September 4 – Colossians 1:24-29

Main focus: The work of Jesus in and through us.

Last week we looked at Paul’s ode to Jesus, the preeminent King through whom and for whom all things were made. We could call that section the how of the gospel (God’s power) and the why of the gospel (God’s glory). This week we’ll get into more of the what of the gospel, what Jesus does in and through us.

In evangelical churches like ours, we tend to think that the primary thing Jesus does for us is make us righteous before God—this is justification. And Jesus certainly does that. But, in fact, there’s a higher, more important thing that Jesus does for us that includes justification, along with a number of other things: he unites us to himself. This is what Paul’s talking about in 1:27-28 when he says that the believers at Colossae are in Christ and Christ is in them. Theologians call this “union with Christ,” which is a massive concept that includes the whole gamut of salvation, from election (Eph 1:5) to regeneration (Eph 2:5) to justification (Rom 8:1) to sanctification (2 Cor 3:18) and all the way to resurrection and glorification (Rom 8:30).

Here’s how scholar Grant Macaskill describes Paul’s concept of union with Christ:

Paul’s personal hope is expressed in his statement “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). This does not mean that his particular distinctive identity has been erased from existence; he still greets the church to which he writes as “Paul” and still writes in a way that is shaped by his past. But something has changed, and it is not just what his life is directed toward, or how he seeks to live it, but it is his most basic sense of who he is, of the person that inhabits the space occupied by his body, of who gets credit for what his limbs or lips do, of who he is becoming. He is not becoming a better version of Paul; he is becoming Paul-in-Christ. He is metamorphosing into the likeness of Jesus. As difficult as it is for us to comprehend the meaning of such language, a proper understanding of Paul’s concept of the Christian moral life demands it.^[1]Grant Macaskill, Living in Union with Christ, ix

That’s a far more complete understanding of what it means to be “in Christ” than simply being justified. The true hope of the gospel, the work that Jesus does in us, is for us to become one with him. “He is our hope.”^[2]Macaskill, vii Don’t miss the significance of this (we’ll touch on it in discussion): most of us live our Christian lives trying to become a better version of me, but Jesus intends to create me-in-Christ.

Also in discussion we’ll briefly hit the “mystery” language that Paul talks about here. In his day, it was a gargantuan thing for him to say the Gentiles could receive forgiveness from the God of Israel through Jesus. Today, we tend to gloss over this monumental development in the storyline of the Bible. But, many of us at Vintage have 0% Jewish ancestry, and if that’s true for you, when you read 1:26-27 you’re reading your own adoption record. And that is good news.