Colossians 1:24-29 — Mystery Revealed

Frank Edwards: A man in chains says he is glad to be there.

Linda Brown: Glad. Not resigned to it, not making the best of a bad situation. He says he rejoices.

Frank Edwards: That is the word. And I want to be careful here, because "I rejoice in suffering" is the kind of line that shows up on a coffee mug, right, and it goes soft the second you put it there. But Paul is not writing this from a comfortable study. He is a prisoner. Awaiting a hearing before Rome, cut off from the very churches he is writing to. So welcome to Dig Deeper, we are in Colossians one, verses twenty-four through twenty-nine today, and it opens on this claim that honestly should stop us cold. Now, which church is he writing to?

Linda Brown: Colossae—a little town everybody bypassed that we talked about back at the start. He's never even stood in front of them, which makes it stranger still.

Frank Edwards: Never been there in person. He's suffering for people whose faces he has never seen. Let me read it straight through and then we can get under it.

Frank Edwards: "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and fill up on my part that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body's sake, which is the assembly, of which I was made a servant according to the stewardship of God which was given me toward you to fulfill the word of God, the mystery which has been hidden for ages and generations. But now it has been revealed to his saints, to whom God was pleased to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory; whom we proclaim, admonishing every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus; for which I also labor, striving according to his working, which works in me mightily."

Linda Brown: "Fill up that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ." I've got to stop you right there, because that line scares me a little. Is Paul saying the cross wasn't enough? That he's topping up what Jesus didn't finish?

Frank Edwards: That reading kills the gospel, and you're right to flinch at it, because it's the natural thing to hear. No. Paul is not adding a single drop to what Christ finished for our sins. The whole letter to this point has been about how complete Christ is. Think of it this way. Christ suffered to accomplish salvation. That's done. But Christ also suffers as his people carry that salvation out into the world, because the church is his body, and when the body bleeds, the head feels it. There's an old line from Maclaren I love here: "Strike the man that is joined to Christ here, and Christ up yonder feels it." That's the afflictions of Christ that are still, in a sense, ongoing. Not the price of sin. The overflow of it, poured out through people like Paul, for the church's good.

Linda Brown: The bruises Paul takes carrying Jesus' finished job to people who don't have it yet—Christ counts those bruises as his own, feeling them in his body.

Frank Edwards: There it is, and hold onto that second half, because that's the part that turns rejoicing from a slogan into something real. If my pain is genuinely Christ's pain, felt in his body, then it is never wasted. It is going somewhere. It's for your sake, he says. That's why he can be glad.

Linda Brown: Servant. He says he was "made a servant." That word doing more work than it looks like?

Frank Edwards: A great deal more. The Greek behind that whole idea is oikonomia, and it's the picture of managing a large house. In the Roman world a big estate ran on one trusted slave, the steward, the oikonomos. He held the keys. He kept the accounts. He handed out the provisions, the daily bread, the wages, all of it, on behalf of a master who might be gone for months. And here is the thing every person in Colossae felt in their gut and we walk right past. The steward owned nothing. Not one loaf. Every coin he counted, every ration he distributed, it all belonged to the master. His entire dignity came from one fact only. He had been trusted with it. What happens if that steward starts acting like the goods are his own?

Linda Brown: He becomes a thief with keys.

Frank Edwards: A thief, exactly, and a steward who hoards the master's provisions instead of handing them out is faithless. The measure of the man was never what he possessed. It was whether he kept opening the storehouse. Now put Paul in that role. He calls himself a steward of "the riches of the glory of this mystery." He does not own the gospel. It isn't his message, his following, his private treasure to guard and grow. It's been placed in his hands to distribute. To hand out to the nations the way a steward hands the master's bread to the household. And that's why he can suffer for it and still rejoice. The steward keeps opening the door even when it costs him, because what he's giving away was never his to keep. But notice a word he leans on twice.

Linda Brown: "Mystery." To me that's a whodunit, something I'm supposed to figure out. That's clearly not it.

Frank Edwards: In Greek it's mystērion, and it does not mean a riddle waiting for a clever person to crack it. It means a purpose of God that no human being could ever have reasoned their way toward. Something locked away in the counsels of heaven, held back on purpose, until God himself decided the hour had come to say it out loud. It's hidden not because it's obscure but because it's kept. And then Paul says, "but now." Now it's been flung open.

Linda Brown: Kept back. Not because God's stingy.

Frank Edwards: Not stingy at all. Think of a father holding a gift behind his back until the moment is right. Hidden for ages and generations, and now spoken aloud. And here's what should genuinely surprise us, Linda. The secret, when it's unveiled, is not a doctrine. It's not a formula you write on a board. It's a person, in a place nobody expected. "Christ in you, the hope of glory." Read that slowly. Not Christ far off. Not Christ someday. Christ, inside you, right now, as the ground of everything you hope for. Who is the "you" that's getting this letter?

Linda Brown: Gentiles. Outsiders. The shocking part is who's reading it.

