Do you like a good mystery? Whether it is an Agatha Christie, CSI or an old fashioned jigsaw puzzle - many people like solving puzzles. Our trip through Ephesians brings us this week to 3:1-13, in which Paul talks about a mystery. In the New Testament a mystery is not something we struggle to work out or find out or solve. A mystery is something that is only known because it has been revealed by God.
If we were left to our own devices to come up with our own religion, without any previous knowledge of the Bible, how many people would come up with the concept of grace? I would hazard a guess at none. The idea that there is nothing we can do to make God love us more and there is nothing we can do to make God love us less... The idea that God would give all He had because of His love for us - even when we were His enemies... And here in Ephesians one of the consequences of that grace is that previous enemies - Jew and Gentile - are now heirs together, members together and sharers together - they are 'one in Christ'. In Galatians Paul tells us that existing hierarchies no longer apply: Jew/Gentile, male/female, slave/free.
But this is an understanding that we come to through the revelation of God. God's Word is the Bible, and therefore if we are seeking to live as a disciple of Jesus we need to be reading the Bible because God's ways are so different to the world's ways. You won't pick up God's values on Eastenders or in The Sun. You'll find them in the Bible.
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