1 Timothy 3:16 And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifested in the flesh, Justified in the Spirit, Seen by angels, Preached among the Gentiles, Believed on in the world Received up in glory. (1 Tim. 3:16)
In 2006, a film followed by a book came out, titled The Secret. It sold over 30 million copies. It actually wasn’t very new, and it wasn’t much of a secret either. It was just a re-hashed version of a New Age teaching that if you want something and ask the universe for it, believing you already have it, then you will get it.
But the title was like honey to a swarm of bees. The Secret. Everyone wants to know the secret. Want to sell a few million books? Make the first three words of your title: “The Secret To…”. And then fill in the blank: a happy life, a successful business, wonderful children, finding your true love, making millions and working one day a week.
It is a very attractive idea: that there is a secret to life, a code that can be hacked, a mystery that can be solved, that tells you what’s behind it all. Because of the Internet and our access to it, the world is now so full of voices telling you they have found the secret, solved the mystery of life. Just buy their book, subscribe to their blog, follow them on social media. And the more voices we hear, the more confusing life can seem, and the more attractive it becomes to hear that there might be one secret, one grand mystery that explains everything else.
Amidst all these voices, there is one voice that towers above the others. It’s the voice of God in His Word, that has been speaking the same consistent message to the human race for thousands of years. And in God’s Word we come across one verse that claims to have the great secret.
That verse is 1 Timothy 3:16. It could rightly be called one of the first Christmas carols, because it was almost certainly a hymn. Paul either composed it, or quoted it. It is a hymn with six lines, three pairs of two, you can see those couplets in the contrasts: flesh and Spirit, angels and Gentiles, world and glory. It even has rhyming qualities – each of the verbs ends with “thei”.
The theme is the Great Secret of Reality. Paul says it is the great mystery of godliness. Mystery of godliness is another way of saying: the deep meaning of true religion or piety or godliness, the grand sacred secret of the world. In the Bible, a mystery is something that was gradually revealed, something that was unknown and slowly unfolded. To put it another way, this is a song that unpacks the whole of the biblical religion. And religion deals with reality: the meaning of life.
This is no small mystery: this is grand, weighty, momentous. This should occupy the headlines; this should be the regular subject of conversation, for this truth about religious reality is great.
Not only is it important, it is also indisputable. In the NKJV, it is rendered as ‘without controversy’. This translates a word which means, we all agree. Christians together confess the truths of this grand sacred secret. Christians do not dispute these core truths. Certainly, the world may dispute that these are true. False teachers may dispute that these are true. There may indeed be people who refuse to accept what God says or refuse to believe what God has revealed. But notice, the Bible doesn’t stoop down to flatter man’s intellectual pride. The Bible never strokes a man’s stubbornness. If you want to believe up is down and wrong is right, if you want to believe that good is bad and bad is good, and pretend that you have neither seen God’s works, nor heard His Word, you can do so, but you cannot expect God to join you in your madness and pretend with you. If you will open your eyes to the friendly face of Heaven, you will see what is there to see.
So with that few words of prelude, telling us that the greatest sacred secret of Christianity is agreed on by all believers, Paul launches into the song. As we said, there are just six lines in the song, but they can really be grouped into three ideas, three truths. These three ideas are about someone. All six lines are six actions done to or about this subject. Who is that?
You can see it in front of you: God. God is the subject of the whole song. God was manifest in the flesh, God was justified in the Spirit, God was seen by angels, God was preached among the Gentiles, God was believed on in the world, God was Received up in glory.
Now you might be using a Bible version which does not have the word God, but has the word he. Why is that? The KJV and NKJV rely on the vast majority of Greek manuscripts, which has the word God, the Greek word Theos. But most of the modern versions rely on a minority of older manuscripts, which has the word “who” or “he”. The Greek word for who is the word hos, which is the same last letters of Theos. You can see how the omission or addition of just two letters can change hos to theos, who to God.
But it doesn’t really change matters. Even if you take the word “who” to be the correct reading, all you have to do is work your way back into verse 15, to see what the antecedent of who would be, and the first name you meet there, is God. Whichever reading you take, verse 16 is all about God.
So this song is going to give us three events that God was at the centre of, which make up the most important secret of reality.
