The idea of a mystery in Scripture in never to be applied to truth as something vague or obscure, or so beyond the grasp of a Christian that it would free them from any and all obligations to embrace it, or any responsibility to receive it. A mystery denotes specifically and simply, a revealed secret!
The mysteries of God are in their own nature an ultimate fact beyond which man’s reasoning cannot go, or some discovery which our own reasoning could never attain. Yet a mystery according to the true meaning and importance of the original term, is not merely in its character incapable of explanation or discovery by our own investigation and reasoning, but in its character also as finally being understood only through God’s Holy Spirit, and only to be fully known and understood by a very privileged class of people: Christians, those who believe by faith and faith alone.
These secrets hid in God, then revealed to us by the prophets, were done so for the purpose of exalting God and to inspire us. They are to be applied to truth by supernatural communication, through and by the Holy Spirit. Secrets long hidden from man until the fulness of time when God clearly chooses to disclose them. In so doing, it stamps a revealed mystery with a special character on all who embrace it and invests in those who receive it, special insights.
Deuteronomy 29:29, “The secret things belong unto the LORD God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children forever,”
Paul writes, Ephesians 1:9, “Having made know unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he has purposed in himself.”
Ephesians 3:3-5, “How that by revelation he made know unto me the mystery; —- which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit;”
The gospel according to its own profession, is a mystery, — “the mystery of Christ.” And for those who believe, all that is left for them to do with any and all newly revealed mysteries is embrace them with reverence as coming not from men, but from God. And we must be as were the Bereans.
Acts 17:11, “searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.”
Phil LaSpino