You pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?
Is there anything here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink. Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together, as we learn how to explore it on our own, as we ask God to meet us there in its pages.
Welcome to More Than Ink. Oh, mysteries. Do you like mysteries? I do like mysteries, but I confess, sometimes I look at the last page first so I know where it's going.
I know heaven not on ties before we get there. And you find out the answer? Well, today Paul is going to show us a mystery, and you know what he's going to do for us? He's going to give us the answer.
Absolutely. And we'll look at the answer to that mystery today on More Than Ink. Well, good morning and welcome. This is More Than Ink, otherwise known as the Catlins dining room table.
Dining room table chat time. And we are here this morning, like we are every Saturday morning, to talk about the Word of God. And we have been reading through the letter, Paul, to the Colossians. So last week we were talking about the preeminence of Christ, how he is first in all things.
First in importance, first in power, first in eternity, first over all things. Well, and even in Paul's little letter to Colossae, it's the first thing he talks about. Well, yeah, after he prays, he jumps right into this.
Pray and let's talk about the firstness of Jesus. But even in the midst of that, you know, in verse 19 and 20, he says, The fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things. So today we get into the specifics of that reconciling action, not in terms of the whole universe, but even in terms of just us. Yeah. Reconciling us. He's really just amplifying the idea that he had just spoken about.
Reconciling all things, making peace through the blood of his cross. Right. So now in verse 21, he's going to start talking about us. Right. Who we were. Right. We are the reconciled ones.
That's right. One of the many reconciled ones. So if you're following with us, we're in chapter one of Colossians, and we're jumping in at 21. And the focus is now on us, those who were alienated, that he has now reconciled. So let's see what he's done for us. How preeminent is Christ? Well, this is how preeminent is. Well, okay.
So he says in verse 21, And you who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister. Well, that's a long sentence. Those were a lot of words. But this is where the rubber meets the road.
This is where you get traction. When we talk about the preeminence of Jesus, it sounds like just theory, you know, like he's preeminent over the universe. But no, guess what the effects were to you. He has reconciled you. So let's look at ourselves for a moment and see what condition we were in before Christ came on our behalf. And this figures actually a lot in Paul's other writings. You can read really in much more detail in Romans, especially Romans 5, about what our condition was and who we now are. But these three things, alienated and hostile in mind and doing evil deeds. That's us.
Yeah, I don't like to think that I'm on that list, right? But if you were alienated, you are facing away from somebody. You are estranged, right? And in fact, that alienated word was used a lot in slave owner to be transferred to another owner. So you were in one place and were moved to someone else.
You were alienated from God who was your first owner. Yeah. And hostile in mind, right? That means hateful, hatefully opposing in our minds. Yeah, yeah. And the effect of that in our lives is to do evil deeds, do things that are exactly the opposite of the goodness of God. Yeah.
Wow. Yeah, and a lot of people will say hostile in mind. Well, you know, before I came to Jesus, I don't remember being very hateful toward God. Is that what this is talking about, hostile in mind? But it is hostile in mind when you think about the fact that God is the sovereign creator.
We were made, we were created, and then we just went off and did our own little independent rebellious, do our own things. That's the hostility. The hostility is talking about isn't standing outside and shaking your fist and looking up at the sky at God.
It's actually about disregarding God altogether. Right. That's the hostile in mind.
Right. And being consumed with yourself rather than consumed with your creator. Well, and Paul says in Romans 5 that while we were sinners, while we were his enemies, while we were actively in opposition to God. In verse 5, 10 of Romans, he says, well, we were enemies. We were reconciled to God through the death of his son. So that's the same thing he's saying here.
Reconciled, put back into relationship with his son by the death of Jesus. Yeah. And when it says doing evil deeds, again, a lot of people say, I was a nice person before Jesus. I wasn't doing bad stuff. But when we talk about this, you need to consider the fact that when you act on your own self-interest, your own selfishness, you often do things, when I say almost all the time, do things selfishly that ends up hurting other people. That's the evil part of it. That's the evil deeds. And so you are actually hurting the people that God loves as well as distancing yourself from God himself based on what you do. So that's the evil deeds, that you really have no choice before Christ to do good deeds because Jesus says there's only one who's good and that's God himself. So without God, everything you do is selfishly oriented and is centered on you. Yeah, that's really the heart of it, that our minds, our hearts are darkened so we're completely focused on ourselves, which is the opposite of God who is other oriented, other loving, self-giving. Right. So that's a description of us before Jesus.