I. God Was Among Us: Incarnation
God was manifested in the flesh, (1 Tim. 3:16)
To be manifested in the flesh means God was revealed in bodily form. It is where we get the word incarnation, which comes from the Latin word for flesh or body. Incarnation is enfleshed. God became visible in flesh and blood. God disclosed Himself in human biology and personality. This doesn’t mean that God simply appeared like a human, or produced a human-like apparition. God entered the human race as one of us, with a genealogy, with parentage, going through growth and development and change.
John tells us that before He was given the human name Jesus, He was in the beginning, and He was with God, and He was God. He was the Word, God Communicated, God explained, God Expounded. And then John tells us in verse 14 that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
This is absolutely staggering. It is an extraordinary claim. In fact, it’s usually a laughable claim. History has enough examples of oddballs and eccentrics who believed they were God. In the 1950s, a Dutch fisherman by the name of Lou de Palingboer told people that he was the resurrected Jesus Christ, between selling European eels. In 1979, an African-American by the name of Hulon Mitchell began a black supremacist group, and changed his name to Yahweh ben Yahweh (God, son of God), and emphasised total devotion to himself. In 1991, he was convicted of conspiring to murder white people as an initiation into his cult. Jim Jones, the founder of a cult which led to a mass suicide, claimed to be the reincarnation of Buddha, Jesus, and several other figures. In our own country, Isaiah Shembe, the founder of the Zulu Nazareth Baptist Church, was claimed to be a manifestation of God.
It’s easy enough to make the claim that you are God in the flesh. And make no mistake, Jesus made that claim: many times and in many ways. He claimed to have existed before Abraham, and called Himself the I AM. He claimed to be able to forgive sin. When Thomas called Him “my Lord and my God”, Jesus didn’t correct him. Jesus accepted worship.
But making the claim is one thing. Backing up that claim is another. What would we expect if God became manifest among us?
I think we would expect a few things. We would expect Him to enter the world in an unusual fashion. We would expect Him to have power over His creation. We would expect Him to be able to speak the wisest words ever spoken, and solve man’s spiritual problems.
Let’s take those in turn.
If the Creator of the universe appears among us as one of us, one thing we should expect is that He would not arrive in exactly the same fashion as His creatures. Something, or perhaps several things, would alert us to the Creator’s arrival.
What does the Bible say about how Jesus entered the world? According to the Bible, Jesus entered the world in a miraculous way. He was supernaturally conceived, and born of a virgin. This was the view of all the Gospel writers. Mark, who doesn’t record the birth of Christ, speaks of Jesus as the son of Mary – an unusual title. Paul spoke of Jesus as born of a woman.
Would a virgin birth qualify as an unusual entrance into the world? As if that weren’t enough, there was an astronomical event of such significance that some Eastern astrologers got on their camels for an arduous journey to come and welcome what they interpreted to be a king. A host of angels was seen by shepherds, praising God and telling them that a Saviour had been born, Messiah the Lord. An unusual entrance.
What about power over creation? If the Creator of the universe appears among us as one of us, we would still expect Him to have unusual authority over everything He has made. If an author writes himself into his own story, he has the power to change the story as he likes. The One who made matter, made time, made space, made the laws of physics, if He appeared among us, we would expect Him to be subject to all those things, and yet able to transcend them if He wanted to.
One of the eyewitnesses of Jesus, the apostle Matthew, records what happened in the life of Jesus:
Matthew 11:5
“The blind see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them.”
The Gospel writers record 27 miracles that Jesus did, and these were clearly a selection of many more that He did. He displayed power over physical disease and deformity, healing leprosy, withered hands, deafness, blindness, dropsy, hemorrhage, fever and even restoring a severed ear. He displayed power over nature in calming a storm, walking on water to help disciples in a storm, directing fish into a net, multiplying food, converting water into wine, and drying up a fig tree in accelerated time. On three occasions, He raised the dead.
When we read of the miracles of Jesus, they seem nothing like the pointless demonstrations of gurus, the flamboyant and show-off magic of legend, myth and folklore, or even the vindictive and spiteful displays in some rabbinic writings. The miracles of Jesus were demonstrations of His person, but always done to help – to feed, heal, restore, release.
Power over creation.
If God became man, we’d expect unusual wisdom and spiritual answers.
So what does the Bible say about the kinds of words Jesus spoke? Well, not only do we have many of Jesus’ words preserved for us, we also have accounts of the effect that His words had on the people that listened.
