The Gospel for All

Colossians, Part 6: Paul’s mission to make Christ known.

Claude Vignon, “Saint Paul”

A version of this article originally appeared on 1517.

One of the reasons Colossians is so unique is that its author had never visited the congregation to whom he addressed his letter. Unlike Philippians, Ephesians, or either of the Corinthian epistles, for example, Colossians sees Paul write to a church he was familiar with only at a distance (Col. 2:1). He, no doubt, knew of the church and of the work that was occurring there, especially since Epaphras was likely one of his converts (Col. 2:5). The real difference, though, between Colossians and Paul’s other letters is that he doesn’t seem to get as personal as he does in those other epistles, which makes sense if he was writing to a community he didn’t really know. However, near the end of the first chapter, we are given a brief glimpse of Paul’s personal touch as he shares some perspective on the ministry he had been given by Christ himself. He 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, 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. (Col. 1:24–25)

1. Paul’s Divine Calling

In verse 23, he alludes to the fact that he “became a minister” of the gospel by God’s appointment and will (cf. Col. 1:1). His passion and preoccupation for the good news of the resurrected Christ wasn’t a message that he intuited on his own, nor was it something that emerged from within himself. Neither was he in the position of an apostle by his own choosing. Instead, all of his ambitions and aspirations were entirely upended when the Lord interrupted his travels to Damascus and enlisted him in the service of the kingdom of heaven. Saul, the persecutor, became Paul, the evangelist and steward of the gospel of the “forgiveness of sins” (Acts 26:16–18), marking, perhaps, the most stunning vocational transformation the world has ever seen. Even as he was gunning for more of those who belonged to The Way (cf. Acts 9:2; 22:4; 24:14), it was the risen Word who found him and recruited him to make the Word of Promise fully known.

Accordingly, Paul’s fervent and earnest diction was downstream of the change that had come upon him. He had been given a new ministry and calling; he had a divine errand to fulfill. But what was it all about exactly? What was the ministry he had been given? What did that look like? And what does that even mean? What does that involve? Within Paul’s most personal bit of writing to the Colossian congregation, he sheds some light on what Christian ministry is all about.

2. Proclaiming Christ at All Costs

Although it is not explicit, Paul seems to contrast his ministry with that of the syncretistic teachers who were gaining a foothold among the believers at Colossae. Even without referring to the errors that were so evident in the teachings of those self-appointed “wise men,” Paul drives a wedge between them and him so that no one could mistake or misconstrue them. Leading the way is his alarming confession that he “rejoices” in suffering for the sake of the Colossians themselves (Col. 1:24). He is “glad” and “delighted” to endure hardship if it means they might wrest some benefit by it. Their encouragement mattered more to him than his own (Col. 2:1–2). All his thoughts and energies were tailored around making God’s Word “fully known” to the Colossians, which is what will lead them to maturity “in Christ” (Col. 1:28–29). In short, Paul’s mandate is thoroughly other-oriented.

This, to be sure, stands in stark contrast to the self-serving tendencies of the syncretistic teachers. Whereas they were earnest about augmenting their already inflated sense of self-importance, Paul’s ministry was uniquely about self-sacrifice. He gladly and willingly put himself in jeopardy so that they might profit. His primary concern wasn’t about self-preservation, nor whatever might become of his public reputation. Colossians wasn’t a treatise written to boost his apostolic résumé. Despite the room that confined him, nothing could prevent Paul from “struggling” mightily for their sake. “For this, I toil,” he attests (Col. 1:29). The object of his ministerial labors was the maturity and certainty of the Body of Christ. And what was his method? Proclaiming nothing but the Word of Christ alone.

“Him we proclaim,” Paul declares (Col. 1:28), which easily serves as the best encapsulation of his message. His “why” was to announce the good news of “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27) — a task given to him by God for the sake of God’s people. That moment on the Damascus highway, you see, was the veritable crossroads, wherein Paul’s entire being was emptied and put to death and then subsequently raised to life by and filled with Christ alone. His prevailing errand was to see the same work of death and resurrection occur in others, notwithstanding their station in society, race, gender, or pedigree. The ministry of the Word is just that — it’s all about sinners being raised from death to life by the Word.

In a profound way, this ministry involves all of us. We are all “ministers” to one degree or another. There are, of course, some who God calls to minister vocationally, but, properly speaking, the ministry of the Word of Christ isn’t a mandate only for a select few. Indeed, the Lord’s invitation to his disciples is one that still reverberates in our hearts, as he welcomes us to deny ourselves, “take up” our crosses, and follow him (Luke 9:23). The more we “hear again” what we have “heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel” (Col. 1:5), the more we will be taken up by the marvelous mandate of Christian ministry.

