Mature in Christ
So I pause at your gates once more as my heart and my spirit soar,
And I wish I could love you more, my God and my king. Robin Mark
Read Colossians 1:21-29
These words were written to a not very big church in south-west Turkey, two thousand years back. Here I am this night, as though sitting in the congregation, one of those set apart, Christ in me, a saint. I am listening. I am addressed here and now as though I was one of them, there and then. It has taken the apostle an enormous amount of head work, re-thinking his entire life, the life of his people Israel, and the significance of all world history — that’s all — to make the statements he makes here. Once he realised that Jesus was true he had to realise that Jesus is the truth about everything! The mystery is out! All this lived experience we’ve had, and that humans have always had, only adds up to something because God has met us. He’s done that in Christ. There is no part of life that can survive long-term by quarantining it from him. ‘Christ in you, the hope of glory,’ about sums it up. There would be no more productive aim I could have in life than to know Jesus and his significance well and better. To be mature in Christ is about it.
God my Father, I worship you because in Jesus Christ I have the hope of glory. I thank you for the apostle’s teaching, and that I have it as though written to me. That what you revealed to him is also for me, your word, hidden within the sordid history of Israel, revealed glorious in Jesus; your word hidden in the sordid struggles of all human history, revealed in the glory of Jesus; your word hidden in the silly, the sordid battles of my own life, revealed to me, even me, in Jesus! Nothing I have done today is untouched by Christ. Nothing is untouched by the hope of glory. All has been redeemed. All will be redeemed. My life now cannot help being touched with the hope of glory.