Suffering Stewards

Put yourself in the shoes of this young Colossian Church. They were happy going about in their ignorance worshiping Caesar or one of the thousand Roman or Greek gods of the day. Maybe you were a farmer so you used to pray to the god of the sun or the rain or fertility that they would bless your herd. You were just trying to exist and feed your family. But then this guy Epaphras comes along and tells you about a man named Jesus. He tells you about his miracles and throws in some of his teachings and you are interested but you aren’t sure what it has to do with you. I mean, after all, Jesus was a Jewish Galilean peasant. You’re not Jewish. You’ve heard that those people don’t eat bacon and you are a pig farmer. Obviously, that’s not for you right?

But the more this guy Ephaphras keeps talking the more you are listening. According to him, there aren’t thousands of gods, there is just one. He’s the god that made all things including you and he’s not happy with you because you aren’t holy the way that he is holy. And because you have sinned he is demanding the death penalty for you.

And before you can even start to argue that you didn’t even know that there were rules, Epaphras tells you that there is good news. This same God that made all things sent his Son down to Earth to become a man, Jesus. And he lived a perfect life and God was pleased with him. The good news is that when he died, he didn’t just die for himself because he had no sin to pay for. So he died as fully God and fully man and asked that God would place all of the sins of humanity on him when he died. God was pleased with this sacrifice and we know that, because three days after the Romans crucified him, he rose from the dead and continued teaching people.

Epaphras told you that if you would trust Jesus, that his death would count for you and that you would get to have his life. That means that your relationship is restored with the God that made you. You can pray to him in Jesus name and he will listen and care because he’s not angry with you. He loves you.

You know a good deal when you hear it, so you gladly accepted Jesus and started meeting together with other people that worship Jesus and you have been learning more about God from the Hebrew writings and from the accounts of the Apostles that lived with Jesus for three years and wrote down everything that he said.

You’ve noticed that since you started following him you treat people differently. You used to have no problem with swindling people in business practices but now you don’t feel right when you do it. You are working at being a better husband or wife and you have told your family about Jesus and what he did for you. Sounds great right?

That’s how these Colossians got started. But after a few years, some other voices started to creep in. And you got busy with your farm and you saw that your competitor had two new oxen and you wished you had some new oxen but you don’t have the money for it. Your son gets sick and is near death and you pray and it doesn’t feel like God is listening. Meanwhile, people are laughing at you and your new beliefs saying that you are foolish to believe these tall tales. They say that the gods want more from you. They push you to start doing different things and they tell you what Rome teaches about the Emperor being the hope of the world and they remind you that Rome has given you lots of good things like roads and a new aqueduct that helps you get water to your pigs without so much work. What has Jesus done for you lately?

Eventually, Epaphras tells you about this guy Paul who told him about the good news when he was in Ephesus. Maybe you look at Paul and you wonder if this Jesus thing makes any difference. You might even doubt that Paul is a good guy to listen to. I mean it seems like this guy is always in prison and he never comes to visit the church. Epaphras says that he’s in prison because he’s preaching the good news and Rome doesn’t like it. But you don’t know for sure. I mean, are we really going to listen to this guy? He’s in prison. What kind of influence is that for our children?

If Paul was really following Jesus, wouldn’t he keep him out of trouble? Maybe, his suffering is a sign that God is not with him. That’s the mindset and the attitude that Paul is going to take and turn it on its head in Colossians. He’s going to tell them that his suffering is part of the ministry that Jesus gave him.

Read Colossians 1:24-27 - “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.”

What is Lacking?

Now, we have to look closely at that first verse because the heresy alarms go off when you first read it, don’t they? So before we can go anywhere else in this verse, we have to silence the alarms that pop-up when we hear the phrase, “I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.” What in the world does Paul mean by this and why shouldn’t we just take a Sharpie and redact this from all of our Bibles?

Doesn’t Mean

First of all, let’s see what Paul doesn’t mean. This is a big rule of hermeneutics (Biblical interpretation) whenever we come to a passage that is hard to understand, we want to interpret it by passages that are less difficult to understand. There are plenty of false teachers who could take a passage like this and interpret it badly then build an entire theology around this bad interpretation because they ignore the obvious teachings that contradict it that are found elsewhere in the Bible. The rule is that Bible interprets Bible. It doesn’t contradict itself so if it appears to in a certain area, then the fault is with our understanding and not with the word itself.

