Christ in You, the Hope of Glory

Scripture: Colossians 1:24–2:5

Read Colossians 1:24–2:5 before proceeding. Keep your Bible open throughout this session.

Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Colossians 1:27

From Hymn to Ministry

The Christ-hymn ends. The application to the Colossians follows. And then Paul turns to himself.

This is the shape of the passage we will study in this session. Having confessed the cosmic Christ and applied that confession to the personal reconciliation of the Colossians, Paul now opens a window onto his own apostolic labor: the toiling, struggling, suffering work of an apostle who has been entrusted with making this Christ known. The passage is unusually personal for Paul, who is not always inclined to write about himself. But here he does. He speaks of his own sufferings, of the stewardship from God that has been given to him, of the mystery he has been entrusted to proclaim, of the energy with which he toils on behalf of those he has never met. The window onto Paul’s ministry is not opened for its own sake. It is opened to show the Colossians something about what the gospel does in those it has taken hold of. The apostle who labors in chains on their behalf is the model, not of pious heroism, but of what a life looks like when it has been seized by the Christ the hymn has just confessed.

The passage also contains the verse from which this volume takes its name. Christ in you, the hope of glory. The seven words are some of the most concentrated in the New Testament. They will repay slow attention. Around them Paul builds an account of the mystery that has been hidden for ages and generations and is now being made known through the apostolic proclamation. The Colossians, the church Paul has never visited, are part of how the ancient mystery is being revealed. Christ has come to dwell in them, and through them in the world. The verse the volume is named after is not the apostle’s pious wish; it is his statement of what God has actually done.

Filling Up What Is Lacking

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for you, and I fill up in my physical body—for the sake of his body, the church—what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ. (1:24)

The verse has been a problem text in the Church for centuries, and a moment is needed to set it on its feet before it can do its work. What is lacking in the sufferings of Christ. Read carelessly, the phrase can sound as though Paul is claiming that Christ’s atoning sufferings were somehow incomplete and that the apostle is making up the deficit. That cannot be Paul’s meaning, and the surrounding letter rules it out. The hymn the Colossians have just been given confessed Christ as the one in whom God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell and who has made peace through the blood of his cross. The cross is the finished work. Nothing is lacking in what Christ accomplished there. The Lutheran Confessions, especially Apology IV, are emphatic on this point. The satisfaction Christ made on the cross is total, perfect, and complete. No human suffering adds to it; no human suffering is needed to complete it. The blood of the cross is enough.

So what is Paul saying? The key is in distinguishing two senses in which the Scriptures speak of Christ’s sufferings. Paul’s word here is thlipseis, afflictions, pressures, the hardships of the road; it is not the word he uses for the atoning death itself. One sense is what Christ suffered in his own flesh on the cross: the atoning, sin-bearing, debt-canceling sufferings that the hymn just confessed. The other sense is what Christ continues to suffer through his body, the Church, as the gospel is carried through a hostile world. When Saul of Tarsus was struck to the ground on the Damascus road, the risen Christ asked him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? He meant: why are you persecuting my Church? The persecution of the Church is, in a real sense, the persecution of Christ himself. The afflictions of the Church are, in this sense, the ongoing afflictions of Christ. And the apostle, as one called to bear those afflictions on behalf of the Church, is filling up what is lacking in them. That is, he is bearing the share of those afflictions that has been allotted to him as an apostle, until the appointed measure of suffering is complete.

This reading fits Paul’s argument exactly. He is not saying his sufferings save anyone. He is saying his sufferings serve the Church. The atonement is complete in Christ; the mission is not yet complete in the Church. Until the gospel has reached every people and the appointed measure of apostolic and ecclesial suffering has been borne, the afflictions of Christ continue in his body. Paul, in his prison cell, is bearing his share. And he is rejoicing in it. Not because the sufferings are pleasant (Paul is not romantic about pain), but because they are serving the Church he loves. They are, in the language of vocation that Lutheran theology has prized, the priestly offering of an apostle to the God who called him.

