Christ in You, the Hope of Glory (His Mysteries #5)

 

One thing about God's mysteries--they don't necessarily lend themselves that well to photographic depiction. Which I find rather delightful. How surprised should we really be that the mysteries of God might not be easily imaged? Yet believers in Jesus, pursuing Him in prayer, the word, and fellowship, though we see only their outward posture, have Christ in them.  

In Colossians 1:13-29, Paul writes to the church at Colossae about the supremacy of Jesus Christ over anything and everything. The error this church was making was to consider other philosophies and religions equally as valid as Christianity--an error we certainly see in our world today. Jesus is the exact living image of the unseen God, we are told. All things were created and exist through Him and for Him. Verse 17, one of my favorite verses in the Bible, adds, "And He Himself existed and is before all things, and in Him all things hold together." The Amplified expands on the original language by saying He is the controlling cohesive force of the universe. All the fullness of deity dwells in Jesus, Paul continues, because it pleased the Father for this to be so. Moreover, through the shed blood of Jesus on the cross, God has made peace with believers and reconciled all things to Himself. And, Paul writes, Jesus will present the Colossians, too, holy and blameless before the Father if they continue in the faith they have received (and presumably not be drawn aside by those other religions or belief systems). 

These truths, Paul says, are a mystery that was hidden from angels and mankind "for ages and generations," but has now been revealed to God's people. Everything Jesus is, and everything He has done, though prophesied in much detail in the Old Testament, was simply not grasped or realized, let alone accomplished, until Jesus came as a Man, died on the cross to pay for our sins, and rose again. That is mystery enough for humans' easily overwhelmed understanding, but as God always does, He goes even further. Though the mystery of how Jesus reconciled sinful humans to God has now been unveiled at this point in history, the even more astounding mystery is that Gentiles share in the glory of the mystery, as verse 27 says, which is Christ in them, the hope and guarantee of glory. 

This is why Paul traveled, suffered, labored, did without. To bring to people news this momentous. Nothing was every more important, and nothing ever will be. Christ in us, the hope of glory, is worth any price. And it's one of His mysteries.