Matthew 7:28-29
“And so it was, when Jesus had ended these sayings, that the people were astonished at His teaching, for He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.”John 6:66-69
“From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more. Then Jesus said to the twelve, ‘Do you also want to go away?’ But Simon Peter answered Him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.’John 7:44-46
“Now some of them wanted to take Him, but no one laid hands on Him. Then the officers came to the chief priests and Pharisees, who said to them, ‘Why have you not brought Him?’ The officers answered, ‘No man ever spoke like this Man!'”
Bernard Ramm said, “Statistically speaking, the Gospels are the greatest literature ever written. They are read by more people, quoted by more authors, translated into more tongues, represented in more art, set to more music, than any other book or books written by any man in any century in any land.”
Jesus never wrote a book, but His recorded words have perhaps caused more books to be written about them than anyone else.
If God was manifest among us, we’d expect an unusual entrance, power over creation, and the greatest words ever spoken. We see all that in Jesus. God was manifest in the flesh.
God was among us. Emmanuel. Let that thought settle down into your heart. The Creator was among us as one of us. All other secrets pale into insignificance next to this one.
But we would expect something more if God was manifest, and it happens to be the second theme of Paul’s song of the Greatest Sacred Secret.
II. God Defeated Death: Resurrection
Justified in the Spirit, Seen of Angels
Justified here means to be declared innocent. To be acquitted of charges against you, to be judged to be a good and righteous person. Why would you have to declare God to be righteous? Everyone knows He is the lawgiver, He is the standard, He is holy.
But when God was manifest among us, He was accused of many things: being a blasphemer, being a Sabbath-breaker, practicing witchcraft, being a deceiver, being a rebel. And He then died a criminal’s death: crucifixion, which was reserved for traitors, murderers, and the dregs of society. Those crucified were often not given burials, their bodies simply thrown on a rotting garbage heap. At the close of Friday, April 3, 33 A. D., Jesus of Nazareth looked like a failed religious revolutionary, a guilty man.
But Paul tells us in Romans 1:4 that Jesus was
declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of Holiness, by the resurrection from the dead. (Rom. 1:4)
The Resurrection was the Holy Spirit’s vindication of Jesus. When Jesus rose from the dead, it was God saying, I find no fault in Him. The wages of sin is death, but Jesus had not spent one day in the employment of sin. He does not deserve its wages. He rose. The Resurrection was vindication that Jesus is the only holy man that has ever lived.
Consider what Peter said about the resurrection.
Acts 2:22-24
“whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it.”
It was not possible that He should be held by it. Why not? Because death is the penalty for sin, and He had not sinned. It was not possible that He should be held by it.
When we think of the many who have claimed to be God, how have they done, by this standard?
- David Koresh, who claimed to be Messiah, cohabited with underage girls in his cult’s compound.
- Hulon Mitchell renamed himself Yahweh ben Yahweh, and was convicted and sentenced for conspiring to kill white people as part of his movement.
- In western Kenya, a man who calls himself Jehovah Wanyonyi claims to be God and has said he would punish the nation of Kenya if they did not give him around $3.8 million. He has 25 wives and 95 children.
Throughout Jesus’ ministry, though He taught others to ask God for forgiveness, to ask others for forgiveness, we never once see Him confessing sin or repenting. And this from a man whose humility and meekness was unquestionable. There is not so much as a hint of any knowledge of sin within Himself. If He allowed His friends to think that He was sinless, when He actually was not, would be one of the worst sins of deception.
Those who had been with Him for most every day of His public ministry wrote of His life. Peter said of Jesus that He was “a lamb without blemish, and without spot”. In chapter 2:22, he writes “who committed no sin, nor was guile found in His mouth.”
John writes in 1 John 3:5
And you know that He was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him there is no sin.
Even Judas, after betraying Jesus, returned the money, saying, “I have betrayed innocent blood.”
These words are from men who ate with him, stayed with him in the same houses, walked long journeys with him, and saw Him when He was persecuted, reviled and under the severest pressure, which is when even the best of men crack, and show their evil hearts.
We find even His enemies unable to pin charges on Him. At His trial, false witnesses arose, who could not agree among themselves. Pontius Pilate said, “I find no fault in Him”. The other thief on the cross said, “This man has done no wrong.” The Roman centurion said, “Certainly this was a righteous man.”
And the final vindication: Justified by the Spirit. God said: this man is innocent. This is My Son, in whom I am well pleased. The resurrection.
Five hundred eyewitnesses saw it. The church went forward and faced persecution on the fact of it. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper signified it. Sunday worship began to remember it. Henry Morris said, “The fact of His resurrection is the most important event of history, and therefore, appropriately, is one of the most certain facts in all history.”
