The Mystery of Christ

Can I just confess I don't really like KFC? I got food poisoning as a kid a couple of times and I despise it. So no offence if you do like KFC, but anyway, one of the things that people claim is the goodness of KFC is the 11 secret herbs and spices they have. Apparently it's locked away in a vault somewhere, and only a few people know the mystery of these secret ingredients. And we all love a good mystery, I think, whether it's the mystery of the 11 secret herbs and spices or more modern ones like the Bermuda Triangle and how these planes and ships seem to disappear in that space on earth, or ancient ones like the Egyptian Pyramids and how on earth they built these things without the modern day equipment that we have. Mysteries, they draw us in.

They draw our interest. Now, the reason I'm talking about mysteries is not to bash on KFC, but it's actually because the passage that we're looking at today mentions the word mystery multiple times. You see, there were these false teachers at this church in Colossae, that's why it's called the letter to the Colossians, and they were claiming to have the mystery, the 11 herbs and spices to spirituality, to genuine Christianity, and the apostle Paul tackles this mystery in our passage today, Colossians 1:24 to 2:5. Now if you're not sure, if you're not convinced, let me put a graph on the screen, and this shows you the amount of times the word mystery comes up in the different chapters in the New Testament. And as you can see, Colossians one and two are here.

Remember, our passage actually crosses over the end of Colossians one to the beginning of chapter two. So all those occurrences of mystery actually come up to here where Ephesians three is. So out of the New Testament, Ephesians three and the passage we're looking at today have the most occurrences of this word, mystery. I think there's a bit of a mystery in this passage that we need to solve today and that Paul wants to unveil to us. Now, the reason we're looking at this passage is because we're in the middle of a series on the letter of Colossians.

We've called the series The All Sufficient Christ: Why Jesus Is All You Need. Because the letter of Colossians presents to us this exalted and towering image of Jesus. He is presented as the preeminent and supreme one in whom our faith is, and Paul labours to show us that Jesus and the gospel are not just the ABCs of Christianity. They're not just the basics. It's the whole alphabet.

Jesus is the point of our faith. He's the pioneer of our faith. He's the perfecter of our faith. But these false teachers, they were troubling the people at Colossae because they'd come along saying, we're not denying Jesus, but you need more. If you wanna have the fullness, if you want to really know what it's about and be a first rate Christian, then you've gotta add some things onto Jesus.

You need Jesus plus, they would say, maybe a Jewish diet. You need Jesus plus a strict spiritual regime. You need Jesus plus devotion to the angels and these spiritual powers around the place. And so Paul writes to say, no. All you need is Christ.

Paul never met this church. It was actually Epaphras who was a local Colossian who heard Paul preach, and he passed this message onto the Colossians. Epaphras has gone back to him again, and that's what triggered Paul's letter. Epaphras has told him what's going on, and Paul is now writing to correct the issues and to reassure this young church in the faith that is in Christ. Now, if you're a Christian, you need to be absolutely clear on what the mystery of Christianity is. Do you know what the mystery of Christianity, the mystery of faith and life and maturity is?

Because if there's a little bit of uncertainty there, there's some risk that a clever false teacher can come along and say, look, I'm not denying Jesus. Jesus is great, but you need this and this and this if you really want the fullness. So we need to be absolutely clear on what the mystery of Christianity is. And if you're not a Christian here today, you're seeking, you're exploring, we just wanna say welcome to you. And today you get to hear about the open secret of Christianity.

This is actually something that sets Christianity apart from other faiths. So for example, Islam began with Mohammed claiming to receive revelations from God through an angel. It was a private secret experience. Mormonism began with Joseph Smith claiming special revelations and visions that no one else directly witnessed. But Christianity, by contrast, was spread by a group of eyewitnesses who claimed that everything had changed because of events that happened in public in first century Palestine.

Events that can be scrutinised, events that can be verified historically. That's one of the big key differences, and today you get to learn about this open secret. And it may seem to us that sometimes something that seems more exclusive or secretive looks more spiritual, but what if that's just a distraction? What if that's not more spiritual? What if that is really just a way of controlling or manipulating followers of a religion or a faith?

Well, let's take a look at the mystery of Christianity together by exploring our passage under three headings. You don't need to memorise these. They're just kind of like signposts along the journey to help you keep your bearings as we go through the passage. And the first heading is this: the mystery worth suffering for. Verses 24 to 27.

