16:25 since the world began. Our word “mystery” comes from the Greek musterion, which referred to the secrets imparted only to initiates in the famous “mystery religions” of ancient Greece. Paul used the word some twenty times in his epistles, adapting this concept to the great purposes of God for His creation, planned before the foundation of the world but only revealed to His initiates, as it were, in the fullness of time (Galatians 4:4). The gospel of Christ, revealed in its completeness to Paul (Galatians 1:11,12), had been foreshadowed in many ways through the prophets, but finally became reality in human experience, when God became man, in Christ. Note also such passages as Ephesians 3:1-11 and Colossians 1:24-27.

16:26 scriptures of the prophets. In developing the great doctrines of the gospel, here in his epistle to the Romans, the Apostle Paul did so within the prophetic framework of the Old Testament Scriptures, which he regarded as the inspired and authoritative Word of God. In this one epistle alone, he quoted from the Old Testament, directly or indirectly, at least fifty times, in support of his arguments and expositions.

16:26 everlasting God. Part of the essence of the now-revealed mystery of the gospel is that the God of creation is, indeed, the everlasting God, concerned with “all nations,” and that any can be saved by “the obedience of faith” (the same phrase is found in Romans 1:5).