Matins Devotion: September 18, 2024

1 Timothy 1

We Lutherans like to use the term “mystery” quite a bit when discussing certain issues. How does Christ give us His body and blood in the Lord’s Supper? It’s a mystery? How can God be three persons but still be one God? It’s a mystery. How can Christ be fully God and fully man? It’s a mystery.

So certain doctrines are mysteries in the sense that we can’t offer a mathematical explanation for how they came to be. Certainly aspects of certain doctrines of the Christian faith are a mystery. But the Christian faith itself is not a mystery. The heart of the Christian faith is not a mystery in the sense that it’s not a riddle to be solved. As Paul tells us “the aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart a good conscience and a sincere faith.” That’s the goal of the Christian life–to receive the love of God and love God and our neighbor in return, to love the God who first loved us and who gave us eternal life through the blood of His Son Jesus Christ, to receive the good conscience, to receive the robe of righteousness He has given to us through faith, and to live lives reflecting that righteousness.

Myths and endless genealogies have no place in the Christian faith. Riddles and speculation have no place. Treating the faith as a launching pad for uncovering spiritual mysteries that only the elite few can solve is antithetical to the faith. The point of Christians coming together in worship and fellowship is not for us to solve the Rubix Cube of mystery doctrines that God hasn’t revealed to us. It’s not to uncover the twists and turns that haven’t been shown to us in the Scriptures. Numerology and Joseph Smith’s golden tablets and Oprah’s the Secret and a host of other false doctrines posing as mysteries have no place in the Christian faith. But you do because Christ has pulled you out of the world of sin and gathered you into the house where salvation is not a riddle to be solved but an inheritance to be grasped. It’s in your hands already. Hold tight.