We are alienated, we've been transferred to another owner, we are hostile in mind and we're doing bad things all the time. But he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death for this purpose, to present us holy and blameless and above reproach before him. So him in view there is God, right, before God. What a big change around that is. Oh my goodness.
What a contrast it was to our life before, right? And he just says it. He's reconciled us in his body. Reconciled means to put back together two that are separated.
Face to face as opposed to face apart. Right. So because of our previous life, we were separated from God because of what we were doing and now that has been fixed and not because we did a whole bunch of good stuff, but because God did this for us in the body, in the flesh of Christ himself. So it's interesting that the first thing he says of this presentation is that we were separated from God, but now we're presented holy, set apart to God.
Set apart to God, right. And instead of evil deeds, now we're blameless. And above reproach, that means no one can wag their finger at us and say, you know, you dirt bag, basically.
We're above that reproach. So I love this word blameless to be nothing in us that marks us as disqualified. Right, right. That is nobody can point a finger and say, oh, but you, right? Right, right. God doesn't point a finger. I mean, it's all from God's point of view. Yeah, yeah. Because all of that blame, all of that shame, all of that sin was taken upon Jesus at the cross. Yeah, yeah.
And I might, I'll say the obvious. I'll say this many times in Colossians, but our life before in verse 21 was characterized by evil deeds, things we do. In verse 22, the correction to that has nothing to do with what we do.
What we do, yeah. It has everything to do with what Christ has done for us. So it's our bad deeds versus Christ's holy deeds on our behalf. And Paul will say this over and over again. So every time we say it, I'll say it again. It's all about what Christ does.
This is not a list of things that we need to do to improve ourselves for self-improvement. This is what Christ has done for us, even while we were yet sinning. That's the amazing thing right now.
In 21, that's someone I really would not want to be with. Well, we don't like to think that we were that. That's right. And in 22, he has fixed the separation between us and God. He's reconciled us through what Christ has done. Okay, but the sentence goes on, right? Because there's a really important condition here. That verse 23 begins with an if, right? Because he said, all these things are true of you if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard.
Okay, so that brings up two questions in my mind. What is the hope of the gospel? And what does it mean to continue in the faith?
Because those are the conditions for being presented before God holy and blameless in Christ. So, you know, Paul has already mentioned hope a couple of times in this letter, right? So hope is that concrete expectation that God will do what he said he will do, right? God's promises are true, you can count on. This is not a vague wishful thinking.
You have a good future based on his promises. Right, so not shifting away from that hope, but continuing in the faith. Well, if you are continuing, you are enduring. You are going onward, foot after foot, forward. Keep on believing that what God has said is true.
Stable and steadfast and not shifting away from what you've learned. Yeah, and I've always simplified faith to say it's a confident expectation of what God will do based on his character. He loves you, so are you continuing on like the day you came to Christ where you said, you know, I place myself in a confident expectation of your loving kindness toward me?
And do you live like that every day then? Is your, you know, Paul says, I've been crucified with Christ and it's no longer where I live, but Christ lives in me and the life that I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God. Okay, so the only thing I would add to your definition of faith is that it is a life-altering condition of mind and heart. It affects the way we live because it is this settled confidence in invisible reality of what God has said and who God is. We can't necessarily see that with our physical eyes, but we understand it from what God has said and done. Right, and you know, it's important too because a lot of people think that giving your life to Jesus is all about signing the bottom line of your fire insurance policy and then you go on and live life the normal way.
He's saying right here, that's not the way it works. I mean, you're changed from the moment you come to him and every moment in life after that has been changed with the knowledge of that truth. So it's an active day-by-day vital kind of way to live. It's not just, gee, I think I'm going to heaven now so I can live any way I want. Well, and faith, as Paul says in another place, we live by faith, not by sight. We walk by faith, not by sight. It has to do with being able to fix our focus on the reality that's beyond the current present difficulty. We fix our focus, as Hebrews 11 says, on the unseen reality of God at work, the things that are more real than what's concrete here. Right, which results in the end in hope. We have an expectation of a good end because of his love for us. Well, we should push on. I mean, this is dead stuff, but this is all just great truth all clustered together in short sentences. Where do we finish?
