1 Tim. 3:16; 4:1-8; 6:3-916And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory. (1 Timothy 3:16)
1Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; 2Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; 3Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. 4For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: 5For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer. 6If thou put the brethren in remembrance of these things, thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished up in the words of faith and of good doctrine, whereunto thou hast attained. 7But refuse profane and old wives' fables, and exercise thyself rather unto godliness. 8For bodily exercise profiteth little: but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come. (1 Timothy 4:1‑8)
3If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness; 4He is proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings, 5Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness: from such withdraw thyself. 6But godliness with contentment is great gain. 7For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. 8And having food and raiment let us be therewith content. 9But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. (1 Timothy 6:3‑9)
This mystery of godliness, while on the one hand it lies at the very center of the truth maintained by the assembly before the world, on the other, is the only power that can sanctify and separate the saint to God.
It is striking the way in which it is brought in here. In chapter 3:16 we find what the testimony was, committed to responsibility and to be maintained by the assembly before the world. The assembly, let us remember, is the pillar and support of the truth. This is a truth of the first moment; it is well said, “that on earth Christ was the Truth. He is so always, but He was so on the earth. The assembly is not the truth: the word of God is the truth. His word is truth. Truth exists before the assembly; it is faith in the truth which gathers the assembly together. But the assembly is that which maintains the truth on earth. But the assembly does not teach. Teachers teach the assembly; but by faithfulness in holding fast the truth taught, it sustains it in the world.”
Now, in connection with all this we are warned by the Holy Ghost, through the apostle, as to that which Satan would introduce and set up in opposition to it, and we find one part of this scheme in chapter 4 and another character of it in ch. 6. The enemy seeks to set aside the testimony by what we find in both these chapters.
Next, in order that we may see clearly what the great mystery of piety is, let us state it as given by God here. “And without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.” Here, then, we have set before us both God and the Lord Jesus Christ. Then we have Satan’s counterfeit in vv. 1-3 of ch. 4—there would be those who would depart from the knowledge of the one Creator and Savior-God, He who had not only created the world, but who also had revealed Himself in Christ. The first great element in this counterfeit is a denial of the end of the first man’s history at the cross. The great object of the devil is in every way to deny this in fact, or set it aside in practice. It is one of the solemn realities of this present time that the judicial end of man’s history in the cross is not accepted, but denied; and hence there is no divine conception of what the new man is—“the new man, which, according to God, is created in righteousness and holiness of truth.” Alas with many their conception of the new man is little better than changed conduct. The new man is a new creation, and the moral characteristic of this new creation is that which is according to God, created in truthful righteousness and holiness.
Now observe in the scripture before us the revival of the first man, in the denial of its judicial end in the cross; the exactions spoken of here are the proof of this revival by the enemy: “forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats.” These are the exactions which the devil would put upon man; these impositions recognize the existence of man in the flesh before God, and the wile is to produce a sanctity pretending to superior holiness, but in reality a false sanctity which denied the authority of God, in forbidding that which He had ordained from the beginning, as well as reviving the history of man in the flesh, which had been judicially condemned and put out of God’s sight in the cross.
Now in 1 Tim. 6 we find the further work of Satan; here it is an attempt in the direction of the elevation of man as he is, taking the favors, the mercies surrounding him in this world, as indicative of the goodness of God to man as allowed in his standing in the flesh before Him, “supposing that gain is godliness.” How specious these various attempts of Satan to set aside the truth; we see the first in full bloom in popery, and the second in human philanthropy. The truth thus attempted to be set aside is itself our great security. What a marvelous truth in fact that God had been manifested in the flesh! How blessed to think that God Himself was manifested in the center of weakness and evil, that where sin was, there was love above the sin; yet in Him, who became flesh, the absence of all sin was made evident by the power of the Holy Ghost during His whole life: He was seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world: it was not the display or manifestation of visible power demanding His rights and glory, but the tender grace that sought the weary and the undone for their perfect, richest blessing.
Lastly, we read, “received up into glory”—thus He takes His place on high as Man, in that glory whence He had descended.
This, then, is the great truth to be maintained before the world by the assembly, the vessel for testimony; but there is another aspect in which we may look at it, namely, this mystery of piety is the true and only producing power of all true godliness in the saints, as well as the ability to fill their varied relationships according to the mind of God. God has, in His own blessed grace, come down, and has cleared, as it were, the scene for Himself that He may now occupy it; it is as we are engrossed with Him who is received up into glory, we are transformed into the same image from glory to glory. I do not deny there are claims, but how earnestly do I desire to press the charms of the heavenly Man now in glory on the affections and hearts of His own!