Christ’s work in individuals and the church

Christ’s work in us

15 Christ is the visible image of the invisible God.

He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation,

16 for through him God created everything

in the heavenly realms and on earth.

He made the things we can see

and the things we can’t see—

such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world.

Everything was created through him and for him.

17 He existed before anything else,

and he holds all creation together.

18 Christ is also the head of the church,

which is his body.

He is the beginning,

supreme over all who rise from the dead.

So he is first in everything.

19 For God in all his fullness

was pleased to live in Christ,

20 and through him God reconciled

everything to himself.

He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth

by means of Christ’s blood on the cross.

Col 1:15–20.

col 1:21 This includes you who were once far away from God. You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions.

Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters (Reconciled and Firm in Faith (Colossians 1:21–23))

The first thing Paul says is: not too long ago, you weren’t on the map at all! God’s great purposes for the world were going ahead, and you were outside in the cold! You were ‘separated, he says, or ‘estranged’. What does he mean?

Paul believes God’s purpose, is to reconcile all creation to himself,. But people living in Colossae, and most other places in the world, were Gentiles, worshipping idols rather than the one true God, ignorant both of God’s salvation and of how they could share in the benefits salvation.

Their lives reflected the gods they worshipped. Their thinking was distorted, getting muddled and into one misunderstanding after another. Their behaviour, was out of line with the wonderful, human existence that God designed for us. (Don’t be fooled with the idea that ‘sin’ or our wickedness’ means ‘having a good time, when God wants you to have a rotten time’. That’s a typical example of the muddled thinking that people get into when they ignore or forget the true God.)

col 1:22  Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault.

But now the Colossians find themselves inside. They are on the map, part of the action. Indeed, the very words ‘but now’—one of Paul’s favourite phrases—says it all. Once you were … outside, sinful; but now God has acted, and everything is different. And being brought ‘inside’, being put on the map, has the delight and privilege of being brought into the very presence of God himself.

What we should think about instead is a royal palace, or perhaps a temple, The Colossians—and all of us who have come to faith —are like people who had been on the street outside the royal palace, and who have suddenly been told they are invited in to appear before the king. Or, if you prefer, they are like people who have been outside the Temple: they were impure, unfit to appear in the presence of the God. Now, , they are told they are summoned in, indeed, welcomed in. How has this happened? How can they come in without something happening to them?

What happened to make them ready for the king, God, is the death of King Jesus. Paul doesn’t here explain in detail how Jesus’ death achieves this, but he declares that through it we have ‘reconciliation’.

We know about ‘reconciliation’ as something really great that can happen when two family members who squabbled for years , and haven’t spoken since, are brought together, and put the past behind them. Or perhaps it’s something we long for when two countries, are brought to peace after a time of war.

it’s like that between humans and God, only more so. It is as though all the anger and all the hostility, that was keeping humans and God shut off from each other was paid for on the cross. That’s how Paul puts it in Ephesians 2:16, According to the poem of verses 15–20, Jesus was and is the place where God and humanity meet. Now we see the result; , and we were reconciled. Now, astonishingly, we are free to approach the living and holy God without a stain on our character. That is the heart of Paul’s gospel.

col 1:23 But you must continue to believe this truth and stand firmly in it. Don’t drift away from the assurance you received when you heard the Good News. The Good News has been preached all over the world, and I, Paul, have been appointed as God’s servant to proclaim it.

Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters (Reconciled and Firm in Faith (Colossians 1:21–23))

But the effects of the gospel don’t happen automatically. Christians, who have come into relatiopnship with Jesus, can’t simply sit back and do nothing. They must press on’; they must now take responsibility for their growth to maturity in faith. Like a house being built up brick by brick, Christians must develop their life of faith, hope and love (col 1:4–5) on this foundation and not somewhere else. Becoming a Christian can’t be a one-off experience which then remains just as a memory of a wonderful moment. It must be something which continues day by day.

Without that ‘pressing on’, the salvation experience may fade. You may start to question whether it was ‘real’ or not in the first place. But if you ‘continue’ you will know it is, because as the building grows and takes shape it will show by its stability that the foundations are indeed there, and are solid.

The foundation is the gospel itself (col 1:5-6), the good news of King Jesus. And here Paul says an extraordinary thing about this gospel. It was announced, not just to a few men, women and children in a few small parts of the Mediterranean world—but to ‘every creature under heaven’. What can he mean?

He can only mean that when Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead, as king and Lord of the world, a kind of spiritual shock wave ran right through the entire cosmos. This was a new kind of event. Nobody had ever gone down into death before and come up the other side. God’s new creation had begun: Jesus is, as the poem had said , the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, and now he is bringing to birth the reconciliation and renewal of all things in heaven and on earth. When somebody hears the message and believes it, what is happening is that the new creation, which has already come into existence and already claims the entire cosmos, is becoming real and actual in another specific instance.

This gives Paul a map, on which he can see the words ‘You Are Here’. His work is not a struggling attempt to convince a few more people to believe an unlikely story, He delivers the message—the message which declares that new creation has come into being and that you are invited to share in it. This gospel is for the individual—you, me, and every man, woman and child; not despite the fact that it’s about the renewal of the whole world, but because of it.

col 1:24 I am glad when I suffer for you in my body, for I am participating in the sufferings of Christ that continue for his body, the church.

col 1:25 God has given me the responsibility of serving his church by proclaiming his entire message to you.

col 1:26 This word declares the mystery that was kept secret from past ages and generations, but now has been unveiled to God’s holy people. col1:27 God’s intention was to make known to them just what rich glory this mystery contains, out there among the nations. And this is the key: the king, living within you as the hope of glory!

