"Christ in You" Colossians 1:24-2:5 Sunday Morning Worship Service

So Colossians in chapter one is our text for this morning.

We'll begin in verse 24 and read all the way into chapter 2 and verse 5.

Let me begin by reading from God's Word.

Would you look down at your copy of the scriptures?

Let's hear from the Lord together.

Colossians chapter 1, beginning in verse 24.

Colossians 1 · chapter mention

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, of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known.

The mystery, hidden for ages and generations, but now revealed to his saints.

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.

Him we proclaim, warning everyone, and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.

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 I have for you and for those at Laodicea, and for all who have not seen me face to face, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches, a full assurance of understanding, and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments, 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.

This is the word of the Lord.

Click on the home page of any local church's website, and one of the first tabs that will confront you, the most conspicuous of all the tabs will be the who are we tab.

What are our defining values?

What is our mission?

What are our core principles?

Likewise, if you were to open one of the letters of Paul, it wouldn't take you very long before you found a passage in one of those letters you could describe as a who am I passage?

What are my defining values?

How do I define ministry?

What is my mission?

What is my goal and purpose?

This passage that we just read is one such passage.

It's a mission statement passage.

It's a passage that defines Paul's method for gospel ministry.

And the world in which we live, in which many churches become increasingly untethered from scripture and rely primarily for their guiding light on the wit of a powerful personality.

For those of us who would desire to be faithful to the scriptures, this is a passage in which we find an orienting North Star for our life and ministry.

This passage, I think, the best way to kind of examine it, the best lens to place on it for us this morning would be this passage provides a checkup and a challenge for us as a church and as individual servants of Jesus Christ.

What does the scripture say should be our orienting purpose?

What should be our method for ministry?

And each of us as individual servants of Christ, that is indeed what a Christian is.

A Christian is a follower of Jesus, a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ.

What does it mean to me to be a servant of Jesus?

I can't just define that in any old way.

Jesus has to define that for me.

And in this passage, Jesus, through his appointed apostle Paul, defines for us what genuine Christian ministry looks like.

So I would like to describe this passage this morning, and there's so much to get to, I want to just jump straight in.

This passage shows for us three defining principles for genuine Christian ministry.

And the first is this Christian ministry is characterized by suffering for Christ's body.

Look at verse 24, where Paul writes, 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 in this passage, Paul begins to identify his orienting principles for Christian ministry by saying, I rejoice in my suffering.

It's helpful to remember the context where this statement comes.

Paul began his letter in chapter 1, verse 3 by telling the Colossians that he's praying for them, thanking God for what God has done in the lives of the Colossians.

He's praying that God would continue to conform them to the image of Christ.

And as soon as he mentions Christ, he can't help going into an extended passage from verse 14 all the way through verse 20, extolling the greatness, the majesty, the supremacy of Christ.

And having mentioned who Christ is and what Christ has done, now he says, I've been made a minister of that Christ and of the message of this Christ.

And this passage, verse 24 down to chapter 2, verse 5, defines for us what it means in Paul's mind to be a minister of this Christ.

And the first thing he says is, I suffer for this Christ, specifically for the body of this Christ.

Look again at verse 24.

Paul says, I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions.

Now that's a weird verse.

He could describe suffering in a number of ways, but the way he describes his suffering is filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions.

What does that mean to fill up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions?

What was lacking in Christ's afflictions?

And the first thing to say very briefly is what it doesn't mean.

It does not mean that there was anything lacking in Christ's atoning sufferings.

That is, Jesus' death, his suffering death, was sufficient to pay for all the sins of everyone who would ever believe in Jesus, and nothing could ever be added to it.

How do I know that?

Well, because I just read verse 20.

Look up in your Bibles to verse 20, where it says God was pleased through Christ to reconcile to himself all things except the things that Paul needed to complete.

So Christ's suffering death was sufficient to redeem all of his people for all time.

So what then does it mean for Paul to be filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions?

And many commentators will point to the use of this word, afflictions, is a word that's never used to describe Jesus' atoning death.

Rather, it's a word to describe the experience of human suffering.

And I think that is what Paul is getting at.

He's talking about participation in suffering on behalf of Christ.

It's very clear in the New Testament that for all of those who believe in Jesus, it has been appointed for us to suffer on behalf of Jesus.

Paul says this very clearly, and for example, Philippians 1.29.

For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him, but also suffer for his sake.