There is comfort here for ordinary believers as well. The Christian who suffers in faithfulness to Christ, whether through illness borne with patience, through marginalization endured for the gospel’s sake, or through the daily costs of vocational faithfulness, is participating in what Paul names here. The afflictions are real. They serve the body. And the same Lord who suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, holds all of it in the providence of his ongoing mission. Suffering, in the Christian frame, is never wasted.

The Mystery Hidden, Now Revealed

I became a servant of the church according to the stewardship from God—given to me for you—in order to complete the word of God, that is, the mystery that has been kept hidden from ages and generations, but has now been revealed to his saints. (1:25–26)

Paul names his office. Servant: diakonos in Greek, the word that gives English deacon. The apostle is a servant. He is a servant of the church, holding an office that has been given to him according to the stewardship from God. The Greek word translated stewardship is oikonomia, literally the management of a household. Paul has been entrusted with a household management on behalf of God. The household is the Church. The management is the apostolic office. And the purpose of the management, Paul says, is to complete the word of God. Paul’s verb is plēroō, to fill, to bring to full measure. He does not mean that the word of God was deficient until he came along. He means that the word is brought to its full measure when it is fully proclaimed, carried to the Gentiles, and made known to all for whom it was always intended.

What is the word of God Paul is to bring to its full measure? He calls it the mystery that has been kept hidden from ages and generations, but has now been revealed to his saints. The word mystery (mystērion in Greek) does not mean what it tends to mean in English. In English, a mystery is a puzzle that has not yet been solved. In the New Testament, a mystery is something that has been kept hidden by God in the past but is now being made known in Christ. The mystery has not been left as a puzzle; it has been revealed. It is no longer secret. Anyone who has heard the apostolic preaching has heard the mystery.

The mystery has two dimensions in Paul. One is the content: what the mystery actually is. The other is the manner of its revelation: that it has been hidden until now and is now being made known. Both dimensions matter. The mystery is not new information added to what was known before; it is the unveiling of what was always God’s plan, now made plain. The Old Testament saints, as Paul had already argued in Romans (Romans 1:2; 4), knew the same gospel by promise that the Church now knows by fulfillment. But what was held in shadow and figure has now been made plain in the gospel. The God who hid the mystery is the same God who is now revealing it. The history of salvation has its hidden phase and its revealed phase, and Paul lives at the joint between them, in the apostolic generation that received the unveiling and is charged with making it known to the world.

This is not unimportant for Lutheran reading. The Confessions hold firmly that the gospel revealed in the New Testament is the same gospel that was promised in the Old. The two testaments are not two religions; they are two stages of one revelation. As Augustine put it, the New is in the Old concealed, the Old is in the New revealed (Questions on the Heptateuch 2.73). Paul is making this point at a stroke. The mystery has not been invented; it has been disclosed. And the disclosure has a name.

Christ in You, the Hope of Glory

God wanted to make known to them the glorious riches of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. (1:27)

The mystery has a name. It is Christ. And not just Christ in some abstract or distant sense, but Christ in you.

The seven words that give this volume its title deserve a slow walk. Christ in you. The preposition in is the same one the hymn used to confess that God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in the Son. Christ really dwells in the believer, by his Spirit and through his Word and sacraments. This is not a metaphor for moral influence. It is not a way of saying that the believer is trying to be like Christ. It is a statement that Christ himself is present in those who belong to him, in the new covenant that has been opened up at the cross. But the same little word does not name the same kind of dwelling. The indwelling of Christ in the believer is not the fullness dwelling in Christ. In Christ the fullness of deity dwells personally and bodily: God and man are one person, and the man Jesus is God. In believers God dwells by grace: he makes his home in them, but they do not become God, and they do not become Christ. The Formula of Concord draws this line with care (FC SD VIII). The saints are temples in which God lives; Christ is the one person in whom the fullness itself has taken flesh.

