A message on suffering with and for Jesus
“24 Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church.
25 I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness—
26 the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints. 27 To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. ”
This morning we are going to think about a young lady who’s mentoring a ten-year-old girl. Let’s call the young lady Jen and the ten-year-old girl Blakelee. Jen got connected with Blakelee through a mentoring ministry. This ministry connects Christian mentors with kids in local schools who could use some one-on-one attention during the school day.
During these mentoring sessions Jen helps Blakelee with homework. Sometimes they read together. Jen watches Blakelee do some handstands or cartwheels between chapters. Sometimes they play boardgames. The goal is for them to connect and for Jen to be a positive influence on Blakelee. The school finds this helps Blakelee do better as a student and grow as a person. Jen enjoys the opportunity to serve, and hopes that Blakelee comes to know Jesus throught eh church parties during the year.
That doesn’t mean, however, that Jen’s time with Blakelee is easy. Blakelee has a difficult home life. She is a hurting little girl and hurting people hurt people. Even though her teacher says that she looks forward to Jen coming, Blakelee does everything she can to push Jen away. Blakelee makes fun of Jen’s clothes. She makes fun of the way Jen styles her hair. Blakelee is usually ungrateful and is terrifyingly entitled. It’s hard mentoring Blakelee. Jen wants to help the girl. Jen, above all, hopes that Blakelee comes to know Jesus. She mentors because she wants Blakelee to succeed in life, but she knows that the sort of hope Blakelee needs can only be found in Jesus. Offering that hope has been hard in Jen’s experience. The gospel offers hope, but offering it is hard. We see that with Jen. We see that with Paul. I imagine you see that in your own experience. The gospel offers hope, but offering it is hard. That’s the claim of this sermon.
We will study this in three points. First: suffering for the church. Second: a commission from God. Third: presenting the mystery. We see Paul suffering for the church in verse 24. We see his commission from God in verse 25 and we see him presenting the mystery in verses 26-27.
First: suffering for the church. Last week we studied the basics of the gospel. We saw that we are by nature alienated from God because we treat Him like an enemy. Our only hope lies in being reconciled to God by way of the cross. We who have that hope continue to live by it. If we turn our back on Christ, we turn our back on the hope he offers. This is the gospel that Paul preached and now we see that he suffered for it; verse 24, “Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church.”
This suffering is closely connected with what we’ve already studied. In this verse Paul speaks of suffering in his flesh to circle back to verse 22 with Jesus suffering in his flesh. He speaks of Jesus’ body the church to circle back to verse 18 and Jesus’ body the church. Paul wants us to see that what he’s been teaching makes sense of the difficulties at play in trying to offer others hope. That’s what Paul means when he told the Corinthians, “so death is at work in us but life is at work in you.”
It’s a Christlike thing. Jen’s sufferings in hopes of inviting Blakelee into the church are connected with Jesus’ sufferings for the church. Our sufferings in Christ’s service are connected with Christ’s sufferings for us.
Now by saying, “I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions,” Paul wasn’t saying that anything needed to be added to what Jesus did on the cross to justify us. Jesus said, “it is finished,” before he died, and he meant it. The cross, as Paul himself explained last week, is sufficient to reconcile us to God.
Paul’s sufferings and our sufferings for the sake of spiritual life in others is a means of applying what Jesus did on the cross. The cross did it all, but it needs to be applied. It applies itself through the gospel—the presentation of which what Paul called “the ministry of reconciliation.” This is what Jen is trying to do with Blakelee. This is what parents are trying to do as they raise their children in the ways of the Lord. This is what Sunday School teachers are trying to do as they push from information to transformation. This, in addition to bettering the life of a child for a day, is what we hope comes out of Operation Christmas Child.
There will be suffering involved with such work. Urging reconciliation with God can bring trouble. People don’t like to be told that they aren’t already good with God. We tend to want half-truths rather than the complete truth when it comes to the fundamental matters of life
That means becoming like Jesus by applying what he did will make you more like Jesus. You will be misunderstood like Jesus was misunderstood. You might be rejected like Jesus was rejected. You will also know the Father’s love as Jesus knows the Father’s love. You will also be resurrected as Jesus was resurrected. In other words, becoming more like Jesus will make you more like Jesus.
