We Proclaim Christ
We ended last week by seeing that the light at the end of the tunnel, the silver lining on the cloud of suffering is the mystery of Christ in you the Hope of Glory. I don’t feel like we had adequate time to explore that concept so we’re going to start today in that last verse from last week then go through what should be the end of the chapter. Let’s jump right in because we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.
Colossians 1:27 - “To them [The saints] 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.”
The Mystery of Christ in You
Let’s stop right there. What is Paul talking about a mystery? This doesn’t sound like much of a mystery to us today. First off, there are two kinds of mystery ones that remain hidden and ones that are solved. Imagine picking up a mystery novel and it being the first category. We’d get frustrated right? We don’t like mysteries that have no answer or conclusion. This is not the kind of mystery that Paul is talking about. He’s saying that the mystery has been revealed. Let’s see if we can’t see the mystery a little bit better is we put ourselves in their shoes.
Way back in Genesis a couple of generations after the flood, God comes to a man named Abram, and He tells Abram that He’s going to reconcile all things, that He’s going to bless all nations on the Earth by creating a people out of Abraham. He says, “I’m going to create a people out of you, and through this line of people, I’m going to bless all nations on Earth.”
And if you’re familiar with the Old Testament at all, you know that Abram becomes Abraham and we can just start working our way through the scripture into Egypt and into Israel becoming too big in Egypt. Egypt gets concerned and makes all the Israelites slaves and is pretty cruel and harsh to the Israelites. God comes to Moses and says, “I’ve heard the cries of My people. You’re going to deliver them. When God calls you listen. So, he accepts the gig and he leads them out of Egypt into the wilderness. He doesn’t lead them into the Promised Land, because they’re disobedient, but towards the Promised Land.
There, God gives them the Law and says, “Look, you’re probably going to break the Law. So when you break the Law, here’s the sacrificial system.” Because sin requires blood atonement. Then He gives them the sacrificial system and then gives them prophets to remind them of all of this over and over again.
While they are in the wilderness, they have this moving Tabernacle, this moving presence of God. They are continually taught that the God of Israel is the God of everyone and that one day the glory of that God is going to cover the Earth like the waters cover the sea. That there’s coming a day where this is not just an Israelite thing, but this is a world, a global thing.
And so this message continues but it’s very much a mystery of how this is all going to work. Because they’ve got a moving tabernacle, or a temple. Is everybody in the world going to have to come to the temple? Or, maybe they will do a tour and loan the presence of God to the U.S. for two months, then down to Mexico for two months, then the presence of God gets shipped over to Africa for a few months, etc. I mean is that how this thing to work? That seems like a very limited way to experience the majesty of God and it doesn’t seem like it’s covering the whole of creation.
So it’s a mystery until Christ comes, lives out the fullness of the law, goes to the cross, dies, is resurrected, sends the Holy Spirit and seals men and women with the promise. That’s why the text says the mystery has been solved, here it is “Christ in you the Hope of Glory.”
Did you catch that? We become, as believers in Christ, the temple and the dwelling place of the Living God. No more tabernacle. No more holy of holies. We have Immanuel, God with us, and in us.
Even in the book of Acts, they didn’t quite fully understand the mystery. Remember at Pentecost when Peter stands up and he preaches the gospel, and 3,000 people are saved? They’re still all Jews. This is still strictly a Jewish thing. It’s not until Acts 10 that you see the conversion of the first Gentile.
Remember, Peter goes to Cornelius’ house because of a vision, and Cornelius is Roman. He is not a Jew. He is God fearing, which means he liked the Old Testament, but didn’t want to be circumcised and wanted to keep eating bacon. And so Peter begins to unpack the gospel, and he speaks in tongues and then becomes a believer. And then Peter’s like, “Oh no, a Gentile just got saved.” Then in Acts 15, The church gets together to discuss whether or not it’s okay for God to do that. They ask, “Can God save the Gentiles?” And Peter’s like, “He just did. He saved them. I was there.” So they argue for a little bit and then it catches fire and Paul begins his missionary journeys and then here you and I are.
This is the God of the universe doing exactly what He said He was going to do in Genesis 12. And although it was a mystery to the generations before we were sealed with the Holy Spirit and the promise, it’s not a mystery to us. The mystery is Christ in us, the hope of glory, the dwelling place of God.
