“CHRIST IN YOU” Col. 1:24–27 (Part 3)

The verses we are going to look at this morning are pregnant with meaning, importance, and soul-nourishing truth. Verses 25-27 cover the whole gamut of redemptive history, a term that we use to describe history recorded for us in the sacred Scriptures.

They address how our brothers and sisters in the Old Testament period were saved, the blessings of the New Covenant or Covenant of Grace, and the astounding reality of our union with Christ. I also hope to teach a way of reading Scripture that aids you in your own study of God’s Word.

It also conveys to us, through the ministry and stewardship of Paul the importance we have in preaching the Gospel.

IV. UNION WITH CHRIST AND OUR SALVATION

When I use the term our I am referring to all of God’s people throughout all time. One of the important points of our faith is that salvation is by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. But what about Old Testament believers? How were they saved?

A. UNION WITH CHRIST AND SACRED SCRIPTURE- 25

Paul was privileged to be a preacher of the Gospel. The Apostle of Grace always kept in mind that wonderful privilege, counting it a joy to simply know Christ and make Him known, despite the suffering Paul endured.

This is a fantastic reminder of our salvation by God’s grace. We are not saved because of anything we do, or are, but because God condescended to us and saved us.

But I want to focus on our union with Christ and sacred Scripture. Paul writes, “so that I might fully carry out the preaching of the Word of God.”

This phrase is translated in several ways.

NIV, “to present to you the word of God in its fullness”

ESV, “to make the word of God fully known”

NKJV, “to fulfill the Word of God”

These renderings may sound strange, as if Paul is saying the Word of God was lacking in the Old Testament. But that is not what he is saying.

Paul is teaching something remarkable about Scripture: it is progressively given by God to His people to accomplish His plan of redemption through Jesus Christ.

That is, Scripture moves linearly, from one point in history to another. Adam comes first, and then through his descendants Noah appears. David and his lineage must come before Christ is incarnated.

I could offer a few examples, but this is an important part of Scripture that too often we either take for granted or simply do not know.

Like a good story, the Bible moves from the beginning to the end, with all sorts of wonderful, Christ-exalting details in between. It is not that the Old Testament was lacking, or imperfect. It simply was incomplete.

For those of you who like the Lord of the Rings, it would be like having the Fellowship of the Ring and Two Towers but not having The Return of the King.

There is nothing imperfect about the first two (technically speaking four) books of the Lord of the Rings, but without the last one it is incomplete.

In a similar way, if we simply had the records of our creation and fall and knowledge that we needed redemption, it would be incomplete. The truths the Old Testament saints had was good and true and conveyed the Gospel, even though it was shadowy, to use Paul’s language, the New Testament completes it!

Augustine helpfully writes it like this,

“In the Old Testament the New is concealed, in the New the Old is revealed” –St. Augustine

Paul is chosen by God to complete, make full, or fill out the details that were present but not evident in the Old Testament. Christ was present in Genesis 3:15 but not clearly. He was evident in the sacrifices of the Mosaic Covenant, that covenant God made with Israel, but He was hidden.

This is the point Peter makes in 1 Peter 1:10–12

1 Peter 1:10–12 NASB95

10 As to this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you made careful searches and inquiries, 11 seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as He predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow. 12 It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves, but you, in these things which now have been announced to you through those who preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven—things into which angels long to look.

Our union with Christ helps us understand sacred Scripture and salvation. Old Testament saints were saved by faith, just as we are, yet their faith was in the promise of redemption, ours in the fulfillment (i.e., Christ).

“Salvation [Redemptive] history is an expression used to summarize all of biblical revelation, culminating in the central saving event of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection.” Robert L. Plummer, 40 Questions About Interpreting the Bible 2nd Edition, 171

*MAKE NOTE ABOUT CLASS BY ROD AND BOBBY

B. UNION WITH CHRIST AND MISSIONS- 25-27

This union with Christ is what motivates our missions, local and international. Paul was chosen by God to preach the completion of the Scriptures, this wonderful plan of redemption promised in the Old Testament and fulfilled in the New Testament.

He says, “that I might fully carry out the preaching of the Word of God.” That “God willed to make known what is the riches of glory of this mystery.” God has a chosen people that He will redeem, and His method of redeeming them is through His saved people. That is why we go and preach and help support others. He says as much in 2 Timothy 2:10 “10 Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.”

I find John Piper’s words helpful here. He writes,

“Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t. Worship, therefore, is the fuel and goal in missions.” John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad! The Supremacy of God in Missions, 11

In other words, it is our privilege and responsibility to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ, this good news about union with Christ, to others.

Christ has a people He will save all over the world, both here and beyond. Our privilege is to, through our union with Christ, share the Good News of Jesus Christ that Christ came to suffer and die for sinners, and that when God saves them they are born again!

This can only happen when you are united to Christ. Adoniram Judson was a missionary from the United States to Burma. His wife, Anne (or Nancy) wrote about her departure from the US in 1812.

“Still my heart bleeds. O America, my native land, must I leave thee? Must I leave thee, Bradford, my dear native town, where I spent the pleasant years of childhood; where I learned to lisp the name of my mother;…where I learnt the endearments of friendship, and tasted all the happiness this world can afford; where I learnt also to value a Savior’s blood, and to count all things but loss, in comparison with the knowledge of him?…Farewell, happy, happy scenes, —but never no, never to be forgotten.” Ann (Nancy) Judson on her departure to India from the US

After struggling to learn a new language, culture, and to deal with the hardships of life in India, they labored for six years before seeing their first convert. Six years of language and culture learning, laboring in the Word to people hostile or indifferent to the Gospel, before Maung Nau was saved.

Listen to Adoniram’s journal entry, and feel the weight of his union with Christ,

“I begin to think that the Grace of God has reached his heart. He expressed sentiments of repentance for his sins, and faith in the Savior. The substance of his profession is, that from the darknesses, and uncleanesses, and sins of his whole life, he had found no other Savior but Jesus Christ; nowhere else can he look for salvation; and therefore he proposes to adhere to Christ, and worship him all his life long.

It seems almost too much to believe that God has begun to manifest his grace to the Burmans; but this day I could not resist the delightful conviction that this is really the case. PRAISE AND GLORY BE TO HIS NAME FOREVERMORE. Amen.” Adoniram Judson, Journal

Union with Christ sustains missions. But it also hints at the hope of glory.

C. UNION WITH CHRIST AND THE HOPE OF GLORY

The substance of this mystery, Paul tells us, is “the riches of the glory…which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

We have a foretaste of the glories of heaven, of the completion of our union with Christ, which we call the beatific vision.

Samuel Parkinson’s helpfully frames what this means,

“What makes heaven, heaven is that there we shall see the face of God. That blessed vision is the culmination of all our godly enjoyments in this life and the satiation of all our desire.” Samuel Parkinson, To Gaze Upon God, 1

Christ in you. Or, to put it like the apostle John, Revelation 22:3–4 “3 No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. 4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.”

When Jesus is first, your savoring, suffering, and serving all change, as we see our union with Christ displayed in the sacred Scriptures, calling us to missions, and reminding us of the hope of glory.

Why is this the case? Because we have been saved by God’s grace for His glory and our good, which culminates into the forever blessedness of union with Christ in which we behold God in all His beauty, increasing in delights and joys for ever and ever.