Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given me by the working of his power. To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory.—Ephesians 3:7–13

On Sunday, December 27, 1874, Charles Spurgeon, the great English preacher, preached a message that would complete a twenty–year set of sermons published and bound annually for distribution. The text he chose for that 1,209th sermon was Ephesians 3:8.

To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.—Ephesians 3:8

He said he chose that text because he couldn’t find any other words in the whole bible that were “more expressive of the deep emotions of my soul than the verse which is now before us” (Charles Spurgeon, “A Grateful Summary of Twenty Volumes”).

It is incredibly great to know God by the promise of the gospel. Similarly, it is great to tell others of the riches of Christ. I mean this not merely for vocational preachers like Spurgeon or Pastor Jason. I mean this for all of us, varying of course according to our calling. It is this very grace—one person speaking the gospel to another—which God has used to bring each one of us who believe to faith in Christ.

Think about it. This is God’s design. It began with the sending of his disciples. God sends a person—a friend, mother, father, brother, sister, co-worker, classmate, author, singer, pastor, missionary or stranger. He sends a believer to speak the gospel of Jesus. Paul writes of this in Romans 10:

And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.—Romans 10:14-17

If you are a Christian today, you believe because by the sovereign grace of God someone spoke the gospel of Christ to you, and you were born of the Spirit. I have worked on my family ancestry and found it very interesting. But it would be all the more interesting to trace your spiritual lineage person to person through history, tracing who told the gospel to whom all the way back through the centuries to the first-century Apostles, and of course, all the way to Jesus himself. 

The aim of this three-week downtown sermon series is that we grow in our gospel telling—our speaking and proclaiming the gospel. We believe that your faith will be strengthened as you tell the gospel more intentionally to yourself and to others, both within and outside the church.

Pastor Mike Tong got us started last weekend with the first sermon in the series entitled, “Tell the Gospel Freely.” My message today is the second. It’s entitled, “Tell the Gospel Intelligibly.” Next weekend Dan Shambro, one of our seminary graduates who has been called to lead a church plant core group in Eau Claire, will preach a message entitled, “Tell the Gospel Gladly.”

Context

Toward that end, let’s first appreciate the context of Ephesians 3 before we zero in on verses 8–9. In the flow of the letter, Ephesians 3 is a digression in which Paul explains his apostolic work.

I can sum up chapter 3 in four headings all beginning with M. We will just focus on the first two today. First, Paul describes his own responsibility as minister of the gospel (vv. 1–2, 7). Second, he briefly but profoundly describes the message of the gospel (v. 8). Third, Paul celebrates the unveiling of the mystery of the gospel (v. 4, 5, 6 and 9). The mystery revealed in the gospel is that Christ Jesus saves all peoples. In Christ, gentiles are included among the people of God as fellow heirs of God, members of one body, and partakers of the promises of all that Christ accomplished.

Fourth, the magnificence of the gospel is seen as the chapter comes to a crescendo (vv. 9–12). As the gospel is preached to all peoples, God gathers them to himself through Christ into one people from every tongue and tribe on earth. In this, God’s magnificent wisdom is cosmically revealed not merely to us, but to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places to the glory of God (v. 10). This is God’s plan. 

Today, let’s look at the first two of these headings: the minister of the gospel and the message of the gospel.

The Minister of the Gospel

The word minister in verse 7 is the word from which we get the word deacon. It simply means “servant.” Don’t think of it with a capital M. It is not a high and mighty term. It’s a humble term used to refer to one who served tables. Paul sees himself as a servant of the gospel in the sense that, according to verse 2, he has been given a stewardship of God’s grace. His responsibility is to steward the gospel in a manner consistent with God’s purposes of grace—to protect it and to spread it to all peoples.

Two seemingly contradictory traits marked Paul in his role as a minster of the gospel: humility and boldness. Paul was humble in this gospel work. The common parody in our day of Christians is that of pride and arrogance. Although Christian pride may be less common than portrayed, we must search our hearts.

Paul refers himself as “the very least of all the saints” (Ephesians 3:8), “the least of the apostles” (1 Corinthians 15:9), and “the chief of sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15). He remembers his life apart from Christ as a self-righteous sinner, persecutor of the church, and pseudo-religious Christ-hater. Paul knows he is a forgiven sinner. Being reconciled to Christ by his death, not by our work, is a mortal wound to human pride. 

On the other hand, Paul’s gospel ministry was marked with boldness. Christ had supernaturally called him, revealed the gospel to him (Ephesians 3:3) and commissioned him (Ephesians 3:2). And God would grant him grace to do it (Ephesians 3:7b; 2 Corinthians 12:9). And do it he would, in the face of much suffering.

Although none of us are apostles, if you are a Christian, you too share a calling as a servant of the gospel. Christ revealed himself to you—not on the road to Damascus, but through the gospel and work of the Spirit. Christ also commissioned you to make disciples of all peoples (Matthew 28:18–20). In a real sense, we are also stewards of the gospel. Though we must rely on the grace of God and power of the Spirit, we are charged with the responsibility to rightly tell the gospel to others.