How does Christ come to be in the believer? Lutheran theology has been particularly careful here. The indwelling is not a mystical fusion in which the believer’s identity is dissolved into Christ’s. The indwelling is mediated, ordered, given through means. Christ comes to dwell in the believer through baptism, in which the believer is buried with Christ and raised with him. Christ comes to dwell in the believer through the Word, which the Spirit uses to create and sustain the faith that holds Christ. Christ comes to dwell in the believer through the Supper, in which his true body and blood are given for the strengthening of the faith that has him. The means do not reduce the indwelling; they are how the indwelling is given. The believer does not have to climb up to Christ; Christ has come down through his appointed means to be where his people are. One more guardrail belongs here. The indwelling Christ is not the believer’s righteousness before God. That was the error of Andreas Osiander, which the Formula of Concord rejected (FC III): the believer’s righteousness before God is Christ’s obedience, his doing and his dying, reckoned to him through faith. The indwelling follows justification and is its gift, not its basis.

The hope of glory. The indwelling Christ is, Paul says, the hope of glory. The Greek word translated hope is the same word the letter used in verse 5, where Paul spoke of the hope laid up for the Colossians in heaven. The hope is the confident expectation of a glory not yet seen. And the basis of the hope is the Christ who is present now, in the believer, by the Spirit. The glory has not yet been revealed; the Christ in whom the glory will be revealed has already been given. The believer who has Christ already has the down-payment, the firstfruits, the guarantee of the glory to come.

This is the verse from which this volume takes its name, and the reason should now be clear. The whole letter to the Colossians is a working out of this seven-word confession. The Christ-hymn names who this Christ is: the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation, the dwelling-place of the fullness, the maker of peace through the blood of his cross. The application to the Colossians shows that this Christ has reached them in their alienation and reconciled them. And the apostolic ministry Paul is now describing is the labor by which this Christ is being made known among the Gentiles. Christ in you, the hope of glory is the heart of the letter. Everything else circles around it.

We Proclaim Him

We proclaim him by instructing and teaching all people with all wisdom so that we may present every person mature in Christ. Toward this goal I also labor, struggling according to his power that powerfully works in me. (1:28–29)

The apostle now describes his work. We proclaim him. The object of the apostolic preaching is not a system of teachings, not a moral program, not a religious philosophy. It is a person. Him. The Christ confessed in the hymn, the Christ in whom the fullness dwells, the Christ who is in the believer as the hope of glory: him the apostle proclaims. The shape of apostolic preaching is the proclamation of a name.

The proclamation has two components, in Paul’s account. Instructing and teaching all people with all wisdom. The NET’s instructing is gentler than Paul’s word. Nouthetountes means to admonish, to warn, to put sense into someone by confronting him. The admonishing is the function of the law and of the prophetic word: the announcement to the alienated that they are alienated, the call to repentance, the unsettling of false security. The teaching is the function of the gospel: the laying out of what Christ has done, the explication of the mystery, the unfolding of the apostolic confession for those who have ears to hear. The two functions belong together. Lutheran preaching has historically been careful to keep both alive. The pure preaching of the gospel includes the proper preaching of the law. The hearer who is only warned but never taught is left in despair; the hearer who is only taught but never warned is left in presumption. Paul does both. So does the faithful pastor.

The purpose is so that we may present every person mature in Christ. The verb present is the same verb that appeared in verse 22, where Christ reconciled the Colossians to present you holy, without blemish, and blameless before him. The apostolic labor is in service of the final presentation. And the goal is maturity: teleios in Greek, complete, finished, brought to its proper end. The believer presented mature in Christ is the believer who has been brought all the way through the formation that Christ accomplishes through his Word and Spirit. The apostle is not satisfied with conversion; he labors for maturation. He wants the Colossians not merely to be in Christ at the beginning of their walking but to be brought through their walking to the end the Father intends for them.

