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  CHRISTIANITY MYSTERIOUS
  by John Nelson Darby
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Summary: John Nelson Darby's sermon emphasizes the essential mysteries
of Christianity that can only be understood through divine revelation
and the work of the Holy Spirit.

Topics: "Divine Revelation", "Mystery of Faith"
Scripture References: Colossians 1:26, 1 Timothy 3:16

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John Nelson Darby emphasizes the inherent mysteries of Christianity,
arguing that the truths revealed in Scripture, such as the Incarnation
and the dual nature of Christ, are beyond human comprehension and
require divine revelation to understand. He asserts that to deny the
mysterious aspects of faith is to undermine its depth and significance,
as these mysteries reveal profound truths about God, sin, and
redemption. Darby highlights that true understanding comes from being
taught by God, and that the complexities of faith should not be
simplified to fit human reasoning. He warns against a superficial
interpretation of Christianity that neglects its rich, mysterious
nature, which is essential for grasping the fullness of God's
revelation.

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CONTENT
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Bible Treasury Vol. 15, page 380.

To say that revealed truth is not mysterious is absurd. A religion,
which depends on the Word being made flesh, and the Son of man at the
right hand of God, and sending down the Holy Ghost to make our bodies
God's temples; which tells us that we are members of Christ's body;
which shews God become a man, obedient as such, and dying as such, with
other truths needless to enlarge on, must be mysterious in the true, and
indeed in every, sense of the word. What angels desire to look into can
well be supposed to be so.

Christ made sin, as well as His miraculous birth; our dwelling in God,
and His in us; our being in this world as Christ is, so as to have
boldness in the day of judgment: all speak with one voice. He who
excludes mysteries from this word excludes sense from it instead of
making it intelligible. By mysterious is not meant that it cannot be
understood. The scriptural meaning of "mystery" is what is know only by
revelation, not by human knowledge. The initiated know mysteries,
uninitiated do not: such is the meaning of the word; but the true
initiated are those taught of God.

If God reveals, there must be mysteries; and from the nature of what He
reveals, true initiation must exist to understand it. Its expression
cannot be at the level of human ideas. All the deepest expressions of
good and evil are brought together. God and sin meet on the cross.
Christ is God, and yet is forsaken of God there. Christ is the power of
Prince (Urheber) of life, and He dies, but through it destroys the power
of death. You cannot have such things brought together in the same act
without mysterious truth.

When all that is pervading truth in God, and all that is evil in man,
meets and are centred indeed in one person, or the condition He takes,
the human mind must be taught of God to know it; and God alone, Who
knows all things perfectly, can reveal it simply, because He does know
it perfectly; but in it He reveals all in man, all in Himself, and all
in Christ. A person may rest on the surface, and seek to destroy all
depth in the truth, and bend it to the standard of the human mind and
the scope of human thought.

But there is no great sense in this - that the Incarnation should not
suppose and reveal immense depths of thought, purpose, and moral truth.
If all this is denied, it is simple infidelity, and one knows what there
is to deal with. If confessed, we have a Christianity in which the
depths of our moral nature, old and new, and in the exercises and
conflicts of both, meet God, where He and sin have met, and Christ came
in the consummation of ages to put sin away. There perfect love and
divine righteousness find their manifestation and ground.

The simplest expressions of Scripture awake profound depths in our moral
nature. What does putting away sin mean? What, Christ the Son of God
appearing to do it? What does the Lamb of God mean? It is easy for
philosophers to avoid all these expressions and to make a Christianity
of their own. Only it is in no part the Christianity that is revealed or
known in the word. But interpreting the Christianity that is revealed in
Scripture and has possessed men's minds for ages, by saying that the
true Divine in it is not having mysteries, is false in fact and absurd
in idea. J. N. D.

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Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/john-nelson-darby/christianity-mysterious/
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