3. Toiling with Christ’s Strength

No ministry is without its deterrents or difficulties, though. Ministerial problems seem to be matters of “when,” not “if.” Speaking from my own experience, there is a weariness that accompanies pastoral ministry that is quite unlike other vocations. While there are certainly other more physically jeopardizing professions, at least in the modern West, the spiritual weightiness of church ministry makes it feel massive, no matter where or who you are. This is especially true since what is said or done in the church affects not only lives but also souls.

• Christian ministry is in the business of men’s and women’s souls.

• Nineteenth-century Scottish churchman Patrick Fairbairn made the same assertion when he described the pastoral office as having to do with “the oversight and care of souls.”¹

• Whenever God’s Word is opened, eternity is at stake.

• If that sounds more than a little daunting, that’s because it is.

Despite the monolithic task, Paul plainly says, “For this, I toil.” Despite how messy and miserable Christian ministry is at times, he “rejoices” in it. The demands of the ministry didn’t deter him from it, nor did they cause him to shrink or back down. Actually, he says they energized him to work that much harder. “I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake,” Paul writes, “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” (Col. 1:24). Although his wording is tricky, his point seems to be that his calling as minister for Christ includes all the residue or “leftovers” of “Christ’s afflictions” (cf. 1 Pet. 4:12–13).

Those who belong to Christ through his decisive and definitive suffering on the cross are united to him precisely in their suffering and affliction (cf. Rom. 8:17). When we suffer, Christ suffers with us. “In all their affliction he was afflicted,” the prophet Isaiah says (Isa. 63:9). Paul, of course, knew this firsthand since the Lord who met him on the road also disclosed who it was he was actually persecuting (Acts 9:3–5). Accordingly, Paul is glad he can suffer for Christ since it is precisely in suffering that Christ’s grace is found and his presence known. This, to be sure, doesn’t make it less daunting, but it does imbue you with a sense of delight in the middle of it. As messy and miserable as Christian ministry was, he was thrilled to be engaged in it.

• It’s sort of like the feeling you get when you are set to play in a big sporting event.

• The bigger the opponent is, the more ready to compete you are.

• The bigger the task seems, the more energized you get.

• This, I think, is the picture Paul paints when he says he was “struggling with all his energy.”

• In fact, the words for “struggle” in both Colossians 1:29 and 2:1 (agōnizomai and agōn, respectively) are related terms that evoke scenes of fighting and contending in athletic contests in public arenas.

But where did this “delight” and “energy” come from? Paul is clear on that matter, too: “For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me” (Col. 1:29, emphasis mine). Even as he struggles for the sake of the gospel, he does so with nothing less than the power and efficacy (energeia) of Christ coursing through him. He makes a similar confession to the Corinthians, when he writes, “By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me” (1 Cor. 15:10). “He who gave Paul the task,” R. C. H. Lenski says in his commentary on Colossians, “enables him to toil and strain for it in accord with (κατά) the energy which [God] himself supplies.”²

Paul wasn’t in this position because of anything to do with him. Neither did he continue in it because of anything to do with him. It was all God. He was due all the credit and all the glory. “Paul,” continues Lenski, “is only God’s instrument; he toils and strains, but not with power of his own; the power comes from God. The results are great, but all are due to this communicated power (1 Cor. 15:10). In every way this publication of the blessed mystery is God’s work, the glory of it is his alone.”³ Apart from the grace that God communicates so mightily and faithfully in and to the hearts of his ministers, no minister would last a week struggling for the sake of the gospel. Thankfully, the energy and wherewithal to press on don’t come from our grit, fortitude, or strength. Rather, it comes from the one who “powerfully works within [us]” through his Word and Spirit.

4. The Universal Gospel

The overriding incentive and inspiration behind Paul’s ministry was making “known” what he referred to as “the mystery” (mustērion, Col. 1:25–27). Nearly every Pauline letter in the canon incorporates this language (cf. Col. 4:3; Rom. 11:25; 16:25-26; 1 Cor. 2:7; 4:1; 15:51; Eph. 1:9–10; 3:1–12; 5:32; 6:19; 1 Tim. 3:9, 16), but what exactly is this “mystery” that he says has been revealed to him? Although we might be inclined to think of some whodunnit caper that pits us as the proverbial Sherlock, intuiting the intricacies of God’s wisdom, Paul’s “‘mystery’ refers not so much to undisclosed secrets,” writes James D. G. Dunn, “as to secrets of the divine purpose now revealed by divine agency.”⁴ Instead of a confidential or incomprehensible truth that requires clairvoyance, the biblical “mystery” is evocative of something hidden that has been decisively divulged. The truth of God wasn’t “hidden” so that it stayed out of reach, but so that it could be revealed all the more profoundly.