Toward this goal I also labor. The verb is intense: kopiaō, to labor to the point of exhaustion. Struggling. The Greek is agōnizomai, from which English gets agonize: to struggle as a wrestler or a runner in the games. Paul’s apostolic labor is not gentle. It is exhausting. It is a contest. And yet the labor is not Paul’s own. According to his power that powerfully works in me. Paul’s Greek is literally “according to his energy that energizes in me” (energeia, energeō). The toiling and struggling are real, but the power that carries them is not Paul’s. It is Christ’s. Paul is exhausted, but the exhaustion is being held up by an energy that is not his own. The apostle’s labor is the apostle’s labor; the apostle’s strength is Christ’s strength. Both are true. Both are needed for a full account of how apostolic ministry actually goes.

How Great a Struggle

For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you, and for those in Laodicea, and for those who have not met me face to face. My goal is that their hearts, having been knit together in love, may be encouraged, and that they may have all the riches that assurance brings in their understanding of the knowledge of the mystery of God, namely, Christ. (2:1–2)

Paul names his struggle by name, and he names the people for whom he is struggling. The Colossians. The Laodiceans. Those who have not met me face to face. The apostolic concern reaches beyond Paul’s immediate circle of converts to include all the churches of the Lycus valley and beyond: the believers Paul has never met, who depend on the gospel that has been mediated to them through others. Paul prays for them. He struggles for them. The fact that he has not seen them does not diminish the apostolic burden he bears for them. He is responsible to Christ for the proclamation of the mystery, and the mystery reaches every place the gospel is preached.

What does Paul want for them? Three things, knit together. That their hearts … may be encouraged. The Greek word means to be strengthened, comforted, made firm, the same kind of work the Spirit does as Paraclete, the one called alongside. Having been knit together in love. The verb knit together (symbibazō) is the word Paul uses again in 2:19 for the body knit together through its ligaments and sinews. The believers are to be joined together in love as the members of one body are joined, so that they live and stand as one. That they may have all the riches that assurance brings in their understanding of the knowledge of the mystery of God, namely, Christ. The destination of Paul’s apostolic labor is full assurance: plērophoria, a heart filled to overflowing. He wants the Colossians to have full assurance of understanding, full knowledge of the mystery, full possession of the Christ who is the mystery.

This is what apostolic ministry is for. Not the production of religious feelings, not the maintenance of an institution, not even the moral improvement of the community. Apostolic ministry is for the bringing of believers into full assurance of the Christ who is the mystery: the same Christ confessed in the hymn, applied in verses 21 through 23, indwelling in verse 27. Everything Paul is doing is in service of this end. And the same end is the proper end of every pastor’s ministry today. The ordained servant of the Word is not primarily a religious manager or a spiritual coach; he is the ongoing extension of the apostolic labor that aimed at full assurance of the knowledge of Christ.

All the Treasures of Wisdom and Knowledge

In whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I say this so that no one will deceive you through arguments that sound reasonable. (2:3–4)

The argument now turns. Paul has spoken of his apostolic labor for the Colossians’ full assurance. He now names the threat against which he labors. There are teachers (Paul has not yet named them, but he is about to) who are promising the Colossians treasures of wisdom and knowledge that are to be found apart from Christ, or above Christ, or in addition to Christ. Paul cuts the ground out from under them with a single sentence. In Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

The word hidden is striking. It does not mean inaccessible. It means stored up, kept safe, deposited in the place where they belong. The treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ, meaning they are not available anywhere else. The Christian who wants wisdom goes to Christ. The Christian who wants knowledge goes to Christ. There is no other deposit, no separate treasury, no higher source. The Christ who is the image of the invisible God, in whom the fullness of deity dwells bodily, is the same Christ in whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden.

This is the answer to the proto-Gnostic teaching that seems to have been circulating at Colossae. The teachers were apparently promising special wisdom, hidden knowledge, esoteric insight available to initiates who had advanced beyond basic Christianity. Paul says: there is no advancing beyond Christ. There is no deeper layer of knowledge available to those who have left Christ behind. The treasures the teachers are promising are the treasures Christ has. Whoever has Christ has the treasures. Whoever does not have Christ does not have them, no matter how impressive the claimed gnosis may sound.