Some people have an issue with this because they want the Bible to agree with them whenever they read it. As if the Holy Spirit was looking for your stamp of approval when he lead these men to write it. I personally get suspicious when I read the Bible for a while and I’m not challenged to think or act differently. If God isn’t any different or higher than what I already think then what is the point of reading or studying at all? I could just ask myself what my opinion is.

First, we know that Paul does not mean that he is adding anything to the finished work of Christ. From the cross, one of Jesus’ last words before he breathed his last was, “It is finished.” Not “I’m done for now.” Not “now it’s your turn.” It is Finished. There is no call to suffer to finish the atonement process. As we saw last week reconciliation has been made. Christ is Enough is the banner over this entire letter. Atonement has been made. It is done. So Paul is clearly not saying that he is somehow adding something to the finished work of Christ. That is antithetical to everything that has come before and will come after in his writings.

Second, we know that Paul is not saying that believers must suffer in order to earn salvation. We’re not like a tough piece of meat that needs to be tenderized by suffering before salvation can take hold. In fact, as we saw last week when we looked at the parable of the sower, it is often when tribulation comes that people fall away and reveal that they never had a reconciled relationship in the first place.

Peter makes it clear in 1st Peter 3:18 that our suffering does not earn us salvation because, “Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.”

In fact, Paul isn’t talking here about salvation at all. The word translated “afflictions” is not used anywhere in the New Testament to refer to Christ’s sacrificial sufferings for our salvation. So Paul does not mean and the New Testament never teaches that we by our suffering must add anything to the sacrificial death that Jesus paid for our sins.

Just as a reminder, the verse that we are looking so closely at is Colossians 1:24 which says, “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.”  

First off, we should make it clear that the sufferings or persecutions that Paul is referring to are those that come upon the Christian precisely because he is a Christian. I’m not talking about not having the newest iPhone, or the free WiFi being slow, or the drive-through person at McDonald’s getting your order wrong. Those are mild annoyances or first world problems. I’m talking about slander, reproach, mockery, scorn, put-downs, cut-downs, verbal flak, verbal abuse, social ostracism, physical torture, and even martyrdom because of your faith in Jesus.

Have you ever experienced any non-physical persecution and hate on your campus or on your job because you're a Christian? Probably not to the extent that you could because you are in a Christian school or workplace. But a lower grade in a course or even lost a job or promotion because of your Christian testimony should not be surprising. Guess what, the Bible teaches that this is all part of normal Christian living and should be expected. Even now, in some countries, physical persecution is a way of life for Christians.

If you aren’t experiencing that then you should be glad that there are other believers who have led the way in persecution to carve out a safe space for you. But I would encourage you to get out of your comfort zone and have some healthy interactions with non-believers. Notice I said healthy interactions. I don’t mean that it is a Christian’s responsibility to go out and be jerks so people will hate them. The expectation should be for a Christian that suffering and tribulation will come, not because we are being antagonistic or rude but because of our association with Christ.

Paul Sees Suffering As Part of Being In Christ

That get’s us back to our original question. What is Paul talking about? I think there is one answer to this question that shows itself in three ways. The main principle here is the same as the main principle that he had been talking about in the previous verses. When you march through the Bible like this it can sometimes be difficult to keep up with the context so I’ll give you a recap.

Verse 2: He’s talking to those saints and faithful brothers in Christ in Colossae.

Verse 4: Their faith in Christ is causing them to live differently.

Verse 14: In Christ, we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Verses 15-17: In Christ, the image of the invisible God, all things were created and all things hold together.

Verse 18: He also created the church and as its head, all believers are in his body.

Verse 21: He has made peace with God in his death, and reconciliation is now available for those who are in Christ.

It would be silly to think that Paul was changing his tune now. The main idea is that of being in Christ. In Christ in his death for redemption, In Christ in his life for reconciliation, and in Christ in his suffering because of resemblance.

Jesus Warns of Suffering

We see the warnings from Jesus in all of the gospel accounts that Christians will be hated and persecuted because of their close connection with Jesus:

Matthew 5:11
“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.”