Well, let's see. We ran all the way to where Paul talks about becoming a minister of the gospel, right? Becoming a servant of the gospel. That was Paul's call. And he's going to continue to talk about that in the next paragraph.
Yeah, in 24. So he's going to talk about what it means to be a minister, what he experienced on their behalf. Okay. So he says, Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is the church, of which I became a minister, according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known.
Oh my gosh, the mystery hidden for ages and generations, but now revealed to his saints. Okay, we have to stop there. That's a big long sentence. I actually wanted to stop a few words back.
Because the whole idea Paul says, Now because of this hope, because of the faith, because of what God has called me to do, now I can rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, because somehow in my flesh I am participating in the afflictions of Christ for the sake of the church. Right. Wow. He's saying it's worth it. And it's not worth it to make me a better person. Right.
It's worth it because of the benefit to you. And that's important here, because many times we think of these monastic religious ascetics who sit up on the hill and they torture themselves by not eating and stuff like that. Yeah. And it's making them better in self-improvement. Paul's saying I'm suffering, but not for my benefit, but for your benefit.
Right. See where God has brought you because of that? So he's writing from a jail.
He's writing from a Roman jail. That's part of the sufferings he's talking about. In a sense he's saying I'm suffering what if Christ was here in my shoes would be suffering as well, because this is important for him. And he is indeed doing it through Christ. That's the whole thing.
But suffering in order to bring the truth of the gospel to people who desperately need to hear it, who are dying in their sin. Right. And that's worth it, Paul says. That's worth it to me.
Yeah. And actually Paul wrote to the Philippians, I think from that same jail, right? I'm stuck here and for me to live is Christ and to die is gain.
And I don't know which to choose, but I realize now that my staying here has benefit for you. So that's in Philippians 1 about 1920. Right. And it's worth going and reading that in parallel to this, because he describes being in prison, thinking he's going to die, but not sure he's going to die, but willing, worthwhile either way, because the word of God is being preached and people are coming to faith. Well, yeah. And in this particular case is the logistics. Paul's in a jail.
And in a way he would say to himself, getting thrown in jail, well, this is really going to slow down the ministry. Right. Right.
Yeah. This is going to get in the way. But in real point of fact, which we'll find in a second, it looks like Paul was never in Colossae. So to their benefit, he's in jail. So in a real sense, he's saying, it's a good thing I'm suffering this or you would be reading this letter right now. Well, you know, I've thought about that because Paul did so much of his writing when he was in prison, some of the really important letters that I wonder if part of God's purpose in locking him up was to make him hold still so he would write.
Slow down and write. Yeah, I think so. It had nothing to do in there except pray and write letters. Yeah, yeah, I think so. This might've been the only contact he'd have with the Colossian church.
He might never have physically gone there, but now he does have contact because he's sitting in a jail. But this is the second time now that he's mentioned that God has given him this stewardship, right? A stewardship, yeah, right. That God has entrusted to him a servanthood to make the word of God fully known. Yeah, and that stewardship is a pretty sobering phrase. It means you're given something that's not yours, but you have to invest it well for someone else's benefit.
Right, take care of it for somebody else. So the riches he's talking about that he has to invest is God's word itself, this word of God made fully known. And Paul says, that's what I'm stewarded with. That's what I have to be so careful about making clear to you.
So it's amazing now that he's gonna begin to talk about this very dense reality, the mystery that's hidden for ages. In 26? Yeah, I wanna kinda stop short before that so that I could've read from 26 through 29 altogether. Okay, okay. So let's read, starting at 26. Can I read it?
Yeah, please. Let's just get this mystery in front of us. Yeah, to make the word of God fully known. 26, the mystery hidden for ages and generations, but now revealed to his saints. To them, God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we proclaim, warning everyone, teaching everyone with all wisdom that we may present to everyone mature in Christ.