I say this so that no one will deceive you through arguments that sound reasonable. The Greek behind arguments that sound reasonable is pithanologia, a word that names persuasive speech designed to convince but not necessarily to inform truthfully. The teachers Paul has in mind are good talkers. Their arguments sound reasonable. Their rhetoric is polished. And it is exactly this polish that makes them dangerous. The Colossians, faced with these articulate teachers, might be tempted to think that the gospel they have received from Epaphras is too plain, too simple, too unsophisticated. The teachers’ arguments are dressed in the cultural prestige of philosophy and religious advancement. The apostolic gospel is dressed in the plain language of a Christ who died on a cross. The temptation will be to trade up.

Paul’s warning is direct. Do not trade. The plain Christ is the full Christ. The simple gospel is the deep gospel. The treasures of wisdom and knowledge that the eloquent teachers are promising elsewhere are already, all of them, hidden in the Christ you have received. Trading would be loss, not gain.

Though Absent in Body

For though I am absent from you in body, I am present with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your morale and the firmness of your faith in Christ. (2:5)

Paul closes the section on a personal note. He is absent in body; he is, after all, in prison far away. But he is present with you in spirit. The phrase is not a sentimental nicety. It names a real apostolic presence, the same presence Paul names in First Corinthians when he speaks of judging from a distance though absent in body. The apostle’s pastoral concern reaches across geography. The Colossians may not have seen him, but he is with them in the only way that ultimately matters: in spirit, in prayer, in the apostolic concern that holds them up before God.

Rejoicing to see your morale and the firmness of your faith in Christ. Even from prison, Paul has heard reports (through Epaphras most likely, perhaps through others as well), and the reports give him cause to rejoice. Your morale. The NET’s word is modern, but Paul’s is military. The Greek word is taxis, literally ordered ranks, the word for the disciplined arrangement of an army or a household. The Colossians are not in disarray; they have an ordered life as a congregation, the kind of structure that lets a church endure under pressure. The firmness of your faith in Christ. The Greek word is stereōma, suggesting something solid, immovable, firm. The Colossians’ faith has not collapsed under the pressure of the false teachers. It is holding. Paul, the apostle who has been struggling for them with all his energy, can rejoice that the labor is not in vain. The faith is firm. The ranks are in order. The same Christ who is in them as the hope of glory is holding them in his keeping.

This is a good word with which to close the section. The apostle has been describing his sufferings, his stewardship, his toiling and struggling, his concern for full assurance, his warnings against deceiving arguments. And yet the section does not end on anxiety. It ends on rejoicing. The Christ confessed in the hymn is doing his work. The Christ in the believer as the hope of glory is keeping his people. The apostolic labor is not the apostle’s grim duty; it is participation in what Christ is already doing through his Word and Spirit. Paul, in his chains, rejoices. So can we.

Gathering the Threads

The passage we have walked is a window onto the apostle at his work. Paul has spoken of his sufferings, which fill up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ for the sake of his body, the Church, not because Christ’s atoning work was incomplete but because the ongoing missionary suffering of the Church has its own appointed measure. He has named his office as a stewardship from God, an oikonomia given to him to bring the word of God to its full measure. He has named the content of his preaching as the mystery kept hidden from ages and generations but now revealed, the mystery whose name is Christ in you, the hope of glory. He has described his apostolic labor in terms of admonishing, teaching, and struggling, with the power of Christ powerfully working within him. He has named his goal as the full assurance of the knowledge of the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. He has warned against the arguments that sound reasonable, by which some would draw the Colossians away from this Christ. And he has closed with rejoicing at the firmness of their faith.

