The mystery which hath been hidden away from the ages and from the generations (Ephesians 2:2, Ephesians 2:3; Ephesians 3:5, Ephesians 3:9; Romans 16:25, Romans 16:26; Romans 11:25, Romans 11:26, Romans 11:33).
The word "mystery" plays a large part in Colossians and Ephesians. It occurs in 1 Corinthians, and twice in the Roman Epistle, written from Corinth. Its use in Romans 16:25 is identical with that of the passage before us.
The Greek mysteries were secret religious doctrines and rites made known only to initiated persons, who formed associations statedly assembling at certain sacred spots, of which Eleusis near Athens was the most famous.
These systems exercised a vast influence over the Greek mind, and Greek literature is full of allusions to them; but their secret has been well kept, and little is known of their real character. Some of these mystic systems, probably, inculcated doctrines of a purer and more spiritual type than those of the vulgar polytheism.
The ascetic and mystical doctrines ascribed to Pythagoras were propagated by secret societies. The language and ideas connected with the mysteries were readily adopted by the Jewish Broad Church of Alexandria, whose endeavour it was to expand Judaism by a symbolical and allegorizing method into a philosophic and universal religious system, and who were compelled to veil their inner doctrine from the eyes of their stricter, unenlightened (or unsophisticated) fellowbelievers.
΄υστήριον appears in the Apocrypha as an epithet of the Divine Wisdom (Wis. 2:22; 8:4; etc.): Psalms 49:4; Psalms 78:2 (comp. Matthew 13:34, Matthew 13:35) furnished the Old Testament basis of this usage.
(See Philo, 'On the Cherubim,' § 12; 'On Fugitives,' § 16; etc., for the place of mystery in the Alexandrine theology.) St. Paul, writing to men accustomed, either as Greeks or as Hellenistic Jews, to this phraseology, calls the gospel "a mystery," as that which is "hidden from the natural understanding and from the previous searchings of men" (1 Corinthians 2:6-16).
But in the words that follow he repudiates the notion of any secrecy or exclusiveness in its proclamation; in his language, "mystery is the correlate of revelation." The thrice-repeated ἀπὸ ("from," "away"), with the double indication of time, "gives a solemn emphasis" (Meyer) to the statement.
Ages are successive epochs of time, with their states and conditions (comp. Galatians 1:4); generations are successive races of men, with their traditions and hereditary tendencies. But now it was made manifest to his saints (Colossians 2:2; Colossians 4:3; Ephesians 1:9; Ephesians 3:5; Ephesians 6:19; 1 Timothy 3:16; 1 Peter 1:20).
The word "reveal" (Ephesians 3:5; 1 Corinthians 2:10) indicates a process, "make manifest" points to the result of this Divine act (Romans 16:25, Romans 16:26: comp. Romans 1:17 with Romans 3:21; see Trench's 'Synonyms').
The transition from the participle in the last clause to the strongly assertive finite verb in this almost disappears in English idiom: comp. Psalms 78:5, Psalms 78:6; Ephesians 1:20-22 (Greek); and see Winer's 'N.
T. Grammar,' p. 717, or A. Buttmann, p. 382. There is also a change of tense: the manifestation is a single, sudden event (aorist), breaking through the long and seemingly final concealment of all previous time (present perfect participle); similarly in Romans 16:25, Romans 16:26 and 1 Peter 1:20 (comp.
Colossians 2:14, note). To his sailors; i.e. to the Church at large (1 Peter 1:2; Colossians 3:12); but this implies a spiritual qualification (1 Corinthians 2:14). "His saints" are the recipients; "his holy apostles and prophets, in the Spirit," the organs (Ephesians 3:5) of this manifestation.
The Church had long ago formally accepted this revelation (Acts 11:18); it was St. Paul's office to make it practically effectual.