Paul has been describing in the book of Colossians and in all of his letters that what it means to be a Christian is to repent of your sins, believe the gospel, and your faith unite you to Christ.

You're placed in a union with Christ so that when God looks at you, he sees the perfect righteousness of Christ covering you.

He delights in you the same way he delights in Christ, because he sees you as united with his son.

But if you are united with Christ and living in this world, then you will end up suffering for this Christ.

That is, the Christ who's been resurrected, ascended, and is seated at the right hand of God, there will be people and programs in this world that would like to afflict that Christ but can't get at him, and so they will get at you.

So we will suffer on behalf of Christ.

But Paul goes further and says that his sufferings are Christ's sufferings.

And what he's speaking of here is that our sufferings on behalf of Christ, because we are united to Christ, our lives are so thoroughly caught up in Christ that he can actually identify our sufferings on behalf of Christ as Christ's sufferings.

Let me look at one verse where we see this principle at play.

This is Paul's conversion experience on the Damascus Road, where Jesus appears to Paul, and Luke says that falling to the ground, Paul heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

What Jesus says to Paul is not you're persecuting the church, not you're persecuting the body, not you're not that you're persecuting my people, but you're persecuting me.

Because Christ is so identified, so united to his people, that to persecute his people is to persecute Christ.

To become a Christian is to become a sharer in the very life of Christ, and so also to become a sharer in the sufferings of Christ, so that when you suffer on behalf of Christ, you're in fact suffering as Christ.

This is what Paul even says in Philippians chapter 3, where he describes his desire that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Philippians 3 · chapter mention

So he is not saying that there is anything lacking in the atoning value of his death on the cross, but rather Paul is saying that my union with Christ is so thorough that when people would attempt to persecute Christ, they end up persecuting me, so that his sufferings are my sufferings and my sufferings are his.

There's a principle of union with Christ, and Paul would even say, privilege to participate in the sufferings of Christ.

That's what he's describing in chapter 1, verse 24.

That's why he says, I rejoice in these sufferings.

I rejoice in the privilege it is to suffer on behalf of Christ.

The great reality that I've been so united to Christ, I suffer not because of who I am, but because of who Christ is, and I'm united to him.

So Paul can say over and over that it's worth it to suffer for Jesus, as he says here or elsewhere in Romans chapter 8, verse 18, he says, I consider the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

Romans 8:18

It is part of sanctification that as a minister of Jesus, as a participant in the life of Jesus, serves Jesus, we encounter sufferings that we can even identify as the sufferings of Christ.

And those pave the way just as Jesus' sufferings gave forth to glory, our sufferings in Christ give way to participation in the same glory.

So Paul says, characteristic of Christian ministry is a willingness to suffer.

But it's not just suffering in and of itself, it's suffering for Christ's body.

Why does he suffer?

Verse 24.

Look at the text again.

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.

We get it four times, twice in the serverse, for your sake, for the sake of the body.

Verse 25, I'm suffering for you.

And chapter 2, verse 1, he says, I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you.

The purpose of Christian ministry is not for personal gain, but a willingness to suffer and labor and toil for the body of Christ.

Now, this is absolutely fundamental to genuine Christian ministry, is that Christian ministry isn't characterized by our setting forth our own personal goals and desires and saying, I'm willing to suffer for that.

In our careers, we might say, I have personal goals I want to attain and I'm willing to suffer for them.

Sleepless nights and enduring all kinds of things in order to attain my goals.

But Paul says that Christian ministry, you don't get to define your goals.

The goal has already been defined.

The goal of Christian ministry is to participate in the same goals that Christ had.

What were Christ's goals?

To redeem all of his people and to see them built up into the fullness of maturity, conformity to himself.

And so Christian ministry is participating in the same goal that Jesus found so worthwhile he would suffer and die for it.

A Christian's ministry, then, is participation in the suffering for the sake of the body of Christ.

Suffering to make the Word of God fully known so that people can hear the gospel and become members of the body of Christ, and suffering for the church so that those who belong to Christ would be built up and fully conformed to Christ.

This is what Paul says is first in his values.

I wonder if that would be first on any church's webpage.

Number one, what defines us?

Suffering for the body of Christ.

That's what defined Paul.

Now, what was the specific ministry that he had?

I think we see a little bit of the attitude Paul has, even in the language he uses, to describe his ministry.

Look at verse 25.

He says that I became a minister according to the stewardship from God given to me for you.

The word he uses that's translated minister is the most generic of all words to describe a servant.

Elsewhere in Scripture it's translated as a servant.

