Daily Archives: January 1, 2025

CHRIST IN ME, THE HOPE OF GLORY

have travelled slowly through Paul’s letter to the Colossians, stopping at every new point to examine each truth and draw from them the life lessons that Paul built into them to guide his readers through some treacherous waters. Though he did not know them personally, he knew that false teachers were assaulting their simple faith in Jesus as Lord. He also knew that they needed solid grounding in the Word because, as new Gentile believers, they had no background knowledge of the Old Covenant and its significance for the New.

Paul carefully steered them back to the supremacy and sufficiency of Jesus for faith and life. All the additions and subtractions of unscrupulous false teachers did nothing but confuse and distract these new believers from one simple truth, that God sent Jesus, His own Son, to redeem them from sin…to restore His presence in them.

Paul slowly builds the picture until he reaches the zenith of his message… “Christ in you, the hope of glory! “

An alternative translation clarifies Paul’s disclosure, the secret hidden from their understanding until this moment.

Colossians 1:26-27 NLT
[26] This message was kept secret for centuries and generations past, but now it has been revealed to God’s people. [27] For God wanted them to know that the riches and glory of Christ are for you Gentiles, too. And this is the secret: Christ lives in you. This gives you assurance of sharing his glory.”

God has finally ended the hatred between Jew and Gentile. This was His plan from the beginning of time, to unite all people under one Head, Jesus, and to put His own Spirit in them as a guarantee that each one would be recreated in His image.

Paul fleshed out this goal, but not in so many words, in his instructions to the men and women in Colossae who made up God’s household in that city…wives, husbands, children, slaves and masters. Each had a role to play in God’s divine order. How were they, ex-pagan, new-born believers in God’s family, to live by God’s impossibly high standards?

Paul’s answer is simple, unimbellished and powerfully possible. Jesus Christ is in you by His Spirit. His life in you makes possible God’s predetermined outcome. Wives can submit to their husbands gladly and willingly because Christ is in them. So too, husbands can love their wives; children can submit to and obey their parents; fathers can teach and train their children without provoking them; slaves and masters can run the household without resistance or conflict because…CHRIST IS IN THEM.

For us too, and all believers for all time, this is the one truth and reality that makes this life possible, despite the ungodly environment in which we live. Jesus is not only the centre of the universe and the centre of our personal world but also the very power by which we are energised to live His life while we are here.

What if this truth dominated our thoughts every moment as we navigate the temptations and tests of everyday life? What if we managed every choice and decision by this thought, “Jesus Christ is in me!”?

Paul seems to have got it right.

Galatians 2:20 NLT
[20] “My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Since Paul’s “old self” was dead, he was no longer obliged to take notice of it. Dead people don’t respond! He was infused with a new nature and a new life. He had a new driver in his vehicle. NOT I BUT CHRIST IN ME!

What an amazing difference it would make to us, to our families, our workplaces, our churches, and to the world around us if we were to live our this truth, Christ in me, the hope of glory.

Paul’s statement has in it a powerful reassurance. Since Christ resides in our spirits by His Spirit, we have the guarantee that God will achieve a seemingly impossible purpose. He will transform these sin-riddled, stubbornly independent, rebellious slaves of the devil into perfect replicas of His own Son. How will He do this? By putting the Spirit of His own Son in us!

Paul tells us, in his letter to the Ephesians, that the Holy Spirit is God’s “deposit”, His promise, like an engagement ring, that He has redeemed us, that we belong to Him, and that He will finish what He started. How will He do this? By Christ in us. “Christ lives in you. This gives you assurance of sharing his glory…(becoming exactly like Him).”

Ephesians 1:12-14 NLT
[12] “God’s purpose was that we Jews who were the first to trust in Christ would bring praise and glory to God. [13] And now you Gentiles have also heard the truth, the Good News that God saves you. And when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long ago. [14] The Spirit is God’s guarantee that he will give us the inheritance he promised and that he has purchased us to be his own people. He did this so we would praise and glorify him.”

So, John could write,

1 John 3:2 NLT
[2] “Dear friends, we are already God’s children, but he has not yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears. But we do know that WE WILL BE LIKE HIM, for we will see him as he really is.”

We receive this assurance by faith. We believe what God says, do what He tells us, experience His grace, and the end result is guaranteed.

Do you get it?