How we are perceived by others is not something that we can always determine on our own. The other person has almost complete control of that. But we have input into the matter and may certainly suggest to the other person how we might like to be seen. In one of Paul’s remarks in his first Corinthian correspondence he reveals one aspect of how he wished to be viewed by others. It is most revealing:

Let a man so account of us, as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God (1 Corinthians 4:1).

Whatever else may have been said of him, the apostle sought to be perceived as a “minister of Christ,” i.e. one going about spiritual service in the employ of God’s Messiah (the word is huperetes, a term that means “an under-oarsman” and thus one who is an assistant or subordinate beneath a higher authority), but also as one of the “stewards of the mysteries of God.” The word for “steward” here is from oikonomos, a “house-servant” who “manages the affairs of a household.” All of this is the language of servant-hood, not high office. He says of himself, then, that he is merely an underling. What is impressive, is not his office, but the work with which and in which he is employed. (After all, there is a difference for example between someone who has the responsibility of cleaning some office, or any office, and the one who takes care of the Oval Office!)  He is, he says, along with his apostolic partners, committed to the task of handling “the mysteries of God.”

Now such language as this challenges our understanding and so bids us explore it further. Etymologically the Greek word musterion derives from the verbal root mueo which relates to hidden, secret or mysterious things, i.e. religious secrets “confided only to the initiated and not to be communicated by them to ordinary mortals” (Thayer, p. 420). Some have supposed that it is ultimately derived from the word mustos (which never occurs in any known instance) that may have had to do with things “closed, covered.” It may have related to objects which were covered over and thus beyond the sight of ordinary men and women.

Be that as it may, in ancient Greece for many centuries a “mystery” stood for a religious or sacred secret into which, after due preparation,  men were initiated by solemn and secretive rites of passage. At Eleusis near Athens, for example, there were many mysteries of this description hidden from general public view for a number of centuries. They were designed to preserve and hand on from one generation to the next certain supposed truths associated with the earliest religion of ancient Greece. These were doctrines and ideas that were lost sight of, denied, or even denounced by the popular religion of a later era. A tenet of this kind thus concealed and thus disclosed only to certain initiates was called a “mystery” for a number of reasons. First, because even after disclosure to the few, it was yet concealed from the general public. Second, because it had been hidden from even the initiate himself until that moment when it was revealed to him. Third, probably also because the mystery itself pointed to other greater and higher mysteries which the new convert to the religion would eventually have committed to him in due time.

This was the basic meaning this word had acquired by the time of the apostle’s writing of this letter to the Corinthians. The Mystery Religions had their secretive ways and their hidden mysteries, and Christianity had mysteries of it’s own. In the latter case, though, the secrets were open to the viewing of one and all, if indeed they could be understood by anyone except God. Certain Christian doctrines, after having been hidden for long ages in the mind of the God of heaven, had been at the last revealed to the minds of men and women, and so could be understood by them. As a result of this revelatory process, the mind of God had been revealed, at least in part, to ordinary human minds. Great mysteries they once had been. But now they were open secrets. Paul speaks of this process in a number of different passages in his writings:

…how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly. When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. 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… (Ephesians 3:3-8).

Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith—to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen (Romans 16:25-27).

…of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory (Colossians 1:25-27).

One particular writer observed correctly that:

Mystery in the biblical sense, then, does not describe a fancy, a contradiction, an impossibility, but always a truth. Yet this truth is one that has been, or is, more or less hidden. A Biblical mystery is a truth, a fact. It is not a product of the imagination but something that is observed as happening or existing but that defies explanation. The term is never applied to any shadowy sort of unreality, but refers to a partially hidden fact or truth

Truths are of two kinds, both of them truths and, as such, equally certain. But they differ in that they are differently apprehended. There are some truths on which the mind’s eye rests directly, just as the bodily eye rests on the sun in a cloudless sky. And there are other truths of whose reality the mind is assured by seeing evidences that satisfy it that they are there. These are apprehended in the same way that the bodily eye sees the brilliant rays streaming from behind a cloud and reports to the mind that, if only the cloud were removed, the sun itself would be seen.

Now mysteries in the Christian religion, as we commonly use the word, are of this description. We see enough to know that there is more that we do not see, and which, while we are in this state of existence, we shall not directly see. We see, as it were, the ray that implies the sun behind the cloud. And to look upon the apparent truth, which certainly implies truth that is not apparent, is to be in the presence of mystery (Spiros Zodhiates, You and Public Opinion, 34-38).

Thus, Paul saw himself as a mere housekeeper in the House of his God. But within that magnificent house lay treasures boundless in their extent, beyond measure for him to enjoy. One grand mystery leads on to another and then another after that. In heaven all of the still-hidden things will at last be seen and fully known. In the meantime we are allowed to enjoy grand truths that could only have been wished for in a bygone era. Such is the status of every initiate into the blessed mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven. What an unparalleled honor it is to keep house in such an incomparable mansion, filled as it is with all the rich treasures of the wisdom of God!