Christ’s Glory; 1 Timothy 3:16

Songs in the New Testament, part 8

I live on a scenic train line. The track between Huddersfield and Manchester goes through stunning scenery when it’s not in a tunnel. Well, at least up to Staleybridge, the Tameside hills are stunning. Yet the last time I travelled it I read a book both ways. I meant travelling in both directions; I never read a book backwards. Sometimes we can take the best for granted. Saint Paul, however, does not seem to be like that.

 Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness:

He was manifested in the flesh,
    vindicated by the Spirit,
        seen by angels,
proclaimed among the nations,
    believed on in the world,
        taken up in glory.

1 Timothy 3:16

This is the second time that Paul has expressed heartfelt praise in this short book, a recurring theme in his writings. If you’ve ever thought of Paul as an angry writer, please reconsider that perspective. I found myself in that place once, but now I perceive him as a caring parent, gently guiding their children. When Paul refers to the Galatians as foolish, it’s out of a deep concern for them. They’re abandoning a life led by the Holy Spirit in favour of following strict rules. Doesn’t that seem misguided to you? His ability to transition quickly into moments of praise reflects a heart that is anchored in God’s love, grace, and glory, which he finds utterly overwhelming, and through this, he lives and writes with sincerity.

Yet again, Paul’s praise seems to be in a strange place. It comes between two sections of his instructions on how to be a good pastor to Timothy, who had accompanied him on his travels and was now leading the church in Ephesus, a church Paul had himself founded. The praise portion comes after a section about personal integrity for church leaders and one about false teachers. Not where you’d expect to see it.

As for the mystery of godliness, well, it’s about the gnostics. In the second century Irenaes wrote his most well-known work, the multi-volume Against Heresies. The Christian church at that time was not only under fierce persecution, but the bigger danger was from within. It could easily have become just another Greco-Roman philosophy, one that offered cryptic interpretations of the Old Testament with a few words of Jesus added on to Christianise it. It was written against all the heresies Irenaeus knew, one of these ideas, which was gaining in popularity, was gnosticism.

Gnostic teachers were spreading ideas and multiplying their adherents throughout the empire, claiming they had a special knowledge of cosmic origins, the soul’s struggle for freedom, a knowledge that could save people, not from sin, but from the material world.

We are not supposed to be escaping from the material world. Jesus prayed that his followers would work actively within society but reject its corrupting mindset. His prayer to the Father was “I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.” (John 17:15 ESV)

The gnostics were teaching that they had a secret knowledge that other people didn’t know. Paul counters this by talking about a mystery of godliness and then illustrates it with a poem of praise about what Jesus did openly. The mystery is not a gnostic secret or something hidden, but Jesus himself. Jesus, who revealed God to people.

It’s worth singing about. There’s no secret in what Jesus did.

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