There’s nothing sacred with this building. This is a double-wide mobile home. We don’t come here and expect to have a supernatural power that’s not available in other places. It’s not a sacred space. The sacred space is now in us. We’ve been sealed with the promise. This is the mystery solved, Christ in us, the hope of glory.
We are the tabernacle and the dwelling place of God. We are. He dwells with us. We have a personal relationship with Him. We don’t offer sacrifices to an altar. That’s not what we do anymore. He dwells in us and this is what Paul’s talking about.
The mystery has been revealed. The solution has been found. When Paul talks about the mystery of Christ in you the hope of Glory he is saying that the long-awaited plot twist has been revealed. You know how much I love movies. This would be like Paul saying spoiler alert in our modern language.
So with the root of the message being this new hope that God doesn’t dwell in temples made by human hands. Let’s now continue in this passage. Colossians 1:28-29, “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.”
In this text, we see the central theme of Christian Ministry. It is right there in the first 3 words. And we are going to see today the Messengers of the ministry, the Message of the ministry, the Means of the ministry, and the Mission of the ministry.
The Messengers of Christian Ministry
We’re going to look at the message of the ministry, but before we get into that, we should see who is carrying the message. If I don’t say something early on you might zone out thinking that this sounds like preacher or pastor work and you’d be missing out.
There is a tendency in our society to hand off the work of Christian Ministry to full-time or bi-vocational Christian workers. As if there are JV and Varsity Christians. Paul is talking to all believers here. He’s not just having a meeting with Epaphras and sending him back to do ministry at the Church of Colossae. Instead, he says, “We Proclaim Christ,” and this is not just a job for pastors or full-time Christian workers, but for all of God’s people.
This is one of the foundational realities of this church. While there is a place for trained men who devote themselves to preach God’s Word (1 Tim. 5:17). It’s also true that every believer is a priest with a ministry to fulfill, and Christ should be at the center of all ministry because He is what every person needs.
So the first thing to understand is that proclaiming Christ is a job for all of God’s people. You have opportunities and venues to proclaim Him to people who would never come to hear me preach, who may never step into a church, and who couldn’t care less about seeking out the truth on their own.
The Message of Christian Ministry
It should come as no surprise that Jesus is the message of all true Christian ministry. But does that mean that we just need to stand on a street corner and say his name? Of course not. Does it mean that every proclamation must rehearse the events of the passion week? That gets a little harder? It begs the question, what should we proclaim about Christ.
Providentially, John Piper, just this week, wrote a great post over at Desiring God that got to the heart of this. The central question of his article was whether or not we should make a “beeline to the cross” in our preaching. What he meant by that is that some preachers will need to deal with a text so they will superficially handle some of the basic features of the text then they will figure out some way to segue into a generic message about the atoning death of Jesus. While that doesn’t sound bad at first (I mean what’s wrong with another presentation of the glory of the gospel?), he argues that there is harm in this:
“Therefore, the primary reason for rejecting preaching that makes “a beeline to the cross” (as we have described it) is that it diminishes the glory of the cross. It thinks it is doing just the opposite. It thinks the cross is more magnified by bringing the sermon to a crescendo every week with a celebration of substitutionary atonement. That is not the way to make much of the glories of the cross. By all means, make sure that the congregation knows the details of the greatest event in the history of the world — the death and resurrection of Jesus. But then spend most of your time preaching the glorious achievements of the cross, which fill the pages of Scripture.
And what we have seen is that every beneficial thing in the Bible — every blessing, every gift, every promise, every gracious warning, every helpful glimpse of God’s glory in every sermon — is blood-bought. It is owing to the cross — to Christ crucified. Every undeserved benefit, every grace, expressed in any text anywhere in the Bible (whether a revealed beauty or ugliness, warning or promise) is a blood-bought grace — including all those in the Old Testament (Romans 3:25; 2 Corinthians 1:20).
The beeline in the Bible is in the other direction. Christ died so that we would make a beeline from the cross to the resurrection to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit to the giving of Scripture to the blood-bought miracle of new birth to the mystery of Christ in you, the hope of glory, to the beauties of Christ-permeating, Christ-exalting self-control and sober-mindedness and love and hospitality without grumbling.”
In other words, Jesus did not die so that a Bible would be written with a thousand pages describing only Calvary. He went to Calvary so that a thousand glories would be described in the Bible for us to see and savor and show through a crucified life.
