The Fellowship of the Mystery

 •  2 min. read  •  grade level: 10
To the Apostle Paul was given the high honor of making known the fellowship of the mystery. We read in this connection that "THE GENTILES should be fellow-heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ by the gospel: whereof I [Paul] was made a minister, according to the gift of the grace of God given unto me by the effectual working of His power." (Eph. 3:6,76That the Gentiles should be fellowheirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel: 7Whereof I was made a minister, according to the gift of the grace of God given unto me by the effectual working of his power. (Ephesians 3:6‑7).) It was truly wonderful to see Jew and Gentile believers, forgetting the centuries-old animosity of their unconverted days, sitting down at the Lord's table in happy fellowship. No animosity can be more hateful than that of religious flesh, but there it was seen to be replaced by LOVE in the Spirit. Social distinctions faded away in their adoration of Christ. We see Onesimus, the runaway slave, sitting at the same Lord's table with Philemon, his owner and master. Converted through Paul when in chains in Rome, and sent back to his master, he was received " Not now as a servant [slave], but above a servant [slave], A BROTHER BELOVED." (Philemon 1:1616Not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved, specially to me, but how much more unto thee, both in the flesh, and in the Lord? (Philemon 16).) Here is communion without communism. Distinctions of race and place disappeared in the presence of their Lord. What a sight for heaven and earth. We read: " To the intent that NOW unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known, by the church, the manifold wisdom of God." (Eph. 3: 10) The Greek word for " manifold " is polupoikilos, meaning much variegated (Liddell and Scott), or as Darby's New Translation renders it, " the all-various wisdom of God." It is one of Paul's superlative words in this epistle of superlative words. Principalities and powers look on the wondrous scene of this fellowship of the mystery hid in God from the beginning of the world. There is no fellowship like it. It takes no heed of frontiers or languages, or of color of the skin. The writer remembers sitting down at the Lord's supper in the United States. There were present Americans, English, Scotch, Irish, German, French, Swedish, Russian and Jewish brethren. What but Divine power could fuse men of different nationalities, so as to give them one spirit and one mind, thus losing all distinctions of class and race in their adoration of their common Lord? Here we see the secret of the New World Order that politicians are clamoring for. Sad indeed it is that schisms, divisions, sects, parties should spoil this wonderful object lesson to principalities and powers in the heavenly place.