Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Timothy 3:16

"And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness; He who was manifested in the flesh, Justified in the spirit, Seen of angels, Preached among the nations, Believed on in the world, Received up in glory." — 1 Timothy 3:16 (ASV)

And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness.—“And is not simply copulative, but heightens the force of the predication: Yes, confessedly great is the mystery” (Ellicott)—for the glorious truth which the Church of God pillar-like upholds is none other than that stupendous mystery, in other ages not made known, but then revealed—the mystery of Christ, in all His loving manifestations and glorious triumph. Yes, confessedly great—so great that the massive grandeur of the pillar is only in proportion to the truth it supports.

God was manifest in the flesh.—Here, in the most ancient authorities, the word “God” does not occur. We must, then, literally translate the Greek of the most famous and trustworthy manuscripts as follows: He who was manifested in the flesh. In the later manuscripts, and in the great majority of the fathers who cite the passage, we certainly find Theos (“God”), as in the Received Text. The substitution can be traced to no special doctrinal prejudice, but is owing, probably, to a well-meant correction of early scribes.

At first sight, Theos (“God”) would be a reading easier to understand and grammatically more exact. In the original copies, the great similarity between ΘC (“God”)—the contracted form in which ΘEOC was written—and the relative ΘC (“He who”) would be likely to suggest to an officious scribe the very trifling alteration necessary for the easier and apparently more accurate word.

Recent investigations have shown, however, beyond controversy that the oldest manuscripts, with scarcely an exception, contain the more difficult reading, ΘC (“He who”). The Greek pronoun thus rendered is simply a relative to an omitted but easily inferred antecedent—namely, Christ.

Possibly the difficulty in the construction is due to the fact of the whole verse being a fragment of an ancient Christian hymn. This hymn embodied a confession of faith, well known to, and perhaps often sung by, the faithful among the congregations of such cities as Ephesus, Corinth, and Rome. It was a confession embodying the grand facts of the Incarnation and the Resurrection, the preaching of the cross to the Gentile world and its reception by them, and the present session of Christ in glory. In the original Greek, the rhythmical as well as the antithetical character of the clauses is very striking.

In the English translation, they can hardly be reproduced:

Who was manifested in the flesh,
Justified in the Spirit,
Seen of angels,
Was preached among the Gentiles,
Believed on in the world,
Taken up into glory.

Fragments of similar hymns to Christ are found in 2 Timothy 2:11, and perhaps also in Ephesians 5:14.

Manifest in the flesh.—When the Son of God came forth from the Father, “He was manifested in the flesh;” or, in other divine words, “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father” (John 1:14. Compare also to 2 Timothy 1:10). The men and women of the first days of Christianity who repeated or sang such words as these must have accepted and firmly believed the dogma of the pre-existent glory of Christ.

Justified in the Spirit.—The truth of Jesus Christ’s own assertion concerning Himself, which seemed to be contradicted by His mortal liability to bodily weakness, pain, suffering, and last of all to death, was in the end triumphantly vindicated or justified.

Or, in other words, the claims of Jesus Christ to Divinity, put forth during His life of humiliation, were shown to be true. It was by His resurrection from the dead that Christ’s lofty claims to the Godhead were justified. The Spirit, to which reference is here made, was the higher principle of spiritual life within Him—not itself the Divinity, but intimately united and associated with it. In the power of this Spirit, which He had within Himself, He took His life which He had laid down, reunited His soul to His body from which He had separated it when He yielded up His spirit, and so made Himself alive and revived Himself, thus publicly proclaiming His divine nature, His awe-inspiring dignity. (Compare Pearson, On the Creed, Art. V.)

Seen of angels . . .—It has been suggested that “angels” here mean nothing more than His Apostles and His own chosen messengers, by whom Jesus Christ was seen after His claims to Supreme power had been justified in the Spirit who had raised Him from the dead. These saw Him first, and after that carried the glad message to the distant isles of the Gentiles.

But in spite of the ingenuity of such an exposition, the plain, obvious meaning of the word “angels” must be maintained, for the invariable meaning of angelos in the New Testament (perhaps with the exception of the earlier chapters of the Apocalypse) is never “apostle,” but “angel.”

He was “seen of angels”—that is, Jesus Christ, after His resurrection and return to the throne at the Father’s right hand, was, in His glorified humanity, visible to angels, who before had never looked on God. (Hebrews 1:6; 1 Peter 1:12—each of which passages bears in some way on this mysterious subject.) Theodoret and St. Chrysostom have similarly commented on this statement concerning the angels’ share in the beatific vision.

Preached unto the Gentiles.—The angels now for the first time saw, gazed on, and rejoiced in the vision of the Godhead manifested in the glorified humanity of the Son. And what the angels gained in the beatific vision, the nations of the world obtained through the preaching of the gospel—namely, the knowledge of the endless love and the surpassing glory of Christ.

This line of the ancient Christian hymn tells us that this early confession of faith was particularly the outcome of the Pauline churches. For, in enumerating the six glories of the Redeemer God, it tells us one of these glories consisted in the preaching of His gospel to those peoples who had until then sat in darkness and in the shadow of death. It was the splendid fulfilment of the Isaiah prophecy concerning the coming Messiah: “It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles” (Isaiah 49:6).

Believed on in the world.—Different from Buddhism or even from Islam, Christianity has found acceptance among widely different nationalities. The religion of the Crucified alone among religions has a fair claim to the title of a world-religion. Its cradle was in the East, but it rapidly found ready acceptance in the West, and in the present day it may be said not only to exist but also to exercise a vast and ever-increasing influence in all the four quarters of the globe.

Received up into glory.—More accurately, received up in glory. These words refer evidently to the historical ascent of Christ into heaven—they declare the belief of these early churches in the fact of the Ascension as related in St. Luke’s Gospel.

This fragment of the triumph-song of the early churches embraces the leading facts of the Messianic story:

1. The Incarnation of the Son of God.
2. The justification in His Resurrection of the lofty claims advanced by Him during the days of His humiliation.
3. The Epiphany of the glorified Humanity of Christ:
   • To angels in the beatific vision.
   • To men in the preaching of the cross.
4. The glorious results of the great sacrifice already visible in those first suffering, struggling days of the Church.
5. The return to heaven, and the session in power at the right hand of God—closing the first part of the blessed resurrection mystery, and beginning the glorious reign of Christ over men from His throne in heaven.