Matthew 5:44
“But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

Matthew 10:22; Mark 13:13; Luke 21:17
“And you will be hated by all for my name’s sake.”

Matthew 24:9
“Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake.”

John 15:18
“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.”

John 15:20
“Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.”

The message should be pretty clear that Christians are called to suffer. Not as part of their salvation but as a consequence of it. That’s why Paul calls them the sufferings of Christ. Notice in our verse they are called “Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body.” The body of Christ on earth (which is the Church) suffers whenever Christians are persecuted for the name of Christ.

Do you remember what the resurrected Christ asked Saul on the Damascus road, "Why do you persecute Me?" Saul had never met Jesus. He was on his way to persecute Christians. Jesus said, “Why do you persecute me?” because Saul was persecuting Christians who are the body of Christ, his physical manifestation on Earth since his ascension. There is no promise that the man or woman of God is going to magically escape tribulation. That’s not the promise. And I don’t want anyone to buy into a lie that is going to one day betray you. You cannot control the hand of God by your behavior and you can’t put God in your debt.

Filling Up what is Lacking

So, quickly, here are a couple of things that Paul means when he says that through his sufferings in his flesh, he is filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.

First, and most obvious, since Christ is no longer on earth but there is still a hatred for the things of God and for the son of God specifically, Paul is saying that he is suffering on behalf of Christ and for the body as a whole.

Paul is making the promises of Jesus specific to himself. He’s taking his sufferings for the spread of the gospel as a key part of his ministry. As he brought suffering to the church early on, so now he sees that part of his calling is to take some of that suffering for their sake. Remember back to Paul’s conversion when he was drawn by Christ into the ministry. He saw firsthand the afflictions of Christ as he persecuted the church.

And you might remember when Ananias was told to minister to Paul, and he was afraid, Jesus told him essentially, I’m going to make him my messenger and I’m going to show him how much he would suffer for my name. That was in Paul’s calling so he was prepared for it and he rejoiced in it. Not in a weird way or a fake way but in a way that he was pleased that God considered him worthy to bear Jesus’ name and to suffer for the sake of the body.

Second, this one is related but is a little more complicated. To put it simply, Paul could have been referring to the “Afflictions of Christ” as a marker of the end times. These Messianic Woes signal a time of trouble for God’s people that precedes the consummation of the kingdom and the resurrection of the dead. Jesus talks about it in Matthew 24. But it has its roots in places like Ezek. 38 and Dan. 12:1–3. My favorite is in Mark 13:19, “For in those days there will be such tribulation as has not been from the beginning of the creation that God created until now, and never will be. And if the Lord had not cut short the days, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the elect, whom he chose, he shortened the days.” The idea is that developed was that there is a set amount of suffering that must be endured before the end comes.

Remember, this is a day when individualism is not what it is today. You were who you were because of your connection to others. The idea was that the people of God as a whole would suffer a certain set amount before God would come to put a stop to it. So when Paul said that he is filling up what is lacking in Christ’s Afflictions it’s like he was saying, “I rejoice in my sufferings and you should rejoice in your sufferings as well because the more we suffer the closer we are getting to the culmination of all things the return of our Savior to come and establish his everlasting kingdom on earth.”

This isn’t the only place that Paul talked like this. After he had been stoned and left for dead in Lystra, in Acts 14:22, it says he was, “encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.” And in 1st Thessalonians 3:4, “For you yourselves know that we are destined for this. For when we were with you, we kept telling you beforehand that we were to suffer affliction, just as it has come to pass, and just as you know.”

Finally, Paul speaks of filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions as part of his ministry and mission to the Gentiles. Essentially, what is lacking in Christ is the ongoing presence and proclamation of the message of the gospel. We see this in the text as well at the end of verse 25 into verse 26 where he says, “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.”

Christ’s death provided perfect atonement for all who believe, but people can’t believe unless Christ’s followers go everywhere proclaiming the good news. As Paul put it in Romans 10:14, “How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?”

Imagine if a scientist spent his life to find a cure for a disease. The discovery of the cure remains useless unless it is taken out of the laboratory and made available to people all over the world. Those who take it to others may have to sweat and risk their lives to do it. They aren’t adding to the scientist’s work. But it could be said that they are completing the sufferings of the scientist by taking his discovery to the far corners of the earth. One of the things lacking in Christ’s afflictions is not the full sacrifice and atonement he secured on the cross, but completion of bringing the message of that salvation to every person in every corner of the globe.

