Gospel Post

Heart to Head. Head to Heart.

Invitation into Mystery (Sovereignty and Human Responsibility)

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Col 2:2 “That their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ.”

        Think about the irony and the beauty of a passage that teaches us to have full assurance and knowledge of a mystery. How wonderful is that! This is the problem I fall into and I think many others fall into as well, not being okay with mysteries. Yet this passage tells me that I need to be certain and of full knowledge of Christ who is God’s mystery.
        I think this passage is helpful for our understanding of the bible as a whole. Here are a few things that are contained in the mystery of Christ and the bible:

  1. Christ is Fully God and Full Man. 
  2. The Trinity: God is three persons, Each person is fully God, There is One God. 
  3. God is fully sovereign and humans are fully responsible.

These three things are perfect examples of full knowledge of a mystery. We can state clearly, humbly, and boldly what the bible teaches and be certain that the bible teaches these things. And we can state clearly, humbly, and boldly that these things are a mystery.
       The problem comes when we only want to be certain about things that contain no mystery. So people can error in one of two ways.

  1. Reject one aspect of what the bible teaches because you are uncomfortable with a paradox. 
  2. Reject the reality that some things in the bible are mysterious by saying “I figured the mystery out”. 
       In my context this most often happens with the 3rd of the three things I listed above. The bible teaches that God is sovereign and humans are responsible. The question is how? The biblical answer is? It is a mystery. The problem is? Its hard to be okay with a mystery. We want either A or B. If A is right then B can’t be right. But with the bible the options are a little different. We have option A which says either A or B is right. But then we have option B which says A and B is right. 
       This is the God of the bible. The God who wrote us a bible and demands that we believe many things we cannot understand. That does not mean that we cant be fully certain about what the bible does plainly teach. That is not the mystery. The mystery is how Jesus is fully “God and Fully Man” how “God is three persons, each person is fully God, There is one God” and how “God can be sovereign and humans responsible”. The bible teaches these things to be true and that is no mystery.
        If we take that approach with many of the difficulties of the bible while trying to truly understand our brothers and sisters in love, I think biblical faithfulness and unity can grow side by side. 

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