“‘For my thoughts are not Your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways’, declares the Lord.”

Isaiah 55:8

 

I used to think that mysteries existed only to be solved. When I heard someone refer to the mystery of Christ, I assumed that Christ was a mystery only to non-believers. I have since learned that the mystery of Christ is reserved for those who do believe. To “know” the mystery of Christ is to realize that it is indeed just that, a mystery.

To represent faith in Jesus merely as something we come to understand and accept is to rob it of the mystery of being in relationship with something infinitely bigger and wiser than we are. His ways are not our ways, the prophet Isaiah tells us.

Mystery is not a category only for the spiritually elite, secret knowledge reserved for the members of the deeper life club. The mysteries of faith in Christ are for everyone who claims to be in relationship with him. The basic truths of Christianity are mysteries, not understandable, not “our ways”: the virgin birth of Jesus, the Trinity,, grace, prayer, the union of the believer with Christ, the cross, and perhaps most mysterious, and key to them all, the incarnation. 

 

How is Christ a mystery to you? How do you respond to the idea that you cannot fully comprehend Christ in this life ---- or perhaps ever?