The mystery worth suffering for. So Rob read it for us earlier, the first verse, chapter 1, verse 24. Paul 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." Now is Paul blaspheming here? I'm filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions. What does he mean by that?

Because Jesus suffered and died to save us, and wasn't His suffering enough at the cross? I mean, we see in places like Hebrews 10 that it says, "When Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, by a single offering He has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified." Or we see throughout the letter of Colossians, there's this once for all language, sorry, the letter of Hebrews. There's this once for all language that the writer keeps using, and he's using it to talk about an event that is never to be repeated, that is once and for all. And so he says in places like Hebrews 7 that Jesus entered once and for all into the holy places by means of His own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. Chapter seven of Hebrews, the writer says Jesus has no need to offer sacrifices daily, since He did this once for all when He offered up Himself.

So the sacrifice of Jesus seems to be a once and for all, never to be repeated sacrifice. So what is Paul talking about when he's saying he's filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions? Well, I love the way that a man called Joseph Son talks about it. He was a Romanian pastor, and like Paul, he knows what it is to be persecuted and to suffer. He actually suffered under the communist regime for preaching the gospel.

And he says this, he says, Christ's suffering is for propitiation. Our suffering is for propagation. Christ's suffering is for propitiation. Our suffering is for propagation. Two big words, but propitiation means turning away wrath or anger.

So Christ turned away God's anger against sin by letting that anger be directed at Himself on the cross. Our suffering is for propagation, that is the spread of the gospel. That's what Paul seems to be getting at. He's not saying he's adding on to the propitiating, atoning work of Christ that reconciles us to God. That is all sufficient.

That is infinitely worthy. He's saying he's suffering for the propagation. He's suffering so that more people might know the infinite worth of Jesus' suffering and put their faith in Him. John Piper explains it this way. He says it means that Paul's sufferings fill up Christ's afflictions not by adding anything to their worth, but by extending them to the people they were meant to save.

What is lacking in the afflictions of Christ is not that they are deficient in worth. What is lacking is that the infinite value of Christ's afflictions is not known and trusted in the world. In verse 24, that's what Paul's getting at. He's saying that he's gladly suffering the inevitable afflictions of someone who is proclaiming the gospel to people who haven't yet heard it, to the non-Jewish world, to what he calls the Gentiles, that's non-Jews. This is his purpose as the apostle to the Gentiles.

That's what he's called in the New Testament. He makes this clear as well in the next verse. So verse 25, he says, "The church of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you," which is interesting. He's saying, I've got the stewardship from God for you, Colossians, that I've never even met before. "For you, to make the word of God fully known."

Now just a couple of things I wanna define there. The word of God, we use that often in modern day Christianity to talk about the whole Bible. We say this is the word of God. This is what we call the canon, where all the books of the Bible are compiled together in this kind of library of the holy scriptures that are inspired by God. But just remember, when Paul wrote this, the New Testament scriptures were still being written and still being compiled together.

What he's actually talking about, when Paul talks about the word of God, nearly always, from what I know, he's talking about the message of God. He's talking about the gospel. Obviously that's contained in the Bible, but he's more specifically talking about making the word of God, the gospel, fully known and fully clear. And that makes sense because remember what these Colossians are struggling with. False teachers are coming along and saying, the gospel that you've heard from Epaphras, this Christ that you heard of, He's great.

Don't deny Him, but you've gotta add on to Him. And Paul's saying, no. No. I labour. I suffer to make this thing fully known.

I haven't given you a part of it. I haven't just given you the ABCs. I've given you the whole gospel. I've given you all of Christ. I make it fully known.

This is my ministry. This is my stewardship from God. That's what Paul is trying to say. And he calls the word of God the mystery that is now being revealed in verse 26. So there it is.

There's the mystery of Christianity. It's the word of God, a.k.a. the gospel. But then he also goes on to define it even more clearly, because who's the gospel about? It's about Jesus Christ. So he says the mystery is Christ in you.

In these verses, I'll read it for you. Verse 27, Paul says, "To them," that's God's people, "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." It's a rich and glorious mystery, but it's not a secret mystery. It's not locked away in a vault somewhere. Paul has made this mystery known millennia ago.

Paul laboured. He suffered to make the mystery of God fully known, and the mystery is the gospel. The mystery is that Jesus Christ of Nazareth is the Son of God and the Saviour of the world, the one who suffered and died for our sins, the one who is the preeminent king over all of creation, through whom all things were created and for whom all things exist, and the one who holds all things together. The mystery is Christ, and Christ is not just out there or up there in heaven. Christ is in you.

