This is by necessity a rather short lesson. The primary subject of this chapter is some of Paul’s personal background and a prayer on the readers’ behalf, but very little doctrine. The doctrinal issue here is very difficult for most people to understand, much less to embrace. Please note that I must refer to the work of Michael S. Heiser, particularly in his book, The Unseen Realm (Lexham Press, 2015).
In the midst of Paul relating his position as a prisoner and Rome, and as an Apostle of Jesus Christ, he twice refers to the mystery or secret of Jesus the Messiah. While he clearly states that the secret was that Christ’s death would open the Covenant to Gentiles, most readers don’t quite get the full significance of that.
Most people do understand how the Jews of Jesus’ time were so hostile to the idea of the Gentiles receiving the gospel. When Paul said that to the mob at the foot of the stairs outside the Fortress of Antonia, the mob was suddenly ready to kill him with their bare hands. The Sanhedrin turned it into a major case and it took two years before Paul was finally sent to Rome in custody, from whence he writes this letter. That’s only half of it. It wasn’t really a secret from the Jews, but it was something the Jewish authorities desperately tried to censor. It was clearly stated in their own prophets that Gentiles would be someday redeemed.
Paul refers also to “rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms” (v. 10). After untold ages passed, these rulers and authorities were finally seeing this secret God kept from them. It’s not as if they were unaware of the message from Israel’s prophets about redeeming Gentiles. However, the meaning was opaque to them.
Heiser tells us that those powers in the heavenly realm were like councilors in God’s heavenly courts. At the tower of Babel, the nations were divvied up between these heavenly beings. At some later point, God took them to task for misleading the nations in their care, in contrast to how He had taken care of the nation He built for Himself, Israel. The image we get is that these heavenly councilors had deceived the nations into believe they were deities, seeking to embezzle the glory that should have been given to God alone as Creator.
Because of their intransigence in this, God never told them His real plans. They knew about the coming Messiah; they didn’t know He was going to send His own Son to play that roll. Whatever it was He accomplished in His time on earth, it was above the councilors’ authority. Thus, His death on the Cross nullified the Old Covenant, particularly the restrictions that separate Jews and Gentiles. As Paul notes, now all Gentiles are accepted in the Covenant of the Messiah.
That means that the nations assigned to the management of those heavenly councilors were wide open to God picking out people to join His new “nation” of people. They hadn’t expected this, did not see it coming. There is nothing they can do to inhibit Christ raiding their populations for the Elect of every nation.
This is what Paul refers to in this chapter. In the mere existence of the church as a symbolic “nation”, the councilors learned what God had hidden from them since the Tower of Babel. Heiser shows us how this is all well established in the teachings of rabbinical schools ever since the time of the Second Temple built after the Exile. That means Paul would have learned it, and this is what he refers to here and in several other passages already noted in this study.
Because God went to so much trouble, and because Christ was faithful in accepting such an awful death, Paul’s readers should be celebrating every day they live in His grace and election, that they are no longer subject to the incomprehensible power of the false gods of the nations. We are all safe in Christ. Both Jews and Gentiles are one in Him. We should be living for His glory as one covenant nation.
