When I was at university—I sweated and groaned and struggled to get through my studies. One day a mate left an major project we were working on in the train. He rang every station from Hornsby to Campbelltown hoping it was handed in. Alas, our major assignment was gone forever! After the lecturer finished laughing, he gave us a compassionate pass. Study was a constant struggle. Long nights and complex assignments. We struggled for the hope of glory—the hope of receiving a degree in engineering.
In Col 1:24–2:5, the Apostle Paul speaks about his own struggles for the Colossian Church. This complements the opening of the letter which reminds us of who we are in Christ and how we became this way. The Colossians were facing life’s challenges, not unlike our own. And Paul’s response is to lay the gospel before them in categories which exalt the risen Christ and demonstrate our union with him. Carefully woven into this explanation are subtle points of contact with the false teachers. Paul refers to the supremacy of Christ over ‘all things’, the ‘fullness’ of God dwellING in Christ. Since we lack nothing in Christ, since we have ‘fullness’ in Christ, then is it not an utter stupidity to fill ourselves with someone other than Christ?
At first consideration, our passage sits rather uncomfortably in the letter. The marvellous opening which climaxes in verse 23 of chapter 1, yields to a rehearsal by Paul of his own sufferings for the gospel. Do we really want to hear about Paul? Are we not more interested in Christ and the implications of the gospel for daily living? You know that the Apostle Paul is not liked in some circles: he appears to many to belittle women, affirm slavery, and express hostility toward the Jewish people. John Shelby Spong says that ‘Paul was a limited man captured by the worldview and circumstances of a vastly different time […he] may have been a gay male’. Fighting words! Perhaps the less we know about Paul the better!
Yet if we are to account for the letter as it stands, we must accept the declaration by Paul that he is ‘an apostle of Christ’ and that he writes the word of God. We know from the Book of Acts that Paul met the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, a significant experience upon which Paul occasionally reflects in his writings to the churches. In the setting of Colossians, Paul refers to his own labours as a servant of this risen Christ. We therefore miss an important section if we overlook Paul’s labour for the church.
So why does Paul detail his own sufferings for the church? And how does this speak into the Colossian situation? What does this mean for us? These questions occupy the remainder of our time.
Now I’d like you to notice in this section—Col 1:24 to 2:5—that there is a change of pronoun. So far its always been ‘we’, that is, Paul and Timothy: ‘we always thank God when we pray for you’ (verse 3), ‘we have not stopped praying for you’ (verse 9), ‘we pray this in order that you may life a life worthy of the Lord’ (verse 10). Now it’s a little more personal. Now Paul is speaking about himself. ‘I rejoice in what was suffered for you’ (verse 24), ‘I am struggling for you’, ‘I tell you this’. This is Paul’s personal testimony and he particularly emphasises his own suffering and struggles.
At the centre of this section (and if you know what a chiastic structure is—its one of them) are verses 29 and 2:1, ‘To this end I labour, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me. I want you to know how much I am struggling for you and for those at Laodicea, and for all who have not met me personally’. There are two reasons why Paul labours and struggles for the saints in Colossae.
The first reason why Paul suffers for the Colossian Church is seen in verse 24, which is perhaps the hardest verse in the letter. So it’s a little tricky to work out what the reason is. The NIV says, ‘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’.
The first clause is, ‘Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you’. It’s not easy to grasp what Paul means. The NASB is a much clearer, ‘Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake’ or ‘I rejoice in what I am suffering for you’. Paul is writing from prison, and in some manner his sufferings are helping the Colossians—and he’s happy about that. The next clause suggests how this might be, ‘I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regards to Christ’s afflictions’. This clause is also puzzling. How do you ‘fill up in your flesh’ and ‘is Christ still being afflicted although he is in heaven’?
There are four ways of approaching verse 24 and rather than walking through each one with you, I have briefly summarised the different positions in your outline. The attractive option is number (iv) and I’ll read it, ‘A fourth view (the one I prefer) regards the afflictions of Christ as Christ’s actual sufferings now, not on the cross but in and through Paul whom He indwelt (cf 2 Cor.11:23-28). When believers suffer, Christ also suffers because He indwells us (cf. Acts 9:4)’.