At his tomb, we read of angels. Angels that frightened the guards away, angels that spoke to the women.
Now let this thought settle down. God manifested among us to deal with sin and death. The one thing that we all face, the one thing that makes nonsense of all that we do, is death. Whether you pursue fame or fortune, or pleasure or power, or education or achievement, or legacy or family, death puts an end to it. Whatever you’re living for either makes sense or makes no sense when we add death to it. But God came amongst us to deal with our sin and our rebellion, and the penalty we deserved: death. He did that by giving His unblemished life as a payment in exchange for ours.
Do you know the most repeated words of Jesus in the Bible?
“For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” (Matt. 16:25)
If you want to cling onto your life by living independently of God, death will finally overtake you and swallow you up. But if you die to living your own life, and give your life over to the God who defeated death on the Cross, you will live. You will find real life in Him, and you will live forever in His presence.
God was among us: Incarnation. God defeated death: Resurrection.
But Paul’s song doesn’t end with Incarnation and Resurrection.
III. God Gathered a People: Proclamation
Preached among the Gentiles, Believed on in the world, Received up in glory.
The third phase of the great sacred secret is that after God was incarnate, and had defeated death, He was proclaimed among all the nations, and believed on throughout the world. In other words, God gathered a family, a people, an assembly: the church. As this message of Incarnation and Resurrection spread, people heard it. And they didn’t need to go to Jerusalem to check for themselves. They knew it was true. They know they were hearing God’s words, God’s voice.
But this also shows that people were given a choice. God does not save people against their will. God came amongst us, defeated our evil, but lay down a requirement. We must forsake that evil, and bow the knee to Him. We cannot go on acting as if He is not there, living life for self, pushing Him to the periphery of our lives.
In the seventeenth century, the philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote that the human heart is like an infinite abyss that can only be filled with an infinite God. All around us is the evidence that people are spiritually restless. They are unfilled, dissatisfied, and in the dark as to what will satisfy them.
But consider the claims Jesus made.
John 4:13-14
Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.”John 6:35
And Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.”John 7:37-38
On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”John 10:10
“The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.”
You cannot mistake Jesus’ words. He tells Person after Person that He Himself is the spiritual solution. He is the bread. He is the water-giver. He is the life-giver. He is the peace-giver. Everyone who comes to Jesus, and believes what He says about Himself, about His Father, will find spiritual life, satisfaction fulfilment.
But what have those who have taken Jesus at His word found?
1 John 4:14-16
And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.
That is why the hymn says, He was believed on in the world. This message of Incarnation and Resurrection has become a Proclamation around the world for 2000 years, and people have heard and believed, and their lives have changed.
And if it is true that God became a man, then He is the way, the truth, and the life. If God dwelt among us, then there is no other religion or philosophy that will help you. This is the secret. This is the path. This is the voice. It has become exclusive and particular, because God was manifest among us, and God defeated death, so that God could gather a people to Himself.
The last line of the hymn ends on a high note: He was received up into glory. The apostles watched Him ascend, leave our dimension to be our forerunner in heaven, to act as our High Priest, send the Holy Spirit, and await His day of final rule over all.
I’m always amazed at this time of year when I hear the carols being sung and played in malls and secular places. Places that would never allow a preacher ring with words like “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, Hail th’ incarnate Deity! Pleased as man with man to dwell, Jesus our Immanuel. God was among us.
Mild He lays His glory by, Born that man no more may die; Born to raise the sons of earth; Born to give them second birth. God defeated death.
Adam’s likeness now efface, Stamp Thine image in its place: Second Adam from above, Reinstate us in Thy love. – God gathered a people. There in a Christmas hymn surrounding all the shoppers is the Great Sacred Secret, that is found in this, perhaps one of the very first Christian hymns in inspired Scripture.
But just as those shoppers go their way, looking for the secret in good and gadgets and status and clothes and trinkets, while the Secret is actually being played in the background, so you too can let this all fade into the background, and go on looking for the secret elsewhere. Or Christmas Day 2020 could be the day you come to terms with the deepest sacred secret. God Came. God Conquered. And now God calls.
What have you decided about Jesus? You cannot leave Him in the manger. He is not a baby on a Christmas card. He is not a religious name for some sweet songs. He is at the centre of the great mystery, and you must accept Him to know life and life eternal.