In Ephesians 3, Paul talks about three big topics: the love of God, the power of God, and the knowledge of God. In scripture, all of these big topics are about the cross. You can’t talk about God’s power, wisdom, and love without talking about the cross.

In fact, the cross redefines these three things. The cross shows us that everything that we thought we knew about power is wrong. Everything we thought we knew about love is wrong. Everything we thought we knew about God’s thinking is wrong. In fact, God’s power, wisdom, and love are opposite of the way the world–and us–think about power, wisdom, and love.

If you read Ephesians 3, you might have seen that it doesn’t use the word “cross” at all. But the cross is present in Ephesians 3; it is being carried by Paul himself. This is the part of Ephesians 3 that readers often miss.

You can see the cross at the beginning in Ephesians 3:1.

EPH 3:1  “For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles—”

Here is the cross!

Paul is writing from prison. Paul is in prison for the sake of the gentiles. But he doesn’t say, “I am a prisoner of the Romans.” He says that he is a prisoner of Christ.

EPH 3:2 “Surely you have heard about the administration of God’s grace that was given to me for you—”

Paul is in prison. But he doesn’t see his imprisonment as the work of the enemy. The enemy that put Paul in prison is just the means that carried out God’s plan. This is a fundamental principle of the Christian life: God works just as well through His enemies as He does through His servants. Like Joseph said to his brothers: “You meant it for evil. But God meant it for good.” Or like Jesus to Pilate, “You would have no power over me except the power that my Father grants to you.”

Paul’s imprisonment is not in spite of the love or power of God. Paul is not saying, “I am in prison now. But just wait until you see the power of God get me out of here.” Paul’s imprisonment is the love and power of God. Paul said that his imprisonment is God’s plan for the administration of the mystery.

God has a plan to end the old creation and birth the new creation through Jesus Christ. And he has given Paul the administration of this mystery. And the way that God gives Paul to do this is through prison. This is God’s choice. It is the way that God wants it done.

So you can see from this one verse just how different God’s understanding of power and love is from our worldly understanding of power and love. God is all-powerful and all-loving. The man God chose to carry out God’s plan is the man who was trying to stop the plan from spreading outside of Jerusalem at all costs. God chooses the persecutor, the one who doesn’t believe in plan and even objects to the plan. And God says, “You’re going to administer this plan. I’m going to put you in charge of it. And you’re going to do it from prison. And all of creation depends on this plan.”

That is why Paul calls this a mystery. It is something that you could never know according to human thinking. That is why Paul writes as he does in verse 3:

EPH 3:3 “that is, the mystery made known to me by revelation, as I have already written briefly.”

These days, Christian ministers say that they cannot preach the gospel yet because they are “preparing the soil”, which typically means that they are building relationships, distributing aid, and generally doing things other than the direct preaching of the gospel.

But think about how God prepared the soil for Paul. How did God “prepare the soil” so that Paul would receive the gospel? Paul’s “preparation” was to become a murderer bent on destroying the Christian movement through violence. God looked at Paul in the midst of these acts and said, “He is prepared. He is ready.”

God’s way of preparing people to receive the gospel is so opposite of human thinking. God’s way of administering the mystery of the gospel relies on imprisonment rather than human freedom. God’s gospel knows only the cross. The cross redefines the love of God, the power of God, and the knowledge of God.

That’s what we learned from the administrator of the mystery…while he was in prison.