Wednesday Bible Study: Seen, saw, him, who

Okay, so this week we get a bit of a break in a rather simple verse (yeah, you've heard THAT one before)- 1 Timothy 3:16.  Here, Paul recites a version of the Creeds they used for shorthand in teaching back in those days.  A Creed is a statement of belief, and this is as clear a statement of what a Christian believes as any:

1Ti 3:16  Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory. 

So let me first show you what caught my eye, and then I will talk about what stumped the commentators...


First thing for me was the phrase "mystery of godliness".  Now mystery has been explained many times by pastors explaining Paul- for them a mystery or riddle was not so much something hidden, like it is for us, but something FORMERLY hidden, and now exposed..  But what was he going after with the term "godliness"?  Translated, it meant "piety", which in turn came from two words that boiled it down to "well-revered".  So, I imagine that the core idea is Paul asking, "How do we revere God the best possible way?  By believing the following:".  And this that we are to believe then, is a great thing- and because it is a "mystery", it was formerly hidden to us- and still is, to those who don't believe.

Second thing was my usual digging through the Strong's references to the other words in the Creed.  And this is what I noticed.

Both "manifested" and "vindicated" (or in some translations, "justified") have a similar start to the translation.  Manifested comes from a word meaning "To render apparent"- God revealed in the form of Christ.  A while back, a FB debater asked me why God didn't just take away sin straight out instead of going through what we were debating- the conception, whether Jesus as human or Mary as sinless.  One good reason is, had God just "waved the magic wand", there would have never been the proof of our faith that we received through the gift of Jesus coming to earth as man.  If God was going to reveal His mystery, He Himself would have to be "rendered apparent."

"Vindicated/justified" means "To render just or innocent".  Where Manifested references His birth in the flesh, Justified refers to something we've hit on a few Wednesdays back- the falling of the Holy Spirit on Jesus publicly at His baptism.  God knew Jesus was sinless and justified; and just like ours, Jesus's baptism was God's justifying Him publicly.

Third thing I looked at was "seen by angels".  Peter has told us that, because angels don't receive salvation, they "long to look into it." (1 Peter 1:12).  So perhaps this is what Paul was thinking of.  One commenter went so far as saying that the angels were fascinated by the sight of God made flesh, because THEY HAD NEVER SEEN GOD; that just as the Father was too wonderful for Abraham to see, even Jesus Before Flesh was too wonderful to look upon.  And there may be some truth to that;  I think of how the Cherubim always had two of their six wings covering their eyes, and how Lucifer was the "Covering Cherub", which may mean he was the one that blocked in his own person the angels from looking full-on at God.  But then you have to deal with the pre-incarnate sightings of Christ, the Angel of the Lord throughout the OT.  All I know for sure is the word "seen" means "to gaze, to stare", and it reminds me of the words from the old Easter hymn:

But angel hosts adore thee,

and tremble as they gaze.

The rest is fairly simple- he was preached to the Gentiles, believed on in the course of order, and taken up back into heaven.  And so, that was what Timothy was to teach his charges- Christ became man, but pure and innocent from sin; looked on by angels, preached to the Gentiles ( a job the Jews had been given but never did well), believed on by the people Timothy would pastor, and has went back in heaven to await the Day of Final Judgment.

Now, the commentators, scrolling through the Greek, found another contention.  At first it seems insignificant- but when you think about it, you really can see why God let it go this way.  Let me show you by giving you the phrase as the two different interpretations change it.  First, look at the KJV:

 And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh...

And now, the Revised Version:

And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness; He who was manifested in the flesh...

So the commentators debated, which is proper: "God" or "He who"?  First, here's how we got there.  Back in the day, since this was all copied in scribework, there were certain "shortcuts generally recognized" to make copying easier.  One of those was taking longer words, just using the beginning and ending of the word and drawing a line over the top to indicate that what was written was short for the longer word.  And on this word, it is unclear whether it was Θεὸς (Theos), meaning "God", or  ὅς  (Hos), meaning who, or which.  In fact, Albert Barnes gives us this interesting tidbit about whether the line was drawn above the "hos" or not:

Probably there is no passage in the New Testament which has excited so much discussion among critics as this, and none in reference to which it is so difficult to determine the true reading. It is the only one, it is believed, in which the microscope has been employed to determine the lines of the letters used in a manuscript; and, after all that has been done to ascertain the exact truth in regard to it, still the question remains undecided.

So what difference does it make? A subtle one, perhaps.  To me, reading it "God" expresses the concept in its unity- God the One did this.  He who makes me think of how it was the Individuality of Christ that did it, and makes it more real- more "apparent."

In the end though, I don't really think we need to take the eyepiece to it, and here's why.  Go back to the "seen" thing.  The word used here is middle voice:  more intense that, "I looked across the room and seen it (forgive the grammar)", but less than, "I examined it in tiny detail".  I gazed, and stared in amazement.  And that perhaps, is the point of the mystery after all.