1Cor 4:1-2 - Mystery That is Not a Mystery

1-2 This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. 2 Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy.


Having established the true way of regarding their teachers, including the apostles, Paul summarizes in the statement that they all should be regarded as servants of Christ (not as rival teachers of each other or of Him) and as those entrusted with the revealed knowledge of the One True God.

This knowledge is referred to as a mystery or mysteries. But that does not mean that it is mysterious. It means that it was completely or partially hidden to sinful human understanding and has now been revealed to those who are being called out of the world and into the kingdom of God. These mysteries are declared to all. The veil is down as far as the utterance of them is concerned. They can be seen by those in the world and they should be believed. But they cannot be believed until God reveals them to the heart. All of this was covered in the opening salvo of Chapters 1 to 3.

But we should be careful, once having understood that all Christian teachers are equally recipients of the same grace and mercy as each other and as their hearers in the church, to see that they have been made stewards of something. A steward is one charged with caring for some aspect of his master’s household. He will be accountable to the master for the proper running of it. These two truths are again held in tension - that of responsibility and dependency. A steward is responsible, but his authority is not his own. His power is not his own. He is there to do only the will of his master.

But what is it that these pastor/teachers are stewards of? It is "the gospel" and all of its attendant underpinnings. The gospel does indeed come to us in simple form, fitted to our understanding of spiritual things on account of our at first new and then growing light on spiritual matters. But it is most fully formed in the whole of the scriptures, starting at creation and ending in the apocalypse. All these things point to Christ, {Lu 24:27} tell us about Him and about the work of God, His nature and purposes. There remain secret things, of course - unknown to us on this side of eternity - but those things that have been revealed are for us and for our children forever. {De 29:29}

The gospel, therefore, reveals most fully to us all that God has purposed to reveal about Himself. It is about Christ and all things in the Book are in some way or another there for us to understand God in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself. Christ is the revelation of the Father. If we would know the Father we must come to Christ and He will show us the Father - just as the Father shows us Christ in the Word. And it is by the Holy Spirit that they both do the revealing.

Now see the human responsibility in this when Paul says "it is required of stewards that they be found faithful." They have a responsibility to be so found - which means, in this context, to be found faithfully declaring and propagating and teaching the gospel in all of its glory and depth. In fact, to do so they must strive to deliver the whole counsel of God as He has revealed it in His Word, In Christ and, from these, through the Holy Spirit to their hearts.

Yet how can they? They can do so by pressing into the God in whom their salvation and their sanctification is found. They can do so by supplicating Him for grace to be faithful and by living out that faithfulness by yielding to the Spirit of God. To preach and teach rightly they must be diligent, submissive and obedient. They will never do so perfectly, and their failures will in no way injure or prevent the decretive will of God from coming to pass. But they will answer to God for failing to abide in Him insofar as they fail to walk in His preceptive (revealed) will.