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Hidden From Them

  • Writer: Andrew B Spurgeon
    Andrew B Spurgeon
  • May 9, 2024
  • 3 min read

Once, I heard a comedian say, “People have three lives: a public life, a private life, and a secret life.” Over the past decades, we have seen Christian and non-Christian leaders fall because they had hidden lives. They thought they could do wrong and hide their secrets forever from people’s eyes and ears, but to their surprise, their secrets were proclaimed from rooftops. That’s a wrong kind of secret or hiddenness. Another is meant for good, such as parents not letting their children watch certain shows, especially when it has violence, sexual scenes, or nudity. The parents purposefully hide such shows from their children. That’s a good kind of secret or hiddenness.


In the Scriptures, God hides things from people until a particular time. These are called mysteries. For example, the oneness of Hebrews and Gentiles in God’s rule was hidden in the olden days but revealed through the gospel and the apostles (Col 1:24–29).


Similarly, Jesus often hid things from the disciples so they understood them after his resurrection. For example, once he took the twelve disciples with him away from the crowd and said to them,

“See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything written through the prophets concerning me will fulfill—I will be handed to the nations, and they will mock me, insult me, spit on me, whip me, and kill me. But on the third day, I will resurrect” (Luke 18:31–33).


For us, these words are plain and clear. We read the Gospels to know what happened to Jesus during a Passover festival—how they did all these things to him and crucified him. But for the disciples, who were excited thinking God’s rule had come by witnessing all the miracles and wonders, Jesus’s words would have been puzzling. First, which prophets said these things? Second, why such torture—what wrong did he do? Third, what is “resurrection”? Fourth, why go to Jerusalem if these things will happen there? Fifth, would they also face such torture?


In short,

“The twelve disciples didn’t understand these words because they were hidden from them, so they wouldn’t understand what he was speaking” (18:34).


Modern-day scholars criticize the disciples, saying they were too stupid to understand what Jesus was saying or doing without putting themselves in the disciples’ shoes. If we were with Jesus while he said these things, we would have been like them!


But as you can see, their lack of understanding (repeated twice) is glued together with God hiding these truths from them. They couldn’t understand because the understanding was hidden from them, just as parents protecting their children by not letting them watch a show with violence or sex. Perhaps if the disciples had understood what Jesus said, it would have troubled them greatly or made them leave Jesus. Whatever the reason, God decided to hide these truths from them, so they didn’t understand and went with Jesus to Jerusalem. As such, we shouldn’t be harsh on the disciples.


Even now, there are mysteries in the Scriptures that we don’t understand. How will the dead resurrect? When will they resurrect? Why should Christians suffer? What would future life with God look like? God hides the answers to these questions to protect us from worrying. Our task is to travel with him, just as the disciples traveled with Jesus to Jerusalem.

 
 
 

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