Proclaiming Christ means more than just telling people about his humiliation on the cross, the work of atonement, and the victory of resurrection. If we stop there, we are in danger of producing spiritually stunted believers or even false converts who can rehearse the details of how salvation works without ever experiencing the rebirth in their hearts.
On the other hand, in our desire to move into the shadow of the cross, we must not lose sight of the basics. This means that we do not proclaim human wisdom. We don’t veer from, supplement, or mix up the revealed truth of God’s word with worldly wisdom. I emphasize this because there is the risk of the message of Christ being undermined.
There is this Christianity-lite out there that doesn’t confront sinners with their guilt and presents a more user-friendly message that doesn’t offend. It fits perfectly with this pervasive idea that you can be a Christian without any real life change. The Pew forum ran a poll on Millennials a few years ago, who were born from 1980 to 1990. 70% of them claimed to be Christians, but that dropped to 33% of them when they started asking about things like active church attendance, reading the Bible, praying, or having any real interaction with the living God of the universe. So, it is a common perception that you can be a Christian without any real allegiance to Jesus Christ or any real love for Him or pursuit of Him or ongoing sanctification.
That is a demonic lie and I think that if you buy into it, then you’ll live an unfruitful, frustrating life and then you’ll die and be judged and not under grace and mercy, but under justice.
Is there seriousness in you about a pursuit of Jesus Christ? If the answer if no, I think you’ve got to go fishing a little bit. I think you’ve got to start digging around in your heart and doing some real significant looking when it comes to what’s actually going on in there and whether or not you’ve bought into some sort of cultural, sociological version of Jesus Christ, or the one that’s unpacked clearly in the Scriptures.
To further illustrate the point that Jesus must be the message of our ministry. C.H. Spurgeon once told a story of a man who travelled many miles to see a specific doctor who understood his sickness; but when he gets to the door they tell him that he is out. “Well,” says he, “then I must wait till he is in.”
“You need not wait,” they reply, “his assistant is at home.” The suffering man, who has been often disappointed, answers, “I do not care about his assistant, I want to see the man himself: mine is a desperate case, but I have heard that this physician has cured the like; I must, therefore, see him.”
“Well,” say they, “he is out; but there are his books; you can see his books.” “Thank you,” he says, “I cannot be content with his books; I want the living man, and nothing less. It is to him that I must speak, and from him I will receive instructions.”
“Do you see that cabinet?” “Yes.” “It is full of his medicines.” The sick man answers, “I dare say they are very good, but they are of no use to me without the doctor: I want their owner to prescribe for me, or I shall die of my disease.”
“But see” cries one, “here is a person who has been cured by him, a man of great experience, who has been present at many remarkable operations. Go into the inquiry-room with him, and he will tell you all about the mode of cure.” The afflicted man answers, “I am much obliged to you, but all your talk only makes me long the more to see the doctor. I came to see him, and I am not going to be put off with anything else. I must see the man himself, for myself. He has made my disease a speciality; he knows how to handle my case, and I will not stop till I see him.”
Spurgeon goes on to say, “Now, if you are seeking Christ, imitate this sick man, or else you will miss the mark altogether. Never be put off with books or conversations. Be not content with Christian people talking to you, or preachers preaching to you, or the Bible being read to you, or prayers being offered for you. Anything short of Jesus will leave you short of salvation. You have to reach Christ, and touch Christ, and nothing short of this will serve your turn.” So we proclaim Christ, his life and work, and all of the multitude of riches found in him. He is the message of the Christian ministry.
The Means of Christian Ministry
Moving on further in Colossians 1:28, “Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom,” we see that the ministry is pushed forward by the proclamation of Christ with warning and teaching in all wisdom to all peoples.
Notice that Paul repeats the phrase “everyone” or “all” several times. It’s possible that he was countering the message of a false teacher who emphasized the exclusivity of their teaching for elite insiders only. Paul is saying, “Every person and every type of person matters to Christ, and so we need to help every person apply the person and work of Christ to his or her unique situation.”
So since our job is to proclaim, does that mean everyone should have their own podcasts or run their own blog where they can spout off their own ideas and religious constructs? Some Christian writing is good, but it is only as good as it’s faithfulness to the word of God. If as you read or listen to any of it you find yourself drawn to it more than you are drawn to Jesus himself then put it down and pick up your Bible and get that love for Jesus back in primary position.