And for this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me. The mystery, so is this like a murder mystery? Well, that's the interesting thing, right? A mystery in the scriptures is just something that's not made fully revealed yet, right? It's covered, it's present. It's kind of like that game used to play as a child when you put a bunch of objects on a table and you cover them with a towel. You cover them up and then uncover them.
You open and let them look for 10 seconds and then you close it up and then say, now what did you see, right? So we know there's shapes under the towel and we can kind of tell what they are, but they're not fully revealed yet. But God says he's gonna make it fully known in Christ. Yeah, so this is not like a riddle mystery.
This is like you got all the pieces you need to put together. This is more like, this is something where the knowledge is made known through revelation. It wasn't revealed before, now it's revealed. Okay, because God has revealed it. So God is in the picture here.
It's not just because woof, I had this great idea and I'm thinking of it as a revelation. Exactly, exactly. And it made me think in Ephesians 3, three, he says, how the mystery was made known to me by revelation. Right. So a mystery in the Bible is something that is not fully revealed, but now it is.
Yes. So he's saying, look, now it's revealed what's going. This has been hidden for ages and now it's revealed to his saints.
And what is the nature of it? He says in 27, God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles. Gentiles, not just the Jews. The Gentiles, the riches of the glory of this ministry and that's Christ in you. Mystery. Mystery, yeah, Christ in you. So I mean, that's the amazing thing. You really don't find that too well understood in the Old Testament.
It's there slightly, but now he's saying, well, it's fully revealed now. Christ in you. Christ in you and we're not just talking Jews.
We're talking Gentiles as well. That's the incredible thing. And everyone knew the Messiah was coming, Christ. But Christ coming and living in you?
Well, that is the amazing thing, right? If you remember when we did John, Jesus said at that last dinner, in that day when the Holy Spirit comes, you'll know that I'm in my Father and you're in me and I am in you. The only way Christ can be in us is by means of this indwelling Holy Spirit that he sent to us. But this phrase, Christ in you, this mystery that God's now fully uncovered, Christ in you, oh, friends, if you listen to this, take your concordance and look for that phrase, Christ in you or you in Christ or the conjunction of those two words, Christ and in, in Christ. Because in the New Testament, you will find it more than 500 times.
It is astonishing. That is used more often, I think, to describe our condition as saved people more than any other term in the New Testament, at least according to my own studies. Yeah, and think about what a radical change that is from standard religions. Standard religion, and I'll call that false religion, actually says, here's a list of things you need to do and you'll make some divine being happy with you. And the more you do the good stuff, the better chances you are of going to heaven.
So you gotta do this list. And a lot of people see the Bible as being just that very thing. And yet here he's saying, no, the mystery which is now revealed is the fact it's not you trying to work really hard to get to heaven. The mystery is actually Christ himself who died on your behalf to reconcile you to God is now in you. I mean, he's in you.
Empowering you to live. And this is remarkably different from any other religion I know of. There's nothing I know of where Buddha is in you or Confucius is in you. I don't know if there's any other religion that teaches that. No, this is just a remarkable truth and that's why you can almost hear his voice bubbling with excitement about, here's the mystery, Christ in you. And we're talking Gentiles as well as Jews. This is a remarkable new thing that was not well known before. Well, I'm glad you said a new thing but it was hinted at in the Old Testament because this is really the heart of the new covenant that Jeremiah talked about.
I'm gonna write my law on their hearts, right? And in Paul's letter of 2 Corinthians, he kind of unpacks that a little bit when he says in chapter three verses four, five, and six, this is the confidence we have through Christ toward God. Not that we're adequate of ourselves or consider anything as coming from ourselves but our adequacy is from God who has made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, a new arrangement, a new way, not of the letter but of the Spirit, for the letter kills but the Spirit gives life. So it is the Holy Spirit within us that brings about this powerful energy that Paul's gonna talk about in a minute to actually do something. Yeah, yeah. And if you were gonna capsuleize what the new covenant is, there's a lot of aspects to it but you can capture most of it by just saying here is life with God, with God in you, with Christ in you, within you. That's the biggest contrast because the old covenant was all external. Exactly.