There were many words to describe servants in the ancient world.

Often in ancient literature, you would hear of a king and you would get a description of all of his servants.

And many of the servants were distinguished.

They had some specific office that they fulfilled where they would get a title to go along with their service.

There were cupbearers and there were cooks and there were messengers.

But the word that's here translated minister is the most generic run-of-the-mill word for a servant.

Nothing stand out, nothing special, just a servant.

That's the way Paul thinks of himself.

Not particularly special.

What's special is that he gets to belong to this master.

And look at the way he describes his ministry.

If we go a little bit further in verse 25, he says, I became a minister according to the stewardship from God given to me for you.

The word stewardship is a word used in ancient literature to describe a task that the master of a house would give to one of his servants to operate on his behalf, according to his values and according to his priorities.

And that's how Paul sees himself: run of the mill, ordinary servant, who, miracle of miracles, God himself has entrusted to me a duty to carry out, not based on my own priorities, my own goals, or my own strategies, but based on the priorities, values, and strategies God has set forth for me in Scripture.

That's who how Paul characterizes ministry.

A lowly servant who gets to do something for God as God directs him.

And what is it specifically that God has entrusted to Paul?

The end of verse 25.

Of which I became a minister, according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, here's his stewardship, to make the word of God fully known.

Or as the King James, I think, perfectly captures this, to fulfill the Word of God.

That's his stewardship.

The ministry, the service that God has entrusted to Paul is to fulfill the word of God.

Isn't that delightfully ambiguous?

What does that mean?

To fulfill the word of God?

Is there something lacking in the word of God?

The only thing lacking in the Word of God is that people don't know it or don't know enough of it.

And Paul doesn't limit the scope of this ministry to say, I need to fulfill the Word of God.

Does that mean he needs to make the gospel known to the maximum number of people?

Or does that mean that he needs to make the depths of Scripture known to every person individually?

And the answer to that, of course, would be yes.

To fulfill the word of God would be all truth to all people.

Everyone needs to hear the message of the gospel, and everyone needs to go into the depths of all that is unfit veiled for us in Scripture.

So Paul says, the nature of my ministry is one task.

It's not to create the smoothest programs, it's not to maximize the results and have the maximum number of people in the building.

It's one task to make the word of God fully known, to plumb all the depths of Scripture, to help every single individual I possibly can go as deep in the Bible as I possibly can.

That's the one and only task that God has entrusted to Christian ministry.

All of the Bible for every Christian.

Now, he goes a little bit further and describes this making the Word of God fully known in verse 26 as revealing the mystery hidden for ages and generations, but now revealed to his saints.

And what is that mystery?

Well, we just needed to keep reading in verse 27.

But that moves me to the second point in our outline.

Genuine Christian ministry is characterized by suffering for Christ's body, and what we'll see in verse 27 to 29 is proclaiming Christ.

Proclaiming Christ.

Because that is the mystery.

Look at verse 27.

Paul says that to them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery.

Now, this word that's translated in the ESV as chose is most of the time, this Greek word is translated as willed.

And some of our English translations render it that way.

God willed, God wanted to reveal this mystery.

Now we often will ask ourselves the question, what is God's will for my life?

What does God want me to do?

And this verse, Colossians 1 27, God tells us what He wants for us.

He says what He wants for you, He says what He wants for our church, He says what He wants for our lives.

He wants us to know the riches of this mystery.

So we better care about this.

Churches better care about this, pastors better care about this.

This better characterize our life and ministry.

Because this is what God wants for us.

He wants us to know this mystery.

What is the mystery?

End of verse 27.

Christ in you, the hope of glory.

The mystery is Christ.

Now, the word mystery, the way that Paul uses it in all of his letters, is not something so confounding you could never understand it, but something that was hidden in the old covenant and is now revealed in the new covenant.

And he says, What was hidden in the old covenant and revealed in the new covenant is Christ in you.

So what about Christ was revealed hidden in the old and revealed in the new?

It's not necessarily the person of Christ, because there's much in the scriptures, much in the Old Testament that tells us about a coming Messiah.

But what Paul says was hidden in the old covenant and is now revealed in the new is that the Messiah, when he comes and performs his work, would then live in you.

What was hidden and is now revealed is union with the Messiah, is the living, real, indelible, forever, eternal, mystical, spiritual, real union that every believer has with Christ, so that you live in him and he lives in you.

And Paul says that great reality is the heart of the new covenant.