Paul rejoiced in that; verse 24, “Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you…” Paul rejoiced because just as Jesus’ sufferings for the church were good for the church—that’s the cross—so Paul’s sufferings for the church were good for the church. When Paul wrote this letter, he was in prison for preaching the gospel. He was imprisoned because the ministering of the word of God has an effect; it changes lives and it produces blowback. You don’t get one without the other. Paul wasn’t sitting in prison thinking to himself, “if only I ministered with a bit more savvy, I wouldn’t be in this mess.” Paul was remembering that his sufferings were just part of the spread of the gospel just as Jesus’ suffering were the basis of the gospel, and Paul thought these sufferings were worth it because the gospel did more good to others than it brought trouble for him.
Paul thought about it all in terms of God’s plan. We see that continue in our second point: a commission from God. Paul thought of himself as a servant of the church; verse 25, “I have become its [meaning the church’s] servant by the commission God gave me.” Paul was a servant of the church but not in the way that Alfred was Bruce Wayne’s servant or Eliezer was Abraham’s servant. The church didn’t tell Paul what to do. Rather, Paul served the church by obeying his ctual master—Christ. Up in verse 7, Paul called himself a servant of Christ. The true church has always been Christ driven. It has never been consumer driven. It has never been about taking the pulse of what flesh thinks is necessary or wise. It takes its marching orders from Christ. So Paul was the Colossians’ servant, but they would never be his master.
Christ was Paul’s master, and the call was for Paul to be mastered by Christ’s message and proclaim that message. Look up at verse 23, “This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.” Paul served Christ and the church by being a servant of the gospel. Paul saw his task as, in the words of verse 25, simply carrying out, “the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness.”
We must slavishly follow Jesus’ directives. The call to the church is the call of Mary to the servants at the wedding in Cana regarding Jesus, “do whatever he tells you.” Any time we as a church or as individuals who are this church downplay a promise of Jesus, disregard a command, disobey a directive, or set up our own wisdom against the wisdom of the word which is the wisdom of Jesus, the church suffers. It might not be perceptible to us, but we humans are not known for our spiritual perceptiveness.
We must slavishly follow Jesus. That’s true for church leaders of whom Paul is a pattern. There is a wonderful scene in the Gene Wilder version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory that shows the need and joy of following the master’s way. It’s at the very end of the movie. The tour of the chocolate factory is over. The other children have shown themselves to be selfish and disobedient. Charlie has shown himself to be selfless and obedient. Wonka asks, “how did you like the chocolate factory Charlie?” Charlie answers, “I think it is the most wonderful place in the whole world.” “I’m very pleased to hear you say that,” says Wonka, “because I’m giving it to you.” Charlie’s shocked so Wonka explains, “who can I trust to run the factory when I leave and take care of the Oompa Loompas for me? Not a grown up. A grown up would want to do everything his own way, not mine. That’s why I decided a long time ago that I had to find a child—a very loving, honest child.” Put Jesus’ ascension and his call for childlike trusting faith together with church leadership in a chocolate factory and that’s what you get.
Charlie was chosen to do things Wonka’s way. Church leaders are chosen to do things Christ’s way. His way is to, “present to you the word of God in its fullness.” That will produce blowback. That’s why Paul was in prison. If Paul picked and chose what he thought would be palatable from the word of God, he wouldn’t be in prison. Presenting the word of God in its fullness will produce life and it will produce trouble. “Anticipate that solid, Biblical preaching will stimulate reaction [both positive and negative]… if you can’t live with that, don’t urge the ministry to preach the whole counsel of God, acknowledging as you do so that this is desertion of your own duty,” writes Berghoef and DeKoster in the elder handbook. That’s the call of the ministry of this church and any church, “to present to you the word of God in its fullness.”
Now the word of God in its fulness is what Paul wanted for the Colossians. It is what Jen hopefully wants for Blakelee. It is what I, at my best, want for you. It is what you hopefully want for anyone for whom you’ve got some sort of spiritual responsibility. The need is always to dive deeper.
You aren’t knowing God unless you are getting to know Him better. You can’t profitably imitate Christ unless you are getting to know him better. Thinking that you already know what is needful to know from God’s word is, at best, the path of spiritual impoverishment. Paul wrote this letter so the Colossians would have more than that. We are studying this letter so that we will have more than that. This is where we find the hope that Blakelee needs. This is where we find the hope that we all need. That hope is our final point: presenting the mystery.