Peter O’Brien in his commentary says, ‘Though now exalted in heaven, Christ continues to suffer in his members, not least in Paul himself’ (O’Brien, Colossians, WBC, 100). Paul suffers in a hostile world, the Colossian church suffers in a pagan world, and therefore the exalted Christ suffers in heaven. For when the body suffers, the head of the body also suffers. Don Constable says, ‘When believers suffer, Christ also suffers because He indwells us’ (Constable Notes on Colossians, 21).
And so Paul rejoices in his suffering because he is bearing the burdens of the Colossian Church. He struggles with all his energy to keep them firmly secure in Christ. And as Paul does this, he participates in Christ’s afflictions. As the world rejected Christ, so the world rejects his apostles. Remember on the road to Damascus the risen Christ said, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ (Acts 9:3). Christ is afflicted when his church suffers. Paul’s suffering for the gospel is no less than a persecution of Christ himself.
In answer to the question, ‘why does Paul talk about his own sufferings for the church’? He does so in order to spur the Colossians onto maturity. The Colossians know that Paul shares their pain. Paul shares their struggles to remain faithful to the Lord Jesus. As Paul endures suffering for the sake of Christ, he encourages the Colossians to do likewise. And through the trials of his people, the risen, exalted Christ is still afflicted in this world. Matthew Henry says, ‘He (Paul) suffered in the cause of Christ, and for the good of the church. He suffered for preaching the gospel to them. And, while he suffered in so good a cause, he could rejoice in his sufferings, rejoice that he was counted worthy to suffer, and esteem it an honour to him’.
Is not Paul an amazing pastor? You and I are recipients of Paul’s faithfulness to the gospel. We are included amongst those whom Paul refers to in 2:1, for we have not met Paul personally. Yet in the providence of God, Paul’s letter to the Colossian Church is circulating among us. Paul is the apostle to the Gentiles and he is our apostle. And our apostle is a great theologian and a concerned pastor. Although he has never met them, Paul is committed to the Colossian church and he wants them to know this in order to spur them on to maturity. He responded urgently to news from Epaphras, he wrote the letter we are now reading, he delivered it with haste; Paul wrestles for the church in prayer. Paul is not boasting, indeed, if he must boast, he says in 2 Cor 11:30, ‘I will boast of the things that show my weakness’. Rather than boasting, Paul refers to his hardships and his weaknesses as a servant of Christ.
I want to get alongside you. I want to present you perfect in Christ. And we want this for one another. Church is working well when we insist on presenting one another mature in Christ. So we ought to be labouring for one another. I share your pain and you share my pain. We share the joys of life together. We struggle to live according to the word of God in a hostile world.
Paul’s example provides an excellent model for the way we ought to relate to one another. Notice that the apostle does not separate theology from pastoral care. Paul’s pastoral heart stirs him to lay the gospel out before the church and then he engages the practicalities of the problem. At the same time he stands beside them—feeling their pain, sharing the hardships of the Christian life. In this way, Paul struggles to keep the Colossians living in a manner worthy of the Lord.
As we get alongside one another and help one another, we must not be afraid to talk about Jesus. We are to be theologians and pastors to one another. Theologians in the sense that we know the gospel and we know the detail in our Bibles the best we possibility can. Pastors in the sense that we take the trouble to encourage one another with gospel truths as we bear one another’s burdens.
And it will sometimes be a struggle as you cook a meal or paint a room for someone because their Christian life is in tatters and this matters to you and you want to stand with them and talk about Jesus because his words are the words of life. And as we talk about Jesus in a secular society we will suffer from time-to-time. Perhaps our lack of suffering suggests that we are not adequately engaging the society around us.
Roger Staubach is an American football player. He was once asked when injured, ‘How do you keep on keeping on if you’re playing professional football’? Roger said something important, ‘If you’re not playing hurt, you’re not playing football’. Paul expresses a similar truth in our passage: if you’re not suffering for the King, then its because you’re not truly serving the King. That might sound offensive to you. After all, nobody in their right mind likes to be hurt. Yet I notice a whole Bible full of men and women who believe that suffering was a natural outcome of serving the King.
We have the assurance that as we suffer, Christ shares our afflictions. Dietrich Bonheoffer wrote, ‘It is a good thing to learn early that God and suffering are not opposites but rather one and the same thing and necessarily so; for me, the idea that God himself suffers is far and away the most convincing piece of Christian doctrine’.
