In Ephesians 3 Paul uses the word “mystery” four times in the first nine verses. He keeps using this word “mystery" when he talks about God’s grace given to him through Jesus AND when he talks about the relationship of Jesus to people of all different ethnic backgrounds—the Gentiles. He calls it all a mystery. And we can easily mis-understand this passage right off the bat because of that word mystery. When we hear the word “mystery” today, we think of a mystery as something that isn’t known and CAN’T be known until WE figure it out. But mystery is used in the Bible in a totally different way. It’s not a truth that we find, it’s a truth that finds us. A mystery in the Bible is something that is not knowable by us as human beings until God HIMSELF chooses to reveal it to us. So when Paul talks about a mystery four times in our short nine verses, he is talking about something that was not previously known by anyone because God hadn’t revealed it to us yet. Even to His own chosen people, the nation of Israel. But now, they are standing on a historic moment when God has chosen to reveal the mystery of His plan of salvation of all nations to them.
