Poul Madsen
"Where there is no vision the people perish;
but he that keepeth the law, happy is he."
Proverbs 29:18
THERE are visions and visions. We must not be carried away by ideas or intrusions into the unseen (Colossians 2:18) but should seek the revelation which God will give us through His Word. It is true that without vision the people are led astray but the vision which rescues God's people from such perils must come from Him, and that is why the verse continues by stressing the importance of knowing and keeping the law. It is usually through the Word that God reveals His mysteries for, as the psalmist explains: "The unfolding (revelation) of thy word gives light" (Psalm 119:130). The greatest need of God's people, therefore, is not visions which provide sensations for men but that the Scriptures should be expounded with the Spirit of wisdom and revelation.
When the Bible deals with the transcendent, it often uses the word "mystery". That which men can never find out for themselves is a mystery which must be revealed to them if ever they are to establish contact with it.
Christ is the fixed centre of existence, its Alpha and Omega, beginning and ending, and yet He is a mystery. He has created everything and everything is held together by Him, and yet He is a mystery to His creation. He is the goal of life, one day everything is to be summed up in Him and subjected to Him; and yet He continues to be a mystery, so that His creation does not know, and never can by its own efforts learn to know, what its goal is.
There were many who saw Him when He walked the earth, and they thought that they knew who He was, but they were mistaken. Even His disciples could not understand who He was by their own efforts. But when it finally dawned upon Simon Peter that Christ is the Son of the living God, Jesus commented that it had been revealed to him by the Father in heaven. The same is true today, and it will always be like this. All human efforts to 'explain', 'prove' or 'define' Christ are in vain, for He simply does not belong to the realm of mere human understanding. It takes revelation from the Father -- usually through the preaching of the Word in the power of the Spirit -- for a man really to meet the Saviour and to know Him as Lord.
Paul tells us that "Christ in you" is a glorious mystery (Colossians 1:27). That the exalted Lord and Saviour should dwell in every born-again believer is entirely beyond our understanding. We can perhaps accept that He dwells in the high and holy places, but that He also dwells in the least of His children -- that they are in Him and He in them -- this exceeds anything that man can imagine or discover. Yet it is one of the greatest realities of the Christian life.
Without revelation, that is, unless God makes us see this reality, none of us can conceive of it. It is absolutely beyond the thoughts of natural man. It is not a question of mysticism, for mysticism can never bring anyone into the transcendent. What people experience in mysticism is no more than their own visions or ideas, whereas revelation embraces that which no man can discover or produce for himself; it lies entirely beyond man's reach and comes from God alone. So when a man claims that by meditation or introspection he has gained contact with God in an extraordinary way, he must be mistaken, for the knowledge of God comes by revelation.
It is characteristic that the Word emphasises that God wishes to reveal His mystery to the Gentiles. The Gentiles are those who were regarded religiously as being despised outsiders. It was to such that God chose to reveal His mystery, for Christ in you is an unmerited gift, an aspect of divine grace. It is not an advanced stage of experience for those who have shown themselves worthy of it, as some who are specially striving after holiness may think, for the moment a Gentile humbles himself in shame and confession to his Lord and Saviour, he is given a share in this mystery of "Christ in you". He is entirely unworthy of it, but is there any feature of the gospel of which any of us is worthy? [21/22]
Paul was also particularly entrusted with the work of giving light on the mystery of the Church (see Ephesians 3). The Church belongs to the transcendent, that is to say it is unattainable for the natural man and far exceeds all human thoughts or ideas. Societies and organisations are not like this. Men can start them and run them; for them no special revelation is needed, for they can be devised and understood by men. The Church, on the other hand, is incomprehensible; it lies quite beyond anything which men can devise or create. When Paul says that there is neither Jew nor Greek, man nor woman, slave nor free, but we are all one in Christ Jesus; when he says that Christ is given to the Church as Head over all things and that it is His body which fills all things -- when he reveals the true nature of the Church -- we are gripped by something which exceeds all our understanding.
