MONDAY, DECEMBER 3
“Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness:”
1 Timothy 3:16 ESV
HE CAME TO SOLVE THE MYSTERY
I was recently part of a team building activity in an escape room. For those of you not familiar with escape rooms, you are typically placed in a locked room with several other people and given one hour to figure out how to get out of the room. Clues are placed throughout the room to help you unlock other clues that may lead you to another room filled with clues. Most recently our task was to find a teddy bear factory infiltrator who had replaced the good heart in the teddy bears with bad hearts. The rooms vary in levels of difficulty but there is always a “game master” watching who can be summoned for additional clues on solving the mystery.
In 1 Timothy, the Apostle Paul confessed that godliness was in fact a mystery and only Jesus provides the way out. For centuries civilizations all over the world have tried to answer the questions around God and being godly. Paul was saying in 1 Timothy 3:16 that all Christians know and can attest that the mystery of their new life finds its source in Jesus. Jesus’ coming that first Christmas was God’s way of solving the mystery of how to be good enough to escape the penalty and power of sin and to having a right relationship with God. The answer to the mystery was we can’t be good enough but only Jesus can provide us a way out.
Humanity is helpless to solve the mystery of “godliness” without God’s grace through Jesus. How are the people around you, who don’t know Jesus, trying to solve the mystery of a “good life?” or of getting into heaven? Pray for the people around you trying to solve the mystery on their own to turn to Jesus this Christmas.