This preeminent, exalted, all sufficient Christ is in you and is among you. How could we ever wonder whether we have what we need in the Christian life? Whether it's a sin that we're struggling with, how could we ever wonder again whether we have enough resources? Literally, inside you, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ has given you His presence, and you have the resources that you need to keep fighting and killing sin and addictions and bad habits in your life.

The Spirit of Christ dwells in you and can keep strengthening you to endure afflictions and suffering and hospital visits and cancer and diseases. Christ is not just the preeminent Christ in heaven. Christ is in you. It's an incredible, glorious mystery. It's like having a billionaire in your house, and you have dinner with him every night, and they're like, look, if there's anything that you need, I would love to take care of it for you.

And if you go bankrupt, I'll just pay it all. You know, it's like you have all those resources in your house, it changes the way you live. But having Christ in your corner, in your home, dwelling in you, makes a billionaire look like a poor peasant. He gives you everything that you need for life and for godliness. You don't need some special spiritual program to help you access God's power and presence.

God's power and presence are a gift to you in Christ. Christ is among us, Open House Church. We're not alone in our mission to grow in and share the love of Christ. Jesus is building up His people. He is the head of His worldwide church, and He's not running everything as a distant CEO.

He's with us here in the trenches, empowering us to do His will. What obstacle is too big for the one who created the cosmos? What budget is too small for the one who owns everything? Whose heart is too hard for the one who holds all things together? What darkness is so great that it could prevent the one who conquered death?

Christ is among us. Christ is in you. We have everything we need for life and godliness. We have everything we need to give ourselves to His mission in this local church. This is the mystery worth suffering for.

Paul has been suffering in his efforts to spread this gospel, so that more Jews and Gentiles might believe and receive the presence of the all sufficient Christ. But Paul didn't just labour and suffer for conversions, as wonderful as that is. He actually went even further than that. He struggled and strived for something deeper. And let's take a look at that next under the second heading.

So we've looked at the mystery worth suffering for. Now we're looking at the maturity worth struggling for. Verses 28 to chapter 2, verse 3. So Paul says, "Him we proclaim," that's Christ. Christ we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.

That's Paul's goal. That's Paul's goal for you, for us. That should be our goal as a church. It's not merely that we want to make disciples or help people know Jesus. It's that we want to make mature disciples.

We want to help people grow up in Jesus. We want to help one another grow up in faith, hope, and love. See, the work of maturing people isn't just my job or the elders' role. If you look at Ephesians 4, it says that our role is to equip the saints, that's God's people, to do the work of ministry. You guys are the ministers with us.

We're doing it together, speaking the truth in love to each other, reminding each other of the gospel. When you've got a brother or sister who's like, I feel so horrible about myself, I struggle, I gave into the sin again this week, you speak the truth in love.

Jesus died for your sins. It's all taken care of. He loves you. Let's keep going together. He's given you His Spirit.

I mean, if a brother or sister is saying, man, I'm just sick of all these medical issues, well, we might offer to pray for them and ask that they would know the power of the all sufficient Christ. We edify each other. We're to build each other up. Paul wants us to mature and grow as a church, and it's our work that we give ourselves to together.

But Paul specifically in this passage, he says that he matures disciples by preaching Christ. He said, "Him we proclaim." Paul proclaims Christ. Paul proclaims the gospel, not just to make disciples, but to mature disciples. See, the gospel is not just the thing that gets people into the kingdom of God.

So when Paul says in Romans 1:16, I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of salvation to everyone who believes, he's not just talking about initial salvation. Because the verse that will come up now, the verse before that, verse 15, Paul said to the Romans in his letter, I'm eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome. But they were already Christians. This Roman church, Paul wanted to preach the gospel to them because it's not just the salvation for entering the kingdom, but it's the continuing salvation for sin. Hearing Christ, seeing Him in His beauty, seeing Him in His power for you, seeing Him in His grace for you, it melts your heart, and it helps you to change and transform and to want to become more like Him. The gospel is not just the thing that gets people in, it's the thing that continues to save and grow and transform.

And this is why you'll notice that every week I preach, I try to show how the passage relates to Jesus, whether in the Old Testament like Jonah, or in the New Testament where, like a passage like this, it's pretty much all about Christ anyway. I try to get to a point where I preach Christ and the gospel, because we don't grow by doctrinal accumulation. Not that that's wrong, but we grow ultimately in Christ. We grow by hearing about the beauty and glory of Jesus and the gospel. It's Jesus who transforms us.