The second reason why Paul suffers for the church is because of his commission from God. He says in verse 25, ‘I have become its (i.e. the churches) servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness’. Paul endures suffering because the Lord Jesus called him into his service. We know from elsewhere (Gal 1:15) that God chose Paul before his birth to become an apostle, with particular responsibility to bring the good news to the Gentiles. This is his ‘commission’ which he shares with the Colossian Church.
Paul is not the only one with a commission. The risen Jesus says to his disciples, ‘Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age’.
It’s a commission familiar to our ears. Our call by Jesus to go into the world with the gospel is no less forceful than Paul’s commission to be an apostle. We need to imitate Paul’s obedience to the Lord Jesus. It’s not a call to the super-spiritual—if there were such a thing. It’s not call to single men and women with more disposable hours over a life-time. It’s not a call to the fanatical and the zealous. It’s a call to simple church folk like you and I. It’s a call that flows from a love of God and a desire to see all people saved.
The gospel call is a call to leave behind the stories that drive secular life and put on the story of reconciliation and new life in Christ. Friends, do we not grow weary of the secular treadmill that runs us ragged and yet delivers so little? We live in a comfortable, middle class, scenic part of the world. We could well be living in first century Colossae and draw the same conclusion. By and large, people lack nothing and life is good. We live in a world of Foxtel and swimming pools.
Young people, how are you going to spend the rest of your life? And new retirees, before the lights grow dim, how are you going to spend your final years? We are called to go into the world as servants of the risen Christ.
As we move on, we see that Paul describes the word of God presented to the Colossian Church as a revealed ‘mystery’. The ‘word of God’ is described in verse 26 as, ‘the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but now is disclosed to the saints. 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’.
Paul describes the ‘word of God’ as ‘the mystery’, kept hidden, but now revealed to the saints. His resonates with the Old Testament and at the same time is culturally relevant. It provides another reason not to depart from the apostolic gospel.
When the wise men could not decipher King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream—God revealed the mystery to Daniel (Daniel 2). God is a God who reveals secrets that would otherwise remain unknown. So Paul uses the word ‘mystery’ to refer to the truth about God and his plan of salvation that has been a secret in the past but has now been made known. The mystery made known is ‘the word of God’—verse 26—it is ‘the word of God’ as it relates to Christ—chapter 2:3. Paul’s commission is to reveal this word to the Gentiles. Incredibly, the glorious riches of the gospel are also for Gentile ears: ‘Christ in you, the hope of glory’.
You see, if someone gives you an amazing gift that you don’t deserve, how do you feel? My response is to treasure the gift and be thankful. Last MONTH (21 May, 2009) a New Zealand couple had an especially good reason to be thankful. They had applied to Westpac for an overdraft of $10,000 to keep their Rotorua service station operating. Mistakenly, Westpac deposited $10 million into their bank account. They were so grateful for the gift, as far as I know they’re still on the run from police!
The Colossian saints have received a gift far more valuable than $10 million. These Gentiles have received an unexpected gift. God has deposited amongst the Gentiles—the Colossians—the glorious riches of his grace, ‘Christ in you, the hope of glory’. And God has deposited the gospel amongst us and we treasure it with all our hearts. By faith, Christ is in you, resulting in a satisfying experience for the heart. But the glory of the gospel lies in its gift of hope for the future, not for some believers, not for the spiritual elite, but for everyone who has faith in Christ.
And so the Apostle Paul teaches us how to relate to one another with the glorious riches of the gospel. A gospel about Jesus Christ which has been made known to the Gentiles and therefore to us. A gospel that is working among us as it looks forward to the hope of glory. It is a gospel that draws us into struggles and affliction because following Jesus will conflict with this world.
Paul details his own sufferings for the church as an example of the teaching he has just expounded. The headship of Christ, the sufficiency of Christ, the gospel of reconciliation and the life of continuing faith in Christ. As we look Paul’s labours, we gain insight into relating to one another and reaching into a lost world. We are called to a life of service: struggling to present one another mature in Christ. Bearing the marks of sharing the gospel in the ‘dominion of darkness’. Christ is doing a good work in us, we have the hope of eternal glory. So ‘we proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ’ (Col 1:28).
