The Life of All Lives - Our Saviour Jesus - 13
The Mystery of Godliness
We are going to bring our series of studies in the Life of All Lives to a conclusion with the words of what was probably an early Christian hymn about the Lord Jesus Christ that the Apostle Paul incorporated into his first letter to Timothy chapter 3. He wrote this: “Beyond all question, the mystery of godliness is great: He appeared in a body, was vindicated by the Spirit, was seen by angels, was preached among the nations, was believed on in the world, was taken up in glory.”
In this statement, Paul sets out a list of facts about the person and the work of Christ that he says are ‘beyond all question’. They are not set out as debating points. He is not asking for Timothy’s – or our – opinions on them. He is laying them down as things that are certain and beyond doubt.
As we bring these studies to a close, it is important that we assert with all due grace but without coyness that the Christian faith has at its heart a body of teaching that it holds to be absolute truth.
It is important because the notion of absolute truth is quite unfashionable in the world today. In the popular mind, truth is what is true for you; and I have no right to say that another man’s truth is in fact false. It is a philosophy that is ultimately absurd and cuts its own throat, but that hasn’t prevented it from being popular.
The doctrine of the person of Christ that we have been exploring together forms part of that irreducible body of truth that lies at the core of our faith. If we take any part of it away, whatever is left cannot be called the Christian faith. Because our faith is centred upon a person, the identity of that person and the nature of what he accomplished is crucial. That is why what we believe about the person of Christ really does matter.
What are the key features of the statement that Paul makes about him here?
Well, the first thing to notice is that this hymn – and thus our faith – focuses on facts. He appeared; he was vindicated; he was seen; he was preached; he was believed on; he was taken up. And here lies a vitally important characteristic of the Christian faith. It is not merely a set of ideas or ethical principles, though it is full of ideas and contains the very highest ethics. Fundamentally, it rests on simple, hard, insistent facts.
This is the nature of the Christian gospel. Listen to how Paul addressed the Corinthians in chapter 15 of his first epistle: “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.”
Here is the greatest gospel preacher that the Church has ever known reminding these early converts of the content of the message he preached, and it was simply a recital of the facts, which he described as being ‘of first importance.’ Referring to these facts, he said, “this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.”
The second thing that we should notice is that the facts that Paul speaks of – whether it is in his letter to Timothy, or the Corinthians – are all related to the Person of Christ. It is here that we start, and it is here that we must get it right. Christians may reasonably disagree about matters of church government or obscure issues of prophetic truth, but while these things – and others like them – have their place in the overall body of Christian doctrine, we must give them their proper perspective.
Christ is central. He is central to your salvation. He should be central to your theology, to your worship, to your personal life and to your church life, to your thoughts, to your priorities, to your hopes and ambitions, so that – as Paul wrote to the Colossians in chapter 1 – ‘in everything he might have the supremacy.’
The late Ron Dunn once said that in the lives of all Christians Christ is present; in the lives of some Christians Christ is prominent; but in the lives of how many Christians is Christ pre-eminent? Let us all search our hearts and lives, in all honesty before God today, to find out whether he has the place that he should rightly occupy.
The third and final point I want us to notice is that Paul expresses these truths as a hymn. What is the significance of that? Well, some have the idea that doctrine is a dry, dusty thing, the preserve of theologians and academics, perhaps because of the way it is often presented. But it is nothing of the sort! Doctrine should always lead to doxology!
No book of the Bible has more concentrated, sustained doctrine than Paul’s epistle to the Romans. In it he explores with magisterial skill the marvel of the gospel. There is no fuller analysis of God’s plan of salvation to be found anywhere in Scripture. For chapter after chapter he explores and expounds these great doctrines. And then what? At the end of chapter 11 he simply bursts out into adoring praise, which is his personal and natural response to what he has been speaking of. “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgements, and his paths beyond tracing out! Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counsellor? Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory for ever! Amen.”
These studies may have increased your knowledge, but our prayer is that they will do more than that. As you meditate upon the Life of All Lives, may your response be to worship Him, and to ‘offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship.’
May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.