Doctrinal accumulation is good. Learning about different doctrines and Bible verses and memorising scriptures and all that sort of thing, it's like adding logs onto the fire, but we need the Holy Spirit to come along and to light the fire and to let it burn in our lives. Paul talks about Christian transformation and growth in knowledge and in wisdom. Actually, I'm getting ahead of myself. I might not say that.

Paul proclaimed Christ in his labours to mature Jesus' followers. The gospel is not a message to memorise and move on from. The gospel is a whole world to explore and enjoy. The gospel is a whole world to explore and enjoy. It's simple enough for a child to understand, but profound enough to keep us mining its riches for years to come.

It's the mystery that Paul suffered to spread among the nations, and it's the mystery he keeps proclaiming among Christians that they might become mature in Christ. Look at verse 29. He says, "For this I toil," so this maturity he just mentioned, "for this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me." For I want you to know how great a struggle, hence the heading of this passage, the maturity worth struggling for. The original Greek word for struggling means to contend.

Paul is contending and fighting and struggling for this maturity in the churches, but it's not just him doing it alone. God's power is powerfully working within him. That's one of the mysteries of the Christian life. It's not that I work and God doesn't, or God works and I don't, or I do 50% and God meets me halfway. I work, but God is working in me.

I am at work, knowing that God ultimately is working in me, empowering me. It's 100% God and 100% me together doing this work, and He gets the glory because it's His power that sustains it. And Paul says, I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you, Colossians, and for those at Laodicea, and for all who have not seen me face to face. And then verse two is really one of his definitions of maturity. This is what he's toiling for.

This is what he's struggling for, the maturity that is his goal. He says, verse two, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ. So if you didn't get it before, the mystery is Christ in you. It's Christ.

It's the gospel. And if we wanna be a mature and fruitful church, this passage teaches that God wants us to be knit together in love and reach the full assurance of what God's mystery is. Knit together in love first. God wants us to experience His love and then give that love to one another sincerely. If we love Jesus and enjoy His love and we realise, actually, members of Christ are all around us.

We are His body. He is the head. We can't love the head and hate the body. If we love the head, we'll love the body too. We look at the members around us.

We look at people who are Christ's bride. We can't love the husband and not like the bride. If we love the husband, Jesus, then we will love the bride. That's what maturity looks like in a church. It's sincere, genuine love and affection for one another, care for one another, concern for one another.

That's one of the maturity goals that Paul is aiming for when he's preaching Christ and His love and the gospel. The second thing that Paul is aiming for is full assurance. Full assurance. He wants us to be fully assured that Jesus and the gospel that proclaims Jesus is all sufficient for saving you and to continue to grow and mature you. There is no other mystery that you need that's out there.

There are always other things that are good. I don't wanna be reductionistic, but the only thing necessary and sufficient is Christ. You need to be fully sure about that. Are you sure? Are you assured of what the Christian life is all about and what spirituality is about and what growing maturity is about?

Settle once and for all in your minds right now that Christ is all sufficient to grow you and mature you. You don't need to move on from Him. You can just go deeper into Him. Paul wants us to really get the mystery of Christ. He wants preachers like me to keep proclaiming it, and he wants Christians to keep mining its riches.

And you may think, well, there are other means of grace that God has given us. By that we mean means that God has given to grow us, like for example the Lord's Supper. But when you think about that, it actually all points to Jesus. It all points to the gospel. The Lord's Supper, what is it but a physical presentation of what Jesus did for us at the cross?

The Christian life is all Christ. He's not a finite source that we exhaust and move on from. He is inexhaustible. That's why Paul says in the last verse that Christ is the one in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. If you wanna be a wise person, if you wanna be knowledgeable in the faith, where do you go?

Maybe you go on YouTube and you find a preacher that seems to speak well and know what they're talking about. Maybe you go to podcasts or TikToks from popular teachers. Maybe thick textbooks on systematic theology or smaller books on devotional life to Christ. Now all these things can be beneficial insofar as they take us deeper into Christ. But that's exactly the point because Christ is the one in whom all these treasures are found, and He's the one that we all have access to.

You don't need a clever teacher to give you some secret access. You don't need me to give you access. God uses me to bless you. I'm part of the body building you up if I'm preaching the scriptures, but you don't actually need me. You've got everything you need in Christ.

Christian wisdom and knowledge is not anti-intellectual, but it's more than that. It's also deeply experiential and personal because it's found in the one we love. Notice Paul says all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are in Him, hidden in Christ. It's in a person. C.