28 He is the one we are proclaiming. We are instructing everybody and teaching everybody in every kind of wisdom, so that we can present everybody grown up, complete, in the king. 29 That’s what I am working for, struggling with all his energy which is powerfully at work within me.

Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters (The King, Living within You (Colossians 1:24–29))

If trees could talk, imagine the sort of conversation that might go on.

Here is an old, weathered and seasoned oak tree, talking to the small sapling that’s just started to grow up nearby.

‘Soon it will be autumn, and the winds will start to blow hard and cold. But you’ll be safe. I’ll take care of you. The wind can do its worst to me. I don’t mind if I have to lose a few branches here and there in the process. What matters is that while you’re young and weak I should take the full force of the wintry wind on myself, and let you grow in safety’.

That’s something like what Paul is saying to the young church in verse 24. how can Paul’s sufferings be for the benefit of the young church? It seems as though he is drawing the enemy fire; as long as he stays in prison, those who are opposed to the gospel imagine they have contained it. In giving Paul a bad time, they are not bothering about the young Christians who are growing up around him, in Ephesus and Colossae, and in the outlying towns and villages.

But Paul develops this already rather strange idea a stage further. He says that in his sufferings he is completing ‘what remains of the king’s afflictions’. Here the image of trees sheltering one another won’t take us quite far enough. We need to examine the ‘royal’ theme, the idea of the king and his people.

Near the heart of Paul’s vision of reality, we find a sense of identification between the king, Jesus the Messiah, and his people. This underlies the present passage, much of the rest of the letter, and a good deal in his other letters as well.

Most human illustrations break down at this point, but we can get some idea of what Paul means through pictures we are familiar with. When an ambassador goes to a foreign court to represent a king or president, it is as though the king or president had paid the visit in person. In some societies, if someone wrongs or harms a person, it is regarded as though they had committed the offence against the whole family. When the head of a large company or organization makes a public statement, we don’t treat it as a mere private opinion, but as the view of the whole organization in question. None of these is exactly the same as what Paul has in mind, but they are signposts pointing in the right direction.

For Paul, part of the meaning of Jesus’ messiahship is that the Messiah represents all his people, so that what is true of him becomes true of them. This is what he has in mind when he talks about people being ‘in’ the Messiah, ‘in’ the king. Though he never loses sight of Jesus of Nazareth as a specific individual, whose individual death and resurrection were the turning point of all history, the reason why they formed that turning point is precisely that, because he was and is Israel’s Messiah, when he died and rose his people died and rose with him. This is central to what he will go on to say in chapters 2 and 3.

In our present passage, this identification of the Messiah and his people takes three forms, one in each paragraph.

First, in verses 24 and 25, Paul sees his own sufferings as ‘the king’s afflictions’. He is drawing on an ancient Jewish belief according to which a time of great suffering darkness through which world must pass to reach the age to come. This suffering would be the prelude to the age of the Messiah, the age of the king. For Paul, the Messiah himself had already passed through the suffering, and had brought the age to come into being. But because this new age is still struggling in tension with the ‘present age’, there is still suffering to be undergone. This is not to be seen as an addition to the king’s own suffering; rather, it is to be seen as an extension of it. Paul is thus content to take his share of suffering, in prison for the sake of the gospel. It will help to complete the afflictions through which the new age will emerge in its full and final form. And at the moment—as with the old tree and the saplings—it will shelter the young church from the wintry winds of persecution. It will draw off the enemy fire.

This isn’t just about going through dark times and eventually hoping to come out somewhere. The hope Paul wants the Colossians to share is much more specific than that. God’s plan for the the whole world has now come to light in the news about the king. Paul is eager, to bring as many people as possible to share its benefits. If in the death and resurrection of Jesus has already brought the new age into being, his own risen life is the source of the church’s hope.

Every individual Christian, in fact, has this hope within his or her own self. The reason is simple: Jesus the Messiah, the king, lives by his spirit within each one. He has already entered into the new state of ‘glory’, God’s full intention for his human creatures. Because his own life is given to all his people, they can be confident in their hope of sharing this glory as well.

col 1:28 So we tell others about Christ, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all the wisdom God has given us. We want to present them to God, perfect in their relationship to Christ.

col 1:29 That’s why I work and struggle so hard, depending on Christ’s mighty power that works within me.

Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters (The King, Living within You (Colossians 1:24–29))

That’s why Paul can’t stop talking about King Jesus. The church in Colossae has never met Paul, but he says in verses 28–29 that if they want to know what he spends most of his time doing, it is this: he announces Jesus as king and Lord. And he does it with the aim of equipping people to mature Christian living Christ.

It is possible to be ‘in Christ’ and be immature, not understanding not grasping the responsibilities set before us. The road to maturity is through teaching and walking in the presence of God. What you need for that is Bible teachers and the life-giving power of the Holy Spirit. Great demands will be made on them. But the energy which Jesus inspires within them is always more than equal to the task.