There are two mysteries at work in the world, the mystery of
Christ in man (the new creation rule or law derived from its nature) and the
mystery of lawlessness. In other words,
two polar opposites exist: the mystery of law and the mystery of
lawlessness. Christ in man is God’s law
fulfilled—the law of love or liberty expressed; but anyone living outside the
scope of Christ inside them is lawless.
“For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who
believes [who clings to Him in marital fidelity]” (Romans 10:4).
The first mystery, therefore, is the “mystery of the good
news” (Ephesians 6:9), otherwise known as “the mystery of Christ” (Colossians
2:2 and 4:3). It is an objective reality
offered to “whomsoever will” and a subjective experience only to those who
remain faithful to the development of Christ within them until He reigns supreme
and mature. It is objective in that it
is real even outside the realm of faith but subjective in that it is useless to
the individual who does not exercise faith in order to experience it as “the
riches of the glory of this mystery...which is Christ in you, the hope of
glory” (Colossians 1:27).
In A. W. Tozer’s preface to his book The Divine Conquest, he called its core argument, “the essential interiority of true
religion.” He went on to add that “if we
would know the power of the Christian message our nature must be invaded by an
Object from beyond it; that That which is external must become internal; that
the objective Reality which is God must cross the threshold of our personality
and take residence within.” God with us—the
definition of “Immanuel”—is the marriage of God to man. That is why adultery is especially heinous and
pervasively condemned in Scripture. That
is also why faith (a form of the word faithfulness) is a dominant theme in Scripture.
“Do you not know that your bodies are the limbs of
Christ? Then shall I take the limbs of
Christ and make them the limbs of a whore?
Never. Or do you not know that he
who clings to a whore is one body with her; for, says scripture, the two shall
be one flesh. But he who clings to the
Lord is one spirit with him” (1 Corinthians 6:15-17 LATTIMORE). “For this reason a man shall leave his father
and his mother and shall be joined [and be faithfully devoted] to his
wife, and the two shall become one flesh.
THIS MYSTERY [OF TWO BECOMING ONE] IS GREAT; but I am speaking with
reference to [the relationship of] Christ and the church” (Ephesians 5:31-32
AMP).
Too often faith is relegated to a trait not so great as love
and something akin to hope. And
assuredly, Scripture defines faith in this context
but not exactly in the way it is usually
interpreted and taught by the church. Real
faith—however much it moves mountains by power—is, at its core, not about power
but devotion (but ironically a devotion to God who is All-Powerful). The power in faith is incidental; devotion or
love is fundamental. Love is greater
than faith not because of an intrinsic and essential difference, but because
love is faith consummated or glorified.
It is possible to have faith without love but impossible to have love
without faith. Love subsumes and
intensifies faith (as well as hope); love is both faith-FULL and hope-FULL—and still
greater! Love is indeed a great mystery;
two becoming one is way beyond cognizance and greater than the sum of two parts
(especially when one of those parts is an infinite God). It is even emotive and visceral beyond feeble
feeling and gut reaction. May we indeed “be
able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and
height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses
knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God” (Ephesians
3:18-19 NASB).
The second mystery is “The MYSTERY OF LAWLESSNESS [rebellion
against divine authority and the coming reign of lawlessness] is already at
work; [but it is restrained] only until he who now restrains it [the Holy
Spirit] is taken out of the way. Then
the lawless one [the Antichrist] will be revealed and the Lord Jesus will slay
him with the breath of His mouth and bring him to an end by the appearance of
His coming” (2 Thessalonians 2:7-8 AMP).
Like never before, the Holy Spirit and His church empowered is being
“taken out of the way,” not in wholesale and sudden effect, but in attritional
and erosional breakdown as we hinge from one age to another. The great falling away expressed as many
hearts waxing cold by fearing what is coming on the earth seems to have spanned
most of our lifetimes.
Theologian Matthew Poole (1624-1679), obviously many years
prior to our day—and concerning these same verses—said that “Right now,
this lawlessness is
a mystery—that it is, it
can only be seen and understood by revelation. Otherwise it is hidden. It is
not open sin and wickedness, but dissembled piety, specious errors, wickedness
under a form of godliness cunningly managed that is herein meant.” Surely our day is closer to the rapture of
the church and the evil revelation of the lawless one as is clearly the nature
of linear time, but as many theologians think, it is a span of time rather than
a moment of time that precedes this “twinkling of an eye” rapture moment. Consequently, a form of godliness without
power is being exposed in deepening layers in our time; blatant and even
militant godlessness is now promoted openly, unashamedly and blasphemously
without hardly a whit of conscience pang.
Always a microcosm of a macrocosm occurs in the inner
recesses of man; when a church or person becomes devoid of the Spirit that
church or person reflects an antichrist spirit (as the world reflects it
wholesale in the macrocosm). The deep
darkness covering the peoples prefigures all hell breaking loose. Whatever can be shaken is shaken away;
whatever is rooted and firm remains.
Therefore, whether someone is entrenched in sin or hidden in Christ is
being exposed by the dawning fiery light of the manifesting Day of the Lord. The great falling away is happening right
before our eyes and the scarcely being saved righteous are reeling like
drunkards in the tidal wave demarcation process. Yet the Christ in us hope is also beginning
to flame to a high, hot and gloriously bright conflagration. Two mysteries are resolving in the resulting
fire. “Every man’s work shall be made
manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire;
and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is” (1 Corinthians 3:13
KJV).