That word translated “proclaim” has a picture of the king giving his message to a herald who would go out to the places where people were gathered and proclaim, “Thus says the king!” You can imagine what happened to heralds who did not stay faithful and true to the message of the king and made up their own messages.
With that in mind, there should be an authority when we proclaim Christ as heralds of the King. While we should listen to people’s point of view and dialogue with them about spiritual matters, we don’t ever want to present Jesus as just one option to consider. He is the only way, the only truth, and the only source of eternal life. He is the sum and substance of the Christian life. So He must be at the center both in evangelism and discipleship.
The text shares three aspects to the ministry of proclamation that I think we should look at further. Warning, Teaching, and Wisdom.
Warning
First, Paul mentions warning everyone. “Warning” is also translated as “admonishing.” The idea is correcting someone who is in sin or in error. In 1 Thessalonians 5:14 Paul says, “We urge you, brethren, admonish the unruly, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with everyone.”
There are times which each of us in our walk with Christ will need to be warned, admonished, encouraged, or helped. Christ is the end of all of those.
This warning reminds me of the Shepherd’s Psalm, Psalm 23. There is a line that says “his rod and his staff they comfort me.” I’ve heard it said that they are a comfort because that is what is used to defend the sheep from attack from wolves and bears. However, those are also the tools that are used to correct and guide the sheep from going off to their destruction.
Sometimes proclamations of warning can be unpleasant like last week talking about all of the suffering that is to be expected in the Christian life. Sometimes it might sting like the shepherd striking you with his rod. The difference in how you perceive the rod of the shepherd depends on whether you are a sheep or a wolf. If you are a wolf the staff is frightening and meant for your destruction. If you are a sheep then the warnings of the shepherd are for your lasting comfort.
Teaching
Second, Paul says that we proclaim Christ by teaching everyone. “Teaching” is the positive side of imparting truth. And like we said before, this is a message that we are all called to proclaim. While only some are gifted to teach publicly, every believer has a teaching role in some capacity. Parents must teach their children (Ephesians 6:4; 2 Timothy 1:5). Older women are to teach younger women (Titus 2:3-5). More mature believers are to teach younger believers (Acts 18:24-26; Titus 1:9).
When we start talking about teaching about Jesus, your mind should go right to the Great Commission given by Jesus before his ascension. Matthew 28:19-20, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
People use this verse to call others into missions, but that “go” is a passive “go.” It means “as you go.” Meaning that in your classroom, at the grocery store, at the park, on vacation, at home, and everywhere we go we are to proclaim Christ. But notice that we don’t just baptize them into the gospel then leave them on their own. We are also called to teach everything that Jesus commanded. Things like listening to him and abiding in him, loving God with your everything, loving your neighbor as yourself, loving and praying for your enemies, taking up your cross and following him, being a servant of all, laying up treasures in heaven instead of on earth.
It is a rich study to go through the gospels and pull out all of the imperatives or demands of Jesus. John Piper who I quoted earlier wrote a book doing exactly this. It’s called, “What Jesus Demands From the World.” It is a great resource and he distilled the demands of Jesus down to 50. For someone who reads Jesus saying “If you love me, keep my commandments.” It is a welcome resource and he pulls everything directly from the gospel with very little reference to the other New Testament writings. I’ll include a link to a full PDF of the book that you can get online, but I’m playing with the idea of that being the next thing that I blog through. Right now, I am going through the New City Catechism, but this would be an excellent weekly reminder as well.
With All Wisdom
With the message being so broad and the means including both warning and teaching, how are we supposed to know what to proclaim? I think that is why Paul includes the phrase, “with all wisdom.” I don’t think this means that we are to impart our wisdom to others but that we are to proclaim with all the wisdom that God supplies us.
Once again, would I be wrong to go stand on a street corner and preach that everyone should repent because the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand? No. That is correct and there may be a time and a place for that. But if that is the only way or the only message that you proclaim then you are not using much wisdom.
We need to use wisdom to discern whether our audience is a believer or unbeliever, are they open to the message or hard-hearted. If they are believers are they obedient and faithful seeing to grow or are they unruly, disobedient, exhausted, or weak? This is what Paul meant by “speaking the truth in love” in Ephesians 4:15. Both a warning and encouragement can be the truth. But speaking in love is the same as proclaiming with all wisdom.