And the central characteristic of genuine Christian ministry is helping people plumb the depths and experience the fullness of their union with Christ.

I could describe union with Christ in many, many, many ways.

One simple way to describe it is it's the only point of access that you have to getting the benefits that Jesus offers.

So we sang a song a moment ago.

Our children led us in a beautiful song that described Jesus as strong and kind.

How do you access Jesus' strength?

How do you access his kindness?

The answer in Scripture is union with Christ.

What is union with Christ?

Union with Christ is your whole life, your soul, all of you being united to Christ in a real spiritual union.

And the way that you get into this union is through faith.

Humble, submissive, confessing, trusting, repentant, open-handed, I belong to you, Lord, faith is the instrument the Spirit uses to unite you indelibly to Christ.

And in your real union with Christ, you get the whole Christ.

You participate in the fullness of all that Christ is.

So that all that he is, all of his strength, all of his kindness, all of his goodness, all of his power is now accessible to you through faith in him.

What Paul says is characteristic of Christian ministry is this just rock solid conviction that the only thing we need is more of Christ.

The only spiritual issue we have is more of Christ.

The only real problem that any of us ever have in our life is more of Christ, a greater understanding, increasing awareness, a fuller experience of the reality that we have already been united to Christ through faith.

That's Christian ministry.

The heartbeat of Christian ministry is to know more of Christ.

That's what Paul says in verse 27.

To them, what God wants for you is to know the riches of the glory, that you are now in union with Christ.

So what does that practically look like?

How do we make proclaiming Christ and helping people know the fullness of their union with him?

How do we make that the heartbeat of our ministry?

Well, he lays out three principles for us in verse 28.

He says, verse 28, first of all, Him we proclaim.

That is, what is it that I talk about?

What is it that I do?

What is the one central task of Christian ministry?

It is to proclaim Christ.

It's to make him known.

All genuine Christian ministry is Christ-centered ministry.

What else would it be?

If the definition of Christian maturity is knowing and being conformed to Christ, what else would you talk about than Christ?

There's a number of implications of this.

One of those is that there can be no other heartbeat or center of any genuine Christian ministry.

It cannot be man-centered.

The heartbeat and focus of our ministry cannot be my perceived needs in the moment.

There are real perceived needs that I have in any given moment.

I have never had a moment in my life.

Have you?

Where I didn't feel like I needed something.

But oftentimes, I am not the best guide for what I actually need.

I mean, you learn this when you're parenting.

There's all kinds of things that my kids want, but not necessarily is that the thing they need.

So that didn't change when I got older.

I just got more clever at justifying what I want.

What we really need is we need more and more and more and more of Christ.

That's the heart of genuine Christian ministry.

So, how do we do that?

Paul goes further and gives us a second principle for proclaiming Christ.

Verse 28 We are warning everyone, Him we proclaim by.

Warning everyone.

That is a powerful word.

It's a very simple word.

It means exactly what you think it means.

It means warning.

It's a word that would be used in the ancient world, especially in pedagogy, when a teacher is teaching a student to tell them the way you're thinking and the way you are acting, if you don't change course, it's going to lead to disaster.

In fact, sometimes in ancient literature, this word that's translated as warn or admonish in our New Testament, sometimes in ancient literature it'd be translated as punish.

Because a good teacher would love his pupil enough that if he saw his pupil acting in a way that was going to lead to destruction, his warnings would be accompanied by blows to tell him, if you don't change, this pain is nothing compared to what's coming.

And Paul says that's characteristic of real Christian ministry is that we warn people of imminent destruction unless they change.

So what is the warning specifically that Paul says is characteristic of Christian ministry?

What is the disaster that looms unless we change course?

Well, it's divine judgment.

Characteristic of real Christian ministry is a willingness to bold face tell people divine judgment's real.

There's a holy God who really will judge sin.

And unless you turn around, Jesus is the only one who can hide you from the wrath to come.

This is characteristic of Paul's ministry.

He would tell people openly and honestly, he would plead with them to flee from the wrath to come, to hide yourself in Christ, the only one who can deliver you from divine judgment.

But he wouldn't just tell that to unbelievers, he would also say that to believers.

This is characteristic of his ministry.

Look at 1 Thessalonians in chapter 4, where Paul says, For this is the will of God, your sanctification.

That you abstain from sexual immorality, that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God.

That no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you.

Characteristic of real gospel ministry is a willingness to warn unbelievers and believers, you cannot live in unrepentant sin.

God is a holy God who will judge sin.