For the Lutheran reader, the passage is rich. The handling of apostolic suffering, as ministerial rather than satisfactional, is exactly the distinction the Confessions have insisted on against any Roman doctrine that would treat human suffering as adding to the work of Christ. The indwelling Christ as the hope of glory is the apostolic confession that undergirds the Lutheran teaching of the union with Christ given through baptism and sustained through the Word and the Supper. The naming of the apostolic office as a stewardship from God is the New Testament basis for the Lutheran teaching of the public ministry of the Word: the Predigtamt, the office of preaching to which the Church calls those whom Christ has gifted for the work. And the warning against arguments that sound reasonable but would lead the believer away from Christ is the perennial pastoral concern of every faithful ministry: that the gospel given in baptism not be displaced by something that calls itself deeper or higher or more spiritually advanced.

The session has been a self-portrait of the apostle at work. It has also been a confession of the Christ whose work the apostle serves. And it has given the volume its name. Christ in you, the hope of glory. The whole letter is a working out of this confession. The whole Christian life is a living out of it.

For Discussion

The following questions are for group discussion or personal reflection.

Paul says he rejoices in his sufferings for the sake of the Church. He does not say his sufferings save anyone; the atoning work of Christ is finished. How do you understand the kind of suffering Paul names here? Where in your own life have you suffered in a way that you believe served the Church?
The mystery that has been kept hidden from ages and generations, but has now been revealed. Paul speaks of the gospel as something that was held in secret in the Old Testament and unveiled in Christ. How does this shape your reading of the Old Testament? Where do you see Christ revealed in passages that may not name him directly?
Christ in you, the hope of glory. The verse the volume is named after speaks of a real indwelling of Christ in the believer. How does it shape your sense of yourself to know that Christ is genuinely present in you, not as an idea, but as the real Christ confessed in the hymn?
Paul names his apostolic preaching as both instructing (in Greek, admonishing and warning) and teaching. Where in your own listening to preaching have you experienced both? Which do you find easier to receive, and which is more difficult?
Paul warns against being deceived through arguments that sound reasonable. What kinds of reasonable-sounding arguments do you encounter in the surrounding culture, or in the religious environment, that would draw you away from the plain Christ of the gospel? What helps you hold firm?
Paul closes by rejoicing in the Colossians’ morale (their ordered ranks) and the firmness of your faith. What does it look like in your congregation, and in your own life, for the faith to be firm? Where is the firmness most tested?

Looking Ahead

Next session moves deeper into chapter two of Colossians, where Paul turns from the description of his apostolic labor to the heart of his warning against the false teachers at Colossae. The passage, Colossians 2:6–15, is one of the most theologically dense in the letter. Paul will name the believer’s union with Christ in baptism (a circumcision not performed by human hands, a burial and resurrection with Christ), the destroying of the certificate of indebtedness that stood against us, the disarming of the rulers and authorities, and the triumph of Christ over them by the cross. This is the great passage of Christian freedom, the freedom from human regulations and the freedom of the conscience under Christ.

Before next session, read Colossians 2:6–15 at least twice. The passage rewards slow reading. Pay particular attention to verse 9, in him all the fullness of deity lives in bodily form, which extends and deepens the claim of 1:19. Notice also the baptismal language of verses 11 through 13, which gives the New Testament basis of Lutheran sacramental theology in compact form. And notice the image at the end of the passage: Christ disarming the rulers and authorities and making a public disgrace of them, triumphing over them by the cross. This is the gospel as victory, told from the angle of the cosmic battle that has been won.

Closing Prayer

Lord Jesus Christ, the mystery kept hidden from ages and generations and now revealed in the gospel, we thank You that the apostles labored and struggled and suffered to make You known. By Your Spirit, dwell in us as the hope of glory. Knit our hearts together in love. Bring us to all the riches that assurance brings, to the knowledge of the mystery of God, which is You Yourself. In You are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge; keep us from being deceived by arguments that sound reasonable but would draw us elsewhere. Keep our ranks in order; make our faith firm; keep us in the company of Your apostles and Your saints. Through the same Lord Jesus Christ, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, to whom belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.