Those who were troubling the Colossians were doing so by perpetuating the conviction that “full assurance of understanding” and faith were only accessed via some “secret compartment” of religious wisdom that only they could give them (Col. 2:4). It was only accessible to those who followed their lead. Paul rejected this idea wholesale. Contrary to the exclusive knowledge of the syncretistic proponents, the mystery of the gospel was meant to be publicized. It was designed and intended to be made “fully known” to everyone (Col. 1:25). This divine mystery is both “to come,” David M. May continues, “and even now has already, by the power of resurrection (Col. 2:12–15), shaken the present.”⁵ Instead of “confidential knowledge” or secret wisdom given only to a select few or some elite group of patrons, the mystery of God’s gospel was revealed to all in the person of his Son.

Quite simply, this “mystery” is none other than the person and work of Christ, “in whom,” Paul says, “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:2–3). In particular, though, Paul’s “mystery” is a reference to what was accomplished through Christ’s death and resurrection — namely, “redemption” and “forgiveness of sins” (Col. 1:14), not merely for a select group of people but for the whole world. This is nothing less than the mystery of grace that was baked into God’s plan from the very start when he promised Abram that through him “all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:1–3). “Paul’s revelation,” writes David M. May, “was that Christ’s reconciling and liberating work was not an afterthought for God, but it was a part of God’s plan from the beginning.”⁶ In his commentary on Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, R. C. H. Lenski agrees:

God’s whole plan, hidden so long, now has the veil withdrawn as Christ’s redemption reaches its consummation in the New Testament Ecclesia. In the church as gathered from over all the world, one great spiritual household and body (Eph. 2:16, 19; 3:6), God’s wisdom shines forth most wondrously. What God’s wisdom had in mind from creation onward is made plain to the angelic world only as the church now finally rises in its spiritual splendor and is actually realized through Christ and his universal gospel.”⁷

The Christ of God is the embodiment and encapsulation of the divine prerogative to establish a great kingdom “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Rev. 7:9–10). In him, God’s magnificent and marvelous presence is made available for all people and for all time. No matter one’s race, gender, heritage, or creed, the blood of Christ poured out on the cross welcomes and reconciles all. In and through the work of Christ, Gentiles are no longer obligated to become Jews in order to secure their eternal standing. Instead, they are welcomed into the kingdom of heaven by sheer faith in the crucified and risen Messiah. All are one in him — all are made “fellow heirs, and members of the same body” (Eph. 3:6). What was “hidden for ages” was now revealed “to his saints” and to the world. What was known only in “types and shadows” had “become flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14).

The prevailing theme of God’s good news is its all-encompassing welcome to the very worst of sinners. “The glory of this mystery lies not in its exclusiveness, belonging to a few, but in its inclusiveness, for it is intended for the nations,” writes R. C. Lucas, the former rector of St. Helen’s Bishopsgate in London. “This ‘mystery’ is nothing more nor less than the gospel of Christ: and it is brought to people not by semi-secret rites but by public proclamation.”⁸ There is no one — not now, not ever — who cannot be included in the family of God through the efficacy of Christ’s saving power, whose work was accomplished and offered for all to receive by faith. No one is too far gone for him. Indeed, in the paradigm of the gospel, there is no such thing as hopeless cases. No matter your past, your baggage, your scars, your sins, or your failures, the mystery of grace, which is the abiding announcement of Christian ministry, says that everything has been taken care of by he who is both Lord and Christ.

1. Patrick Fairbairn, Pastoral Theology: A Treatise on the Office and Duties of the Christian Pastor (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1875), 39.

2. R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Paul’s Epistles to the Colossians, to the Thessalonians, to Timothy, to Titus, and to Philemon (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1961), 82.

3. Lenski, Colossians, 82.

4. James D. G. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014), 120.

5. David M. May, “Servant and steward of the mystery: Colossians 1:26-27; 2:2; 4:3,” Review & Expositor 116.4 (2019): 474.

6. May, 472.

7. R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Paul’s Epistles to the Galatians, to the Ephesians, to the Philippians (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1961), 482.

8. R. C. Lucas, The Message of Colossians & Philemon: Fullness and Freedom, The Bible Speaks Today Series (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2020), 69.