New Message from God

May 17, 2009

Background Scripture: Ephesians 3:1 – 13
Lesson Passage: Ephesians 3:1 – 13

The message of our lesson today is not new; the message is older than time—in fact, it is eternal but the revealing of the message at this time is new. This revelation of God’s purpose in Jesus made known by the Holy Ghost breaks God’s eternal silence concerning what he purposed before the world was created. The Holy Ghost, acting as agent for Jesus Christ, is a revealer of the mysteries of God. Jesus spoke of the Holy Ghost as the Spirit of Truth. He declared to his disciples that the Holy Ghost would guide them into all truth. The message in today’s lesson is one of those previously unrevealed truths that were hidden in God before the world was formed. The message is that both Gentiles and Jews are a part of the same body and both share equally the promised blessings of God in Jesus Christ. The Jews were privy to some of this knowledge through the many covenants God made with their Hebrew forefathers. The mystery unknown to the Jews included Jesus in his two advents, the church age, and the inclusion of the Gentiles as fellow heirs.

The church is God’s wisdom on display for the heavenly host. How can a holy God commune with those who by their very nature are unholy? Although we were conceived in sin and brought forth in iniquity, yet because of our faith in Jesus Christ, God grants us access into his holy presence. We cannot imagine the depths of this mystery. We are still amazed at God’s salvation by grace. We can comprehend individually that God’s grace has overextended all that we once considered reasonable. This is made clear just by considering ourselves as the object of God’s grace. Who among us truly deserved to be saved? All are guilty before God. Yet, God saved us and made us a part of his divine family. That is well beyond reasonable considering what we deserved. The church, then, must be an even more astounding revelation for spiritual creatures who have known God in his holiness for an eternity already. How is this mysterious wisdom of God comprehended by cherubim and seraphim or archangels or demons? God’s wisdom is revealed through the church. Spiritual beings can behold the richness of God’s wisdom by observing God’s grace on display in the church by Jesus Christ. Through Jesus Christ, God has both executed divine justice against sin and rescued the condemned sinner from eternal destruction through his faith in Jesus. All who make up the body of Christ are recipients of this amazing grace. The Apostle Paul counted it a blessing to be chosen by God as a vessel to deliver this revelation to the saints, especially the Gentiles who were the object of Paul’s God-ordained ministry. Paul proclaimed the unsearchable riches of Christ among the Gentiles as part of this new message from God, by way of the Holy Ghost, through the apostle, and to the Gentiles.


Robert C. Hudson
May 7, 2009