Mystery (3)

In Christ all is mystery. Christ possessing two natures, God and man, in one person; mortal and immortal; greatness and baseness; infiniteness and finiteness, in one person.
The church itself is a mystery. For under all its fallenness and the scorn of the world, what is hid? A glorious people. The state of the church in this world is like a tree that is weather-beaten. The leaves and fruit are gone, but there is life in the root. What is the church? A company of people that are in the world without glory, without comeliness and beauty; yet notwithstanding. they have life in the root, a hidden life: 'Our life is hid with Christ, in God' (Col. 3:3). The church has a life, but it is a hidden, mystical life. They seem to die to the world, but they are alive. This is excellently and theoretically followed by Paul: 'As dying, and yet we live; as poor, yet making rich' (2 Cor. 6:9). A strange kind of people, poor and rich, living and dying, glorious and fallen. Yet this is the state of the church here in this world. They are an excellent people, but they are veiled under infirmities of their own, and the disgraces and persecutions of the world.
So, we see that the doctrine itself, and the graces, and the head of the church, and the church itself, are nothing but mysteries.

Devotional Readings taken from Puritan Richard Sibbes 'Refreshment for the Soul.'
The Fountain Opened, Works, vol. 5, pp. 464
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