Written on stone, here it is, do it, sprinkle the blood on the thing. Right, right. Whereas now we have the life of God in us, written in our hearts, on a living heart, not a cold stone. Yeah, and I might add too when he puts that phrase the hope of glory, glory is kind of a catchphrase for meaning being with Christ, after you die and in heaven and stuff like that. So glory is that time. So if you wanna have a hope, that is good news of an expectation that you'll live forever with Christ, this is it, is the fact that he's in you. That's the hope of glory. It's not about glorifying you, it's the hope of being there when the glorifying of Christ happens. And the full recognition of that because this term glory carries with it that idea of recognizing something for its essential reality of what it is. So we will be, and John says actually in his letters, we'll see him like he is, and we'll be known, we'll know him as we are fully known.
Right, when he's glorified. And Paul says that's what I struggle for in this ministry, to present everyone mature in Christ, right? What's maturity? Fully grown. Full, right. Grown up to all that you were intended to be.
Arrived, complete, yeah, yeah. And it's interesting too in 2080s as he warns everyone, teaches everyone, he's implying Jews and Gentiles both right there, but anyone, men and women, slaves and free, anyone, this is an anyone proposition. This message is for everyone. For the great and the small alike and he's teaching them with all wisdom that they might present everyone mature. So that's his excitement, so this is why I spend my time doing what I do, he says, because Christ in you, the hope of glory, that's a great piece of good news and that's why I get so excited about talking about it, he says.
Well, and then he uses himself as an example. He says, for this I toil, right? I agonize, struggling with all his energy. This is verse 29. So that word, his energy, that word in the New Testament is only used for a power that's not human, it's beyond human, struggling with his energy that he powerfully works, that's the operative, active thing within me. So Paul says, I am laboring and it's agonizing labor but it's because of the power of God in me through this indwelling Holy Spirit. Yeah, it's fascinating, we like to put Paul on a pedestal, think of him as kind of a very capable man, capable speaker or something, but he's saying right here, he's struggling, that's an athletic word by the way, he's struggling with God's energy and not his own gifts.
God is working through him and in him and it powerfully works within him as he shares the gospel in the places he goes. Christ in you, that's the new word, that's the new covenant. Oh my goodness. Well, we're running short on time again. Oh, we are. We got to the end of chapter one.
We did, we did. I just like to camp on this whole idea of Christ in you. Yeah, it's a remarkable thing.
What really does that mean? And Paul speaks of that in other places, he says we have the mind of Christ, we have the love of Christ, we live by faith because Christ lives in us, we don't live our own lives anymore, we live by the power of his indwelling spirit. Right, right. Leading this life. That is a phrase I have just sat with over the years and I continue to marvel at the reality of it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's something that Paul goes on later on in this letter, also in Romans, to talk about this isn't, talking about this is not something that just is Paul's job. He says that we do it as well. Later in chapter three, he'll say, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another.
Well that's that same word he uses right here. So this is the good news that we have to share as well. The good news is not a list of do's and don'ts. Praise God. And a way in which you try and please God and minimize the bad things for the bulk of the good things. It's about the fact that it's all what Christ has done for us and as a result, he is in us.
He is in us and that just changes the entire game. Everything is completely different after this point. So Paul goes on in his other letters and says, and this is your job too, to admonish one another about what this is.
This is an exciting thing. So if this is new to you, now you're in the job of admonishing other people about the fact that what God has brought us to is Christ in us, the hope of glory. Yeah, and Paul had prayed at the beginning of this letter, if you remember, about praying that they would grow in all spiritual wisdom and understanding so they would walk in a manner worthy of the Lord. So that's making the connection between what God is doing in us with how we walk.
What is our life like because of that? Yeah, and we can expect, like he says in the end of verse 29, that as a result of that walking, it'll be his energy that powerfully works in us and not our own, another aspect of the new covenant. It's not what I bring to the game.
It's what he does through us rather than what I try and do for him. So anyway, we are totally out of time. We're glad you're with us right now and we'll come back next time and start into chapter two in Colossians. And so come back and join us here at More Than Ink. There are many more episodes of this broadcast to be found at our website, morethanink.org. And while you're there, take a moment to drop us a note.
Remember, the Bible is God's love letter to you. Pick it up and read it for yourself and you will discover that the words printed there are indeed more than ink. I'm brewing my teeth. We're brewing it as we speak? Wow. This has been a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City.
