Today we are going to look at three of the big ideas in Colossians 1:24-29, including an especially big idea about “progressive revelation”.
1. Christianity involves suffering
Although the Holy Spirit has been provided to us and many miracles have taken place, God has not offered us a magic wand in which anything miraculous will occur on demand whenever we want it.
Jesus was keen that we reorientate ourselves from just thinking about our wishes to focusing on God’s plan. Hence, in the Lord’s Prayer, we don’t start with a wish list. Early on, we say: “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven.”
In the start of this passage in Colossions 1:24-29, we do not hear Paul saying: “Life’s great as an apostle. I have loadsamoney, not a care in the world and never get sick.” He’s actually writing the letter having been arrested! So instead he says (NIV):
Now I rejoice in what I am suffering 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.
Paul suffering is not a surprising thing because, before he was converted to Christianity, back in Act 9 (NIV), God told Ananias:
This man [Paul] is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.”
But Paul talks about in seemingly obscure language how he will “fill up in my flash”. F.F. Bruce suggests that this may have been a reference to “the rabbinical concept of the messianic birth pangs which were to be endured in the last days”. He continues:
Jesus, the Messiah, had suffered on the cross; now his people, the members of the body, had their quota of affliction to bear, and Paul was eager to absorb as much as possible of this in his own “flesh”.
2. Progressive revelation
In the middle of this Colossians passage, in verse 26, Paul refers to “the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the Lord’s people”.
He is referring to what is known as progressive revelation.
The New Testament scholar Ben Witherington III explains why this matters:
Consider for a moment the example of the great trilogy the Lord of the Rings. One cannot tell whether Frodo will have the necessary character to do what is required with the ring until we get to right near the end of the story. Up to that point we do not know whether he will pass the test. Or even more tellingly, we cannot tell whether Gollum is going to end up being an adversary or an assistant in the process of saving the Shire and the world until right near the end. Or what of Gandalf? Will he return in time or at all to help the human race ward off evil? We don’t know until many hundreds of pages into the story.
The Bible involves a similarly epic story from creation through fall through various acts of redemption to the final new creation… We don’t understand the importance of creation to God’s eternal plan until we hear near the end that God’s plan is that all of fallen creation be renewed and restored, and that resurrection be the talisman of the final stage of redemption for human beings themselves.
One of things people assume is that the Old Testament way of saving people was different from the New Testament way.
In much of the Old Testament, it’s assumed that people followed the Law of Moses and sacrificed some animals, and the animal sacrifices somehow caused their sins to be forgiven.
So people assume that the Old Testament was about salvation by works, whereas the New Testament was about salvation by grace. But on a more careful reading of the New Testament, it’s revealed that it is, in fact, Jesus’s death that enables Old Testament Jews to be forgiven.
This centrality of Jesus is hinted at in the Old Testament. The prophet Isaiah, who of course writes about the future coming of Jesus, quotes God’s view on sacrifices:
“The multitude of your sacrifices –
what are they to me?” says the Lord.
“I have more than enough of burnt offerings,
of rams and the fat of fattened animals;
I have no pleasure
in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.”
And this is because sacrifices are merely symbolic. They point forward to the perfect sacrifice of Jesus in the gospels. But that wouldn’t be apparent from reading instructions, written down by Moses, in the book of Exodus.
3. Paul ‘strenuously’ contends for Christ
Verses 28 and 29 give an indication that Paul isn’t just interested in saving souls. Instead, he wants Christians to develop in real discipleship so that they are “fully mature in Christ”.
Paul talks about “admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ”. The everyone is important because it’s not just the elite, or rabbis, or priests or elders who should be mature Christians.
The Biblical Theology Study Bible, edited by D.A. Carson, says:
Since the gospel is proclaimed to all, it is not targeted to only the spiritually or intellectually elite. The gospel grows through the whole world so that everyone may be come fully mature, i.e., entirely focused on and directed by Christ.