So the message is Christ and we as the messengers must use the means of proclamation to teach and to warn every person using all wisdom to know the difference. But what is the point? Why do Christian Ministry at all?
The Mission of Christian Ministry
Finally, Paul shares the purpose that all of our preaching and teaching is aimed towards. Let’s look at our passage again, “Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.”
The Goal and mission of Christian Ministry is to present every person “mature” in Christ (ESV). Mature is translated as “complete” in the NASB, or “perfect” in both the NIV and New King James.
“Perfect” is a little too strong because we are going to need correction and encouragement up until our final death. It isn’t wrong because in Christ we are perfect because we are in Christ. But Paul is talking about developing believers in their walk to look more and more like Christ.
“Mature” is a little too relative. We tend to think we’re mature as long as we’re doing better than some other “Christians” we know. The translators used this word because Paul contrasts this word with being infants or children in 1st Corinthians 14:20. So, I think that “mature” is a good translation as well.
We should aim to be “complete” in Christ. As we help others grow to spiritual completion as well. Christ redeemed us so he could present us to himself on that final day holy and blameless, but Paul says our mission is not to prepare people to be presented by Christ but for us to present them. The reference that comes to mind is when Paul is writing to Timothy about the word of God in 2 Timothy 3:16-17 where he says, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”
Maturity in Christ
So what does maturity in Christ look like? To describe this, we could go through the entire Bible cataloging all the character traits and behaviors that are commanded and exemplified in the lives of godly saints. But the supreme example is Jesus Christ as the message of our proclamation.
He said that the two greatest commandments are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves (Mark. 12:29-31). These are relational commands. You can measure how mature in Christ you are by assessing your relationships with God and with others.
Love for God is more than just a warm, fuzzy feeling that you may get when you sit in a church service or listen to Christian music. Love for God, like love for any person, begins at a point in time when you enter a personal relationship with Him. So at the point you put your trust in Christ, you begin a relationship with God. But because of our sin even though our standing with him isn’t affected, our relationship can be.
Like all relationships, you have to spend time together if you want to grow in that relationship. As you spend time in God’s Word, you get to know Him more deeply. As you spend time in prayer, you draw near to Him and open your heart to Him. As you learn and obey His commandments, Jesus promises that He and His Father will come to you and make their home with you (John 14:23; Eph. 3:17).
So we are back where we started. Maturity in Christ is the mystery that Paul revealed in verse 27. Christ in you the hope of glory.
An author named Robert Munger has a beautiful little storybook called “My Heart, Christ’s Home,” that pictures this truth very well as they go through the “rooms” of the heart and Christ works maturity into the heart of the believer. They go to the library and see the things that we study and place our attention on, they sit in the dining room and the appetites are changed, they go to the workroom and great things are done as Christ works in us, even that filthy hall closet where all of the things that we want to hold onto but not mention. Jesus comes and cleans them out. That is a picture of maturity. Jesus making his home in your heart.
God also grows Christlike character and conduct in us by refining us through trials. As James 1:2-4 commands, “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” (“Perfect” is the same word translated “complete” or “mature” in our text.) Psalm 119:67 puts it, “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep Your word.”
Another helpful summary of Christlike character and conduct is the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23): “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” I recommend that you commit those verses to memory. If they aren’t in your mind, you’re not likely to work on expressing them in your behavior. Each of those nine qualities has a relational dimension. If you violate them, you will damage your relationships with others.
The New Testament is filled with other lists of godly character qualities. For example, Ephesians 4:25-32 tells us to put aside lying and speak truth; not to sin with anger; to stop stealing and start working; to use our tongues to build up, not to tear down; to clean out all bitterness, wrath, anger, yelling, and slander, along with all malice; and, (Eph. 4:32), “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.”
So you mature in Christ as you allow his word to permeate your heart and mind. As you learn to obey it, you will steadily be transformed into the image of Jesus Christ. You will grow toward maturity in Him. While you’ll never arrive until you see Jesus, “perfect” doesn’t happen in this life, you should be making progress.
And as you grow you are called to help others along the way. You don’t have to be perfect, you don’t have to have degrees or formal training, but you do need to be walking in the Spirit, growing to maturity in Him.
So, it is my prayer that as we go, we would be proclaiming the mighty name of Jesus Christ. Warning people that he is the only hope and teaching them to obey everything that Jesus commands of us with the goal of seeing our mighty Savior and being mature in him.