What Jesus and the New Testament authors say about the Scriptures: Rom 16:25-27
There is a plethora of works on how Jesus and the New Testament authors use the ‘Holy Writings’ (2 Tim 3:15) or ‘Scriptures’ (2 Tim 3:16). However, I’m not aware of many that fully explore in one place the various places where they tell us what they think about those scriptures and how they should be dealt with. In the following days or weeks my intention is to give some reflections on some key passages from the New Testament where Jesus or his apostles give their reflections on how they approach these scriptures. Before we do this, I ought to clarify that there is some debate as to whether what they call ’scripture’ is exactly equivalent to what is called the ‘Old Testament’. At the moment, I don’t intend to explore this.
In order to kick off, I thought it might be helpful to look at a place that is not often looked at, Romans 16:25-27, which says:
Now to him who is able to establish you by my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all nations might believe and obey him—to the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ! Amen. (NIV)
These final verses of Romans pick up many of the main ideas of the letter. In particular, they echo the language and ideas of the first seven verses of the letter. In other words, Paul started his epistle by talking about God’s revelation in Jesus and finishes in the same way. However, there are a couple of things to specifically notice about what he says in these closing verses.
First, he talks about ‘the command of the eternal God’, thereby making clear that God has ordained and determined what happened in history and in Christ. It is under his direction and supervision.
Second, he uses the term ‘mystery’ in verse 25. For Paul, a mystery is a secret that was hidden from human beings, which is apparent in what he says in these verses as he talks about this mystery having been hidden in the past. However, for Paul a mystery is also something that is now revealed. Again, this can also be seen in what he says here as he talks about this mystery being revealed as he proclaims the gospel which is about God’s great deed in Jesus Christ.
Now as soon as we say these two things there is an apparent contradiction that becomes evident. Paul says that God’s mystery was hidden in the past but he also says that it was made known through the prophetic writings. You can’t help wondering how the gospel can contain a mystery that was hidden in the Old Testament scriptures and yet at the same time made known through those same scriptures? However, I think that there is a way through this apparent contradiction. What paul is saying is that God announced his purposes in the Old Testament but the people there could fully understand or apprehend those purposes. They just could not see these things clearly, even though they might have got hints of what was coming. This is reflected in the comments both in the Old and New Testaments about God’s people being hard hearted or stiffnecked or darkened in their understanding (this will explain some things that we will meet later and I’ll say some more about it then).
So, while we want to hold on to the doctrine of the clarity of scripture, it seems as though some things in the Old Testament were not all that clear to those to whom those scriptures were originally directed.