And unless you repent, divine judgment will wait for you.

Now that's characteristic all over the New Testament.

Jesus, when he begins his ministry, Mark chapter 1, the first word out of Jesus' mouth as he begins to proclaim the gospel is repent.

Mark 1 · chapter mention

And characteristic of Jesus' life was warning people to turn back to God, to repent of sin.

And this is characteristic not just of proclaiming people to come into the kingdom, but also warning people within the kingdom that you must take your sins seriously.

When the Spirit convicts you of sin, you must be willing to surrender and say, Yes, Lord, you're right.

And an open-handed trust, say, direct my affections, direct my life, Savior.

Hebrews in chapter 12, verse 14 crucially says, strive for peace with everyone and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.

There is such a thing as a holiness without which you won't see Jesus.

The Scripture says that the unrepentant will not inherit the kingdom of God.

The warnings that are characteristic of Paul's ministry are the means of grace to preserve God's people from judgment.

So characteristic of real Christian ministry would be a willingness to love people enough to warn them of judgment to come.

I am so thankful that I have frequently seen this as characteristic of ministry in Emmanuel, not just from the pulpit, but in one-to-one relationships.

I've seen over and over people loving one another enough to even put friendships on the line and to warn one another and say, My brother or sister, I love you.

I've seen this pattern in your life.

What's going on?

So let me ask you: would you say that your life is characteristic of being willing to love people enough to warn them and also being humble enough to receive warnings?

When the scripture comes into your life and convicts you that what you're doing is wrong, is it a characteristic pattern of your life to justify and to excuse, or is the characteristic pattern of your life to respond in humble submission to the Word of God and say, Lord, expunge my sin, wipe it clean, I need you, I want you.

Characteristic of Christian ministry is warning and responding to those warnings.

There's a second element of proclaiming Christ here in verse 28.

Look at what else he says.

Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom.

If warning is the negative element, teaching is the positive element.

Teaching would include all that God is and all that God requires of you.

So teaching ministry is a positive ministry in which Christian ministers unveil the Word of God in its totality to help people know all that God is and all that He requires of them.

Let me just make a couple comments about what teaching ministry would be characterized by.

One is any Christ-centered ministry, any proclaiming Christ, must be an exclusive and exhaustive Bible teaching ministry.

If you try to proclaim Christ anywhere else than from the source of the scriptures, you will end up proclaiming a different Christ.

And if you attempt to proclaim a selective Christ from selective passages of scripture, you will end up proclaiming a different Christ.

Because the way that Christ reveals himself is through the pages of Scripture.

Any Christ-centered ministry will be an exclusively and exhaustively Bible-centered ministry.

This is the ministry.

What are we doing at church?

It's to know God and make him known.

And how does he make himself known to us?

Scriptures.

Characteristic of Christian life is an insatiable appetite to know more of Christ through more of his word.

Real Christian ministry is exclusively and exhaustively Bible teaching.

Here's the second thing: Christ-centered ministry would be a God-centered ministry.

And what I mean by that is this there is a natural human tendency to want to restrict a Christ-centered ministry to maybe just those parts of Jesus that we find particularly attractive.

But Jesus identifies himself with the God of the Old Testament, with the God of heaven.

So if we were to restrict the scope of our understanding of who Jesus is to just selected passages in the gospel or elsewhere, we will come away with, as I said a moment ago, a different Jesus.

That wouldn't be a genuinely Christ-centered ministry.

Jesus says that all that is in God is in him.

So if we would know all that is in Christ, we must know all that is in God.

So a Christ-centered ministry must be a God-centered ministry.

It is inherently doctrinal and theological.

A Christ-centered life is one that desires to know God, to know all that characterizes God, to know his attributes, his desires, his will, his providence, his works.

It's a doctrinal, theological ministry and a Bible-based ministry, an exhaustively scripture-saturated ministry.

That's what Paul is talking about when he says, we proclaim him.

We proclaim all of him.

And what is the goal of this teaching ministry?

We see it at the end of verse 28.

Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ.

Some of your translations will have, instead of mature, might have complete.

Or some of your translations might be so audacious as to render this word perfect.

Perfect in Christ, which I think is an excellent translation.

What does Christian minist maturity mean?

It means perfection.

It means complete conformity to the image of Christ.

Absolute full conformity to Christ.

Who said Christian ministry didn't have lofty goals?

No, of course, that isn't obtained in this life.

It's obtained in the next life when God completes the good work that He began in us, as Paul says in Philippians 1.