Frank Edwards: That is the whole scandal, and this is the day in our series I really want to plant this flag, because Paul defines himself by it. He is the apostle to the Gentiles. Now sit with what that meant. For a Jew of Paul's training, the Gentiles were the outsiders. The uncircumcised. The ones who ate what was unclean and worshipped whatever they pleased, standing entirely outside the covenant God made with Israel. And Paul's specific commission, the thing he was seized and set apart for, was to carry the promises to them. On equal footing. Without becoming Jews first. To many in his day that looked like a betrayal of everything Israel had guarded for a thousand years. Which is exactly what he means when he writes about this mystery.

Linda Brown: "The riches of this mystery among the Gentiles"—that's not a throwaway. That's the offensive part he's in chains for.

Frank Edwards: This exact thing is the price of his chains. "Christ in you," he tells a room full of Gentile Colossians. The glory that used to live in a temple, in an inner room no one could enter, behind a veil, the presence that filled the tabernacle behind a curtain, that presence now lives in these outsiders by his Spirit. And this is crucial. This was never plan B. God isn't scrambling. Way back in Genesis, before there was a law, or a temple, or an Israel to speak of, God tells Abram, "in you all the families of the earth will be blessed." All the families. Paul is out harvesting a field Abraham was told to plant. And Ezekiel promised it too, God saying, "I will put my Spirit within you." Israel had God among them, in the cloud, in the tent. Ezekiel promises something nearer. God inside his people. The presence that filled a building now fills persons.

Linda Brown: God with us, and then God in us—that's the direction the whole Bible's been leaning the entire time.

Frank Edwards: The whole Bible leans toward that nearness. God with us becoming God in us. And when Jesus says in John, "we will come to him and make our home with him," that's the promise arriving in full. The dwelling Ezekiel talked about, Jesus calls his own settled address. So no wonder Paul will bleed to hand this on. A man carrying that treasure will suffer to get it to your table.

Linda Brown: I want to bring this down out of the air though, because it can stay very grand and very far from me. There's a person in my week right now, a friend whose marriage is coming apart, and she wants to talk. Again. And honestly a lot of me wants to give the quick, warm, safe reply and get off the phone, because I'm tired and I don't have answers for her.

Frank Edwards: You've just put your finger on exactly the cost Paul's talking about. That "fill up what is lacking" line, we spiritualized it a minute ago, but here's where it actually meets you. Real service to another believer eventually takes something out of you that you'd rather keep. And obedience, most days, is just staying. It's saying "tell me what's really going on" and then not glancing at the clock. It's the draining conversation you can't fix and refuse to walk away from.

Linda Brown: But that's what's hard. It spends something I can't easily get back. And I don't have a bottomless supply of that.

Frank Edwards: You don't, and Paul knows it, which is why the passage doesn't end on your effort. Look at his very last words. He labors, he strives, "according to his working, which works in me mightily." That word "mightily" is not decoration. The strength is Christ's, poured into you as you go, not summoned up out of you before you start. It's the same power he prays a few verses earlier that the whole church would know. So it's not "grit your teeth and give till you're empty." It's "he holds you while you pour." You do not host Christ by your strength. He holds you.

Linda Brown: And there's a goal to it, right? He says he does all this to "present every man perfect in Christ." Which, again, "perfect" — I hear that and I think flawless, and I check out, because I'm not that.

Frank Edwards: Then let go of "flawless" completely, because it's the wrong picture. The Greek is teleios, and it means brought to completion. Arrived at the end you were made for. A teleios fruit isn't a fruit with no blemish, it's a fruit that's ripe. A teleios athlete is one fully trained. It points to a finished work, a person grown to full maturity in everything Christ intends them to be. That's the doctrine the church calls glorification, God finishing what he began. And notice the little word underneath it. Paul doesn't say perfect by Christ, or perfect for Christ. He says perfect in Christ. The completeness you're headed toward isn't a self you manufacture by trying harder. It's Christ's own fullness worked into you, because you're already joined to him. Not one person truly joined to Christ gets left half-finished on the day he appears. He does not abandon what he lives inside.

Linda Brown: So my tired, half-empty attempt to sit with my friend isn't me generating something perfect. It's Christ, who's already in me, doing the finishing.

Frank Edwards: That's the ground you stand on. Which is why I'd turn the whole passage into one question and hand it to you. Carry that with you into whatever your week actually holds. There is a person God has put near you who needs more than a polite word, and you already know their name. The question isn't "do you have enough to give them." You don't, none of us do. The question is whether you'll open the storehouse anyway, and trust the master to keep filling it.

Linda Brown: Then here's the charge, and I'll say it plain because it's the part I need. This week, when the phone lights up, or they catch you after the service, don't give the quick safe reply. Stay. Say "tell me what's really going on," and let him supply what it costs you.

Frank Edwards: Christ gave his whole body for yours. You were the costly one he stayed for. Go pour a little of that out.

Linda Brown: This one's part of the Dig Deeper app, so if you don't have it yet, go find Dig Deeper in your app store.