S. Lewis explains different ways of knowing this way. He says, if you ask someone what love is about, you can ask two people that are in love, and they might tell you, oh, you know, that when I see her, I feel butterflies in my stomach, and every time I see her I just want to see her again, and I hate saying goodbye. You might ask the actual lover themselves, or you could ask a neuroscientist. And say, well, what's happening when someone's in love?

There are different synapses in their brain that are firing and hormones that are being released, and it creates a feeling of wellbeing and so on and so forth. Which type of knowing is right? Well, they both kind of are. And I think in our church tradition, reformed Christianity, we're a bit better at the more bookish intellectual knowing, and that's good. Knowing God is not anti-intellectual.

But we also need to remember it's deeply personal. It's in a person. It's in Christ. And I think the way to bridge that gap is through prayer. We read our scriptures.

We read textbooks. We get to learn about God and doctrine and all that sort of stuff, and then we bring that to God, we talk to Jesus about what we're learning about, and we treasure Him, and we praise Him, and we repent before Him, and we have a personal communion with Him. All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are found in Him. This is what Paul is struggling for, the maturity he's struggling for, that we would be knit together in love, fully assured, finding knowledge and wisdom in Jesus. So we've looked at the mystery worth suffering for, and surprise, surprise, it's Christ.

We've looked at the maturity worth struggling for, and surprise, surprise, it comes from Christ. And now we'll finish by briefly looking at the mark Paul's aiming for. Now forgive me, I just wanted to get the three M's, keep them going, mystery, maturity, mark. But anyway, I just love this alliteration thing. Paul mentions the minor aim first.

He says in verse four, I say this, all this stuff, in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments. In the Greek, if you look up the word for plausible arguments, it means plausible arguments. Yeah. So I went to Bible college to learn that. And it also means the kind of argument that looks genuine on the surface.

It might be someone who's like, I'm not denying Christ, and I'm using lots of Bible verses, and it sort of looks genuine on the surface. And Paul's saying, I don't want you, Colossians, to be deluded by that, because the heresy that they were dealing with in their church wasn't a non-Christian heresy. It was a Christian heresy. They weren't denying Jesus. They were adding on to Jesus.

And so Paul's saying, I don't want you to be deluded with these plausible arguments, but that's really the minor goal. That's part of the major aim that he's going for, and he says this in verse five. He's aiming for firmness of faith in Christ. He says, for though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ. See, Paul's rejoicing because the Colossians have started well as a church.

Paul says their faith is firmly in Christ, and this is what Paul wants to continue. He wants them to be enthralled by Christ's all sufficiency. He wants them to be absolutely sure that the mystery has been revealed in the gospel about Christ. He wants them to continue trusting in Christ in faith. This is what Paul is aiming for.

It's a Christ centred mark. He doesn't want chaos or confusion in the church thinking, what should we really be about? No. He wants us to know we should be first and foremost about Christ, about Jesus. And that might sound like a Sunday school answer.

That might sound so obvious, but we need to continually be reminded of that. He wants the church of Colossae, our church today, to be fully assured that Christ is the beginning and end of faith. He is the one we proclaim. He is the one who matures us. He is the one who dwells in us.

The mystery of maturity is not a secret. It's Christ alone. Imagine if you could just settle that in your heart today, that you don't have to wake up each day and worry or be anxious about, am I choosing the right career, or did I make mistakes back then that have ruined my trajectory in life. No. You actually know what the secret to spirituality is, the secret to maturity is, the secret to life is.

It's Jesus, and Jesus is in you. You have it. Imagine you can just wake up each day fully assured of that and just get to work pursuing Christ, enjoying Christ, telling people about Christ, growing in faith in Jesus. Imagine the kind of impact we would have if we would just be fully firm in our faith in Jesus together. We don't need flashy secrets or mysterious techniques.

Spirituality, maturity, fruitfulness, it's all found in Christ, and Christ is in you. Let me pray for us. Father, we thank you for your word. It is a light unto our path and a lamp unto our feet. We thank you that you've revealed this great mystery, that Christ is in your people.

Even among Gentiles like us, many of us, I'm assuming even all of us, are not Jewish people. And we thank you that you've extended your grace to us. We thank you for your great love for us, and we pray that you would fully assure us that Christ is all sufficient, not just for getting us into your family, but for growing and maturing us. Open our eyes to see more of His beauty and His glory and grow us in Him. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.