by no means implies that the revelation has not already taken place and the hidden truth been made fully known, but rather just the contrary. The “mystery of piety” is thus just “the opened secret of piety.” And what Paul affirms of it is that this “opened secret of piety” is confessedly of the highest importance. “Confessedly great” he says, and he throws these words forward with sharp emphasis, “of admittedly the highest importance,” “is the mystery of piety.”
What Paul is doing in this clause, then, is simply impressing on Timothy’s mind as deeply as possible a sense of the supreme value of the Gospel, which he calls a “mystery” only because it is a matter of revelation, but without the faintest implication that it is difficult to grasp when once made known, or that it includes in it any elements of the inscrutable or incomprehensible. Christianity, like other religions, had its mysteries, its sacred truths, made known to its initiates; and these mysteries, as they constituted its very essence, were to every Christian of the most supreme importance—to be carefully guarded, preserved intact, and kept whole and entire, pure and unadulterated, at every hazard. Confessedly great, says the Apostle here with marked emphasis, admittedly of supreme importance, is the mystery, the opened secret of Christian piety, the Gospel.
It is especially worth our while to observe two things here. First, preliminarily, why the Apostle is so strenuous in insisting here on the importance of the opened secret of piety, the value and significance of the Gospel. And, secondly, and more at large, because it is this that constitutes the burden of the text, what the Apostle conceived to be this “opened secret of piety,” that is to say, what he conceived to be the contents of the Gospel which he pronounces here to have such confessed importance.
We need not delay long on the preliminary point. A glance at the context is enough to inform us that the Apostle insists on the greatness of the Gospel here in order to impress Timothy with the importance of attending to the directions he had been giving him as to the proper ordering of the Church. Somewhat minute prescriptions had been laid down especially as to the conduct of public worship and as to the organization of the Church. In particular the officers of the Church had been enumerated, and the qualifications for their offices carefully described. At the close of these directions, now, the Apostle adds these pointed words: “I am writing these things to you, though I hope to come to you very soon: but if I am delayed that you may know what sort of behaviour is incumbent in God’s house—seeing that it is the Church of the Living God, the pillar and buttress of the truth; and confessedly great is the mystery of piety… .” You see, his appeal to the confessed greatness of the truth, for the support and propagation of which in the world the Church exists, is intended to impress Timothy with a sense of the importance of the proper ordering and right equipment of the Church for this, its high function.
It is of the more importance that we should note this, that there is a disposition abroad to treat all matters of the ordering of public worship and even of the organization of the Church as of little importance. We even hear it said about us with wearisome iteration that the New Testament has no rules to give, no specific laws to lay down, in such matters. Matters of church government and modes of worship, we are told, are merely external things, of no sort of significance; and the Church has been left free to find its own best modes of organization and worship, varying, doubtless, in the passage of time and in the Church’s own passage from people to people of diverse characters and predilections. No countenance is lent to such sentiments by the passage before us; or, indeed, by these Pastoral Epistles, the very place of which in the Canon is a standing rebuke to them; or, in fine, by anything in the New Testament.
On the contrary, you will observe, Paul’s point of view is precisely the opposite one. He takes his start from the inestimable importance of the Gospel. Thence he argues to the importance of the Church which has been established in the world, so to speak, as the organ of the Gospel—the pillar and buttress on which its purity and its completeness rest. Thence again he argues to the proper organization and ordering of the Church that it may properly perform its high functions. And, accordingly, he gives minute prescriptions for the proper organization and ordering of the Church—prescribing the offices that it should have and the proper men for these offices, and descending even into the details of the public services. His position, compressed into a nutshell, is simply this: the function of the Church as guardian of the truth, that glorious truth which is the Gospel, is so high and important that it cannot be left to accident or to human caprice how this Church should be organized and its work ordered. Accordingly, he, the inspired Apostle—“an Apostle of Christ Jesus according to the commandment of God our Saviour and Christ, our Hope”—has prescribed in great detail, touching both organization and order, how it is necessary that men should conduct themselves in the household of God—which is nothing other than the Church of the Living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. In other words, it is God’s Church, not man’s, and God has created and now sustains it for a function; and He has not neglected to order it for the best performance of this function.