So for that reason, Paul says, the rest of my life I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me, because the goal that God had in sending his only begotten Son was to redeem a people and to conform them perfectly to the image of his son.

And if that goal was so lofty, so worthwhile that God would suffer and die for it, Paul says, Of course, I will spend the rest of my life endeavoring to participate in that mission, to help people be completely conformed to the image of Christ.

You notice in verse 24 and verse 25, or verse 29 rather, we have a bookend in this paragraph.

He begins the paragraph by saying, This goal of conformity to Christ is so worthwhile, I'll suffer for it in verse 29, I'll labor for it the rest of my life.

But there's another bookend in this section that I want to notice.

Beginning of verse 24, he says, It's so worthwhile that I rejoice in it.

And in chapter 2, verse 5, he says, As I'm seeing you progressing in your conformity to Christ, I'm rejoicing to see your good order and firmness in your faith in Christ.

That's the third characteristic of Christian ministry.

Ministry is characterized by rejoicing in Christian maturity.

Ministry is characterized by rejoicing how good it is to participate in God's people, being conformed to God's image.

What would Christian maturity look like?

Complete conformity to Christ.

But let's spell that out a little bit more, and that's what Paul does in verses 1 through 5 of chapter 2.

Look down at your scriptures at chapter 1, at chapter 2, rather, verse 1.

Paul says, I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea, and for all those who've not seen me face to face, so that your 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.

I just want to pull out an observation about the language Paul uses.

He describes your hearts being encouraged and your minds reaching full assurance of understanding.

What he's talking about is a complete human person.

Hearts in this context seems to focus more on your affections.

What do you love?

What do you delight in?

What makes you enthused?

And mind obviously would be the intellect.

What do you understand?

What do you know?

And what he's describing here is a person whose entire heart, soul, mind is being conformed to Christ, so that you know Christ in an increasing way are reaching for the fullness of knowledge of Christ.

And as you do, your heart is being shaped by that so that you love all that Christ is, so that your heart, your affections, and your mind, your intellect are united, so that you know what you love and you love what you know.

And these two realities, these two aspects of your humanity are mutually reinforcing, so that as you know more of Christ, you love Christ more, and as you love Christ more, you want to know him more, and as you know more of Christ and love more of Christ, that Christ is shaping everything about you.

Your character and your desires and your goals are being reoriented and conformed to Christ.

And as that's happening, Paul says in verse four, there'll be some results.

One of them in verse four is that you'll be foolproof against false arguments.

Verse four, he says, I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments, which is one of the things he's going to endeavor to do in chapter two is dissuade us from any temptation in the world that would cause us to prioritize anything over Christ.

And you see the heart of his desire in verse three.

Look at verse three.

What is it that we know?

What is it that shapes us?

Knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

So, what is Christian maturity?

It is an ever-approaching fuller knowledge and fuller experience of all that is in Christ.

It's an ever-increasing awareness and experience of your union with Christ.

It's an ever-increasing understanding and enjoyment of what is already yours.

You've already been united to Christ.

And Christian maturity is an increasing awareness and enjoyment of Christ.

The more that you understand who you are in Christ, the more you will be empowered to be conformed to his holy character, to be energized to participate in his redemptive mission, and to be enabled to experience his own divine joys.

That's what you were saved for, to be fully conformed to all that Christ is.

And the way that happens is through understanding Scripture that unveils the fullness of Christ.

So Paul says at the beginning of this text, he says at the end of the text, that he's willing to suffer, to proclaim Christ, and as he sees people conform to the image of Christ, his life is characterized by rejoicing.

What greater calling can there be than to know Jesus, to belong to Jesus, and to participate in the same mission for which Jesus died?

That's what we were called to to know Christ and to help one another know Christ.

Father, thank you for the greatness of the calling that is ours.

Oh, how true it is that Paul says that you desire for us to walk worthy of the call.

God, the call that you've given us to know Christ and belong to Him, to enjoy Him, to share in His life, to share in His sufferings, to share in His ministry.

Oh, how overwhelming, how much greater than we could hope for or imagine.

So we pray that you would, by your Spirit, open our eyes to greater awareness of who you are, or humble us with an increasing understanding of how awesome it is to know Jesus.

We ask by your spirit that you would convict us of sin, that we would heed Scripture's warnings.

Increasingly, we would desire to rid ourselves of anything that hinders our pursuit of you.

And we ask even this morning that you would conform us to the image of Christ and pray these things in his name.

Amen.