May we go about our own gospel ministry marked by both humility and boldness. The gospel doesn’t smell like arrogance, so let’s not stink it up. The message of the gospel smells like humility. Like Paul, may we humbly communicate the gospel, saying something like this: “Christ came into the world to save sinners like me and you. I am the greatest sinner I know, and he has forgiven my sins, and he will do the same for you.” 

May God also give us grace to go about our gospel ministry marked by boldness. Paul’s humility didn’t melt him into mush. He was bold. Time and time again, he walked into the synagogues and proclaimed the gospel. He spoke the gospel in the face of much persecution, opposition, and threats to his life.

The Message of the Gospel

The way Paul goes about the task of a minister of the gospel is by telling the message of the gospel. Paul’s pithy description of his gospel message gripped me: “To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ” (v. 8).

Wow! What does that mean? God has given him grace to preach the “unsearchable riches of Christ”? Right away, if you think the sum total of the gospel message can be contained in a tract or diagram or a book, Paul’s description here will explode that notion.

Christ’s riches are unsearchable. The word translated unsearchable means “beyond tracing out,” “beyond understanding,” “unfathomable,” or “impossible to comprehend.” Paul uses the very same word at the end of Romans 11. After probing the depths of God’s divine sovereignty in salvation and silencing all human objection, he concludes with this prayer of praise: “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” (Romans 11:34). 

So we can say that God’s wisdom is unsearchable, and God’s knowledge is unsearchable, and God’s judgments are unsearchable. Similarly, the riches of Christ are unsearchable. While Christ’s riches can be known, they cannot be fully comprehended.

I recently enjoyed reading two books about the exploration of the polar cap. These books were set in the late 1800s, and they told the stories of expeditions sent out to discover, understand, and map out the arctic. These explorers went to great lengths to do this. Many of these men died.

One popular notion, believe it or not, was there was a hot spot at the North Pole. The idea—which these explorers debunked—was that there was a vent at the pole where the heat from the earth’s core came out, causing tropical weather and warm water at the North Pole. As expedition after expedition went out, more and more was learned about that part of the earth. Now the land has been mapped, and its ice floes are more reliably predicted and understood. The same kind of scientific study continues in all kinds of fields, such as oceanography, biology, and astronomy.

Here’s the point: we may come to understand the polar cap, and we may theoretically come to a complete understanding of the ocean depths, quantum physics, microbiology, the human genome, and math at levels I do not even know how to name. But the riches of Christ—like the wisdom of God—will never be captured or contained. He will never be fully understood in the glory of his riches. Christ’s riches are unsearchable. 

The Riches of Christ’s Blessings

Though we cannot fully understand Christ’s riches, we can know his riches in part. Let me show you a few of the descriptions of Christ’s riches in Ephesians and one more from 2 Corinthians 4.

There are two categories of riches: the riches of Christ’s blessings and the riches of Christ’s person. First, Christ has unsearchable riches of blessing and grace to us as his people. For example, Christ is rich in his grace toward us.

In him [Christ] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight.—Ephesians 1:7–8

The riches of his grace are unsearchable. Now we taste of his grace of forgiveness, reconciling us to God. The riches of his grace are greater than you can ever fully know.

Christ is also rich in his inheritance. You know that we who are united with Christ by faith are united with him in his inheritance as the only Son of the living God. Paul prays “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints” (Ephesians 1:17–18). All that God has, Christ has by inheritance as Son. And all that Christ has is ours (Colossians 1:12–13). 

Christ is the mediator of the richness of the saving mercy and love of God to us. Paul writes, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:4–5).

Christ is also rich with the riches of God’s grace. From now to the eternal ages, God will show us more and more of the immeasurable riches of his grace to us in Christ. Paul explains that for eternity God will show us “the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:6–7).

The Riches of Christ’s Glory

Second—and even more importantly—Christ has unsearchable riches in his person. He is rich with the glory of God. He is the image of the invisible God. We see this the moment we believe. The gift of saving faith is the gift to see “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). All the riches of the glory of God the Father belong to Christ the Son. All the riches of God’s glorious love, compassion, justice, mercy, wisdom, righteousness, truth, goodness, and saving grace belong to Christ.

This is what Paul meant. He meant that as a minister of the gospel, his task was to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ, namely, the riches of the blessings of Christ’s grace to us who believe and the riches of the glory of God that he possesses and reveals to us. 

Paul’s aim was to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ to all peoples, and may God give us grace to do likewise.

Beware of Diverting from the Riches of Christ

In his little book Rejoicing in Christ, Michael Reeves makes this observation:

We naturally gravitate, it seems, toward anything but Jesus—and Christians almost as much as anyone—whether it’s “the Christian worldview,” “grace,” “the Bible” or “the gospel,” as if they were things in themselves that could save us. Even “the cross” can get abstracted from Jesus, as if the wood had some power of its own. Other things, wonderful things, vital concepts, beautiful discoveries so easily edge Jesus aside. Precious theological concepts meant to describe him and his work get treated as things in their own right. He becomes just another brick in the wall. But the center, the cornerstone, the jewel in the crown of Christianity is not an idea, a system or a thing; it is not even “the gospel” as such. It is Jesus Christ.—Michael Reeves, Rejoicing in Christ, p. 10 

May God guard us from getting off course. May God guard us from shifting the theological and practical ground of our faith away from anything but Jesus and the news of his death for us.

