The book of Ephesians is Paul revealing the mystery of God’s eternal plan of salvation. God gave the Jews everything they needed to decode the mystery of the Messiah in the Old Testament. The resurrected Jesus says as much to the men on the road to Emmaus as He rebukes them for not understanding the Messiah in the Old Testament and then unfolds to them how the prophets testified to Him.
Paul devoted much of his written ministry to showing Christ in the Old Testament. But like a good mystery, the believing Jews understood Jesus as Messiah, but the twist for them was that it has always been God’s plan to save the Gentiles too and that they would share in the exact same inheritance as the Jews.
This truth is all over the Old Testament, but the believing Jews just didn’t see it because when they read the Scripture, they were using their conformation bias to confirm their racial and spiritual superiority.
The mystery God revealed that we will see in the text this morning is God’s eternal plan of salvation that was carried out by Christ so that both Jew and Gentile would be saved and have access to God.
In Christ, we have been saved to share the Gospel with the lost so they too will have access to God.