When we studied marriage and sexuality, we came across the word “mystery” and saw that this mystery was God’s formerly hidden but now revealed plan to bring what has been separated back together. We saw that marriage is a living parable of that mystery—two becoming one. It points to God and humanity becoming one. We saw the ministry of reconciliation. This is the mystery of reconciliation.
This mystery in verse 26 is that same plan for reconciliation; “the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints.” God’s people in the Old Testament didn’t know exactly how He was going to reconcile sinners like them and like us to Himself. We only know because it was made clear in the cross. The way of the cross means we shouldn’t be surprised that our ministry of reconciliation involves suffering because the process of reconciliation involved suffering for Jesus.
This reconciliation is the message of all Scripture. That’s the reason for that dash at the end of verse 25 and the beginning of verse 26. God’s word explains how what has been separated by sin is reconciled. In the end, it is all about God making all things new. The whole story of Scripture, in other words, is a story about coming home. It begins in Eden and ends in Eden 2.0; that’s what’s going on in verse 26’s, “the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations but is now disclosed to the saints.”
This term “mystery” is somewhat technical. It comes from the book of Daniel and the story of Nebuchadnezzar’s disturbing dream. Nebuchadnezzar was so distraught by this dream that he told his counselors that he would have them executed if they couldn’t tell him the dream in detail and, more importantly, the meaning. Daniel asked for a stay of execution and urged others, “to plead for mercy from the God of heaven concerning this mystery, so that he and his friends might not be executed with the rest of the wise men of Babylon. During the night the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a vision.” Notice that word mystery is all over Daniel 2. God revealed the mystery to Daniel. It was the story of the kingdom of God—not surprisingly one of Jesus’ favorite teaching points. Nebuchadnezzar told Daniel, “Surely your God is the God of gods and the Lord of kings and a revealer of mysteries, for you were able to reveal this mystery.”
That mystery, according to Paul, is now an open secret. The kingdom of God is now among us. The good news has gone out into the whole world; verse 27, “To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery.” The open secret is open to all who will come. Reconciliation is open to all who will be reconciled.
This reconciliation is glorious; “the glorious riches of this mystery,” as verse 27 puts it. We Christians probably don’t meditate often enough on just how good we have it. How often do you think of yourself as God’s beloved? How often do you think of yourself as “holy in His sight, without blemish and free from accusation,” as we studied last week? The Christian life involves enjoying the glorious riches you’ve been given. We often put our focus elsewhere. We often behave like a kid flopping around inside watching TV when the weather outside is perfect for exploring. We miss out on what has been given us for our joy.
This joy, the object of this glorious hope, has a specific focal point—Christ in ou, the hope of glory, as seen in verse 27. The idea that someone like me could become one with someone like Jesus is glorious. To return to marriage as a metaphor, think about how often brides-to-be write their new full name in joyful anticipation of becoming one with their man. They take on his name. That’s you and Christ; “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” If you ever get over that, you’ve come to the end of eternity because from what we see of the new creation, no one who is one with God ever gets over the joy of being one with God.
So given that you can be one with God, what could be more foolish than to stop finding your fullness in Jesus now? Remember, this letter was written to urge Christians to dive deeper into Jesus and his ways rather than looking for fullness elsewhere. It is your connection with Jesus that is the hope for everything being put right. That comma in verse 27, “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” is really just an equal sign, “Christ in you equals the hope of glory.”
That’s the hope that Paul wanted for the Colossians. He didn’t write them because it was his job. I hope I’m not preaching the fulness of this word to you because it’s my job. Once we are jobbing it in any form of ministry, the joy is gone, and the sufferings seem senseless.
Jen started mentoring Blakelee in hoping of seeing Christ in that little girl, the hope of glory. All of this—the hope of glory, Christ in you, the mystery of two becoming one—of us and God becoming one—all of this is the goal that keeps us Christians serving. Working toward that goal opened her up to sorrow. It will bring any number of difficulties as every letter in the New Testament, and especially in the life of Christ, makes clear. We shouldn’t expect otherwise though because suffering love is par for the course for people who are becoming like Jesus. That’s part of Christ in you too. That’s part of the hope of glory too. That glory is worth it. It's worth it for Blakelee. It’s worth it for Jen. It’s worth it for others. It’s worth it for you. Amen.