Four Applications

First, memorize a gospel summary. It is good for us to have a short gospel summary in mind. The gospel is the news that God send Christ to die for our sins for our redemption and the redemption of all things. This good news is told in Scripture in various places in various ways, all referencing the common core of the gospel (John 3:16; Luke 2:10–11; 1 Corinthians 15:3; 1 Peter 3:18; Romans 10:9). The common biblical core of the gospel should make reference to the following: God as Creator and loving Father, Man as created in God’s image yet fallen into sin and thereby cut off from God, and Christ as redeemer who reconciling us to God by faith in his substitutionary death for our sins. This news of God’s grace is ours by faith in Christ.

Find a summary of the gospel that reminds you of the grace of God to you in Christ and encourages your faith. Use it to tell yourself the truth, and use it to help others as God gives opportunity.

My simple summary combines the gospel summary in 1 Corinthians 15 with the gospel summary in 1 Peter 3:18. If you ask me what the gospel is in a nutshell, I would say this: “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures in order to bring us to God.” This is how I remind myself of the basics of the gospel. If someone asked me what the gospel was, this is where I would start.

There are other biblical summaries that are good, and God has used them to bless many people. My point is that you should take hold of a gospel summary that encourages your heart, strengthens your faith, and reminds you that Christ died as your substitute to reconcile you to God.

Second, realize that the gospel cannot be fully simplified. Rest in the fact that the gospel of the unsearchable riches of Christ cannot comprehensively be wrapped up in a little package. The gospel is too rich to be comprehensively written in a tract or a drawn in a diagram. The riches of Christ that are ours are unsearchable.

Timothy Keller writes about this in his book Center Church:

There is an irreducible complexity to the gospel. I do not mean that the gospel can’t be presented simply and even very briefly. Paul himself does so on numerous occasions (e.g., Rom 10:9). The gospel is a clear and present word, but it is not a simplistic word.—Timothy Keller, Center Church

This leads to a third application: Commit to the adventure of knowing the unsearchable riches of Christ. The great adventure of pressing in to know Christ—to know the height, breadth, length and depth of his love, to know his love which surpasses knowledge, and to know the fellowship of his sufferings—is the normal Christian life. This is the life of believing all God’s promises to us in Christ. This is what it means to live by faith in future grace. This is what it means to keep ourselves from believing the promises of idols and to hope in the riches of Christ. Nothing compares to the greatness of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord and enjoying all that he promises to be for us.

It is in this adventure of knowing Christ that we experience the fuller implications of the gospel and more of the riches of Christ. Christ meets us with the riches in the complexity of our lives with his grace, his forgiveness, his presence, his faithfulness, his power, his promises, and most of all, his person. We will have a bigger view of the riches of Christ as we spend our lives joyfully mining the treasure that he is and as we grow in our experience with and understanding of the unsearchable Christ.

Fourth, we should speak the gospel intelligibly to others. If you are mining the unsearchable riches of Christ personally, I guarantee you that you will have gospel encouragement for others. Using a good gospel summary—and drawing from your experience of Christ’s riches—speak the gospel in a manner that is rooted biblical truth, drawn from your experience of Christ, and suited to the person to whom you are speaking. 

This is called contextualization. I use the word in its best biblical sense of speaking the gospel in a manner that is suited for our hearer’s understanding but that does not compromise the truth. I mean it in the sense that I see it in the Bible.

Have you ever noticed that Jesus presents himself differently to different people? To those looking for miraculous free bread, he says, “I am the bread of life” (John 6:51). To the man born blind, he says, “I am the light of the world” (John 9:5). To the woman at the well, he says, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water” (John 4:10). To the paralytic, he says, “That you may know that [I have] authority on earth to forgive sins . . . rise, pick up your bed and go home” (Matthew 9:6). To the disciples, he says, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11).

Jesus never had a canned stump speech. When Jesus reveals himself, it is as if he reaches into the unsearchable storehouse of the riches of his person and grace and presents himself in a manner suited for his listener to hear.

Not surprisingly, the apostles also present the gospel differently to different people For example, Peter’s gospel preaching in Acts 2 is different from Paul’s preaching in Acts 17. In fact, throughout the Bible the one true gospel of Christ is presented in various ways.

In his book The Unbelievable Gospel, pastor and church planter Jonathan Dodson describes five New Testament gospel metaphors that are helpful in understanding and speaking the gospel intelligibly to others. They are justification (legal metaphors), redemption (slavery and sacrificial metaphors), adoptions (family metaphors), new creation (life and death metaphors), and union with Christ (body and marriage metaphors).

Grounded in a good gospel summary and drawing from your experience of Christ’s riches, speak the gospel in a manner that is rooted biblical truth, drawn from your experience of Christ, and suited to the person to whom you are speaking. May God give us grace to tell the gospel to others both within and outside the church.