Alright, so now that everyone is thoroughly depressed and ready to quit because they thought that they were coming to Jesus to get their best life now and then they find out that what’s in store is just more and increased suffering. Let’s get to the good news. Jesus wants us to suffer well, but it is not without a point.

We saw why Paul can rejoice in his sufferings:

• Because he is suffering as a representative of Christ
• Because those sufferings are pushing us closer to the end when Jesus will return
• Because those sufferings allow the spread of the gospel.

But all of those things find their root in the message of the gospel that Paul is preaching to the Gentiles.

We see it in Verse 27, “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.” What was the mysterious message that Paul was bringing to the Gentiles? Christ in you. The hope of Glory! The thought of suffering fades away when you consider the riches of the hope of glory.  

Go to Romans 8:35-39 “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, ”For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Suffering is coming, and we’re all going to have a season where we personally walk through it or someone we love walks through it. It’s imperative to know and grasp and understand that as believers in Christ, difficulty, sorrow, suffering and loss are not punitive. It’s not God going, “Oh, you’re not going to do that? Alright, then. Take that.” The difficulty in sorrow for us is it’s about mercy, not about wrath.

When you struggle, when I struggle, when you get sick, when our loved ones get sick, that’s not God’s wrath; more often than not, it’s His mercy. We’re not being punished. There’s not wrath for those of us who are children of God. We have not been appointed to suffer wrath, but mercy. So the difficulty then, is about the mercy of God. I’ll try and say it this way to make it really, really clear.

The passive wrath of God is, to me, the most terrifying thing in the Bible. Here’s what I mean by passive wrath. For God to leave you healthy and content with everything going perfectly for you all the days of your life, right up into the judgment seat where you’re damned, would be cruel of God. For Him to give you a thorn in your flesh, for Him to break your hip, for Him to get you sick, for Him to free up your hands off of the myth of control and show you how dependent you are on Him, is one of the most merciful things He could ever do. It is not the wrath of God, for those of us who are believers, for difficulties to befall us. Whether that difficulty is physical, whether that difficulty is in our relationships, whatever that difficulty is, He is revealing to you, out of His mercy, your desperate need for Him and your lack of control and your lack of ability to manipulate your environment for your own good.

Stay there in Romans 8:18: I just want to look at one more verse. “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time. . .” Can we agree that the sufferings of this present time are vast? In the grand scheme of things, you and I have it pretty sweet. Hundreds of thousands of people have died over the last couple of years of just disaster and disease. And there are people dying of disease today around the world that we could cure for three dollars at Walgreens. So the suffering today is vast. It’s easy to see. So, listen to what he says here, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”

This is hard for me to get my head around. Even if I use my imagination, it’s hard to get. What could be so compelling in the future that all the suffering of mankind is not worthy to even compare to it? We know who it is who comes reigning on the clouds. It’s not a faceless, nameless Messiah; it’s the crucified, risen Jesus Christ. And when He comes, all death, all disease, all sorrow, all pain, all panic and all anxiety die. Not only does it die, but all that existed before is not even worthy to compare. We don’t even look back on that with, “Man, wasn’t that horrible?” So, how beautiful is this over here? This promise for our future that all that we’ve walked through isn’t worthy to be compared.

So we look at it and what we find out in 1 Corinthians 15 is that you and I have physical bodies. It’s not ethereal, you’re not on a cloud, and you’re not playing a harp. That’s not how this thing ends, with thousands of years of you strumming on a harp with a bunch of other people. You have an imperishable body. You have a body that’s not going to get weak, and it’s not going to get sick. There’s no pain, no suffering, no loss and we don’t even need the sun anymore, for God will be our light. We will dwell with Him. He will dwell with us.

There’s not going to be the need for faith, there’s not going to be the need for us to go, “Help me through this and show me that You’re real. Show me You’re there.” He will dwell with us. We will dwell with Him. I’m hoping that we can fly. We’ll see. I don’t know if that’s going to happen or not, but I can hope. But this is our future. That this is what is to come when the ruling, reigning, anointed One of God returns to call His people to Himself and to present us to God, holy and blameless before Him.