The Glorious Mystery
Colossians 1:24-27 · Miles Driedger · Sep 13, 2026
Colossians, No. 07
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/913261755433000

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

We are continuing on in our series in Colossians. This morning's message is entitled, The Glorious Mystery. Is anyone here a fan of mysteries? I was hoping Bob and Margaret would be here because Bob's been telling me about this Sherlock Holmes series they've been watching. Our boys, our younger ones especially, are into the Hardy Boys mysteries. Anybody, any, it's got a boy, yeah, read the Hardy Boys when you were young? The same plot 100 times over, but it's always, you know. And any of the girls into the Nancy Drew? That was like the girl alternative. Yeah, Nancy Drew. Oh, my mom always talked about another one she would read. Anyway.

But we're going to be talking this morning about a mystery. And now that I've totally set up your minds in terms of the modern concept of a mystery or a mystery novel, a mystery story, I want you to put that completely out of your minds because everything that you've learned from pop culture about what a mystery is doesn't really apply or not very well. If you ask the average person today to define the word mystery, what are they going to say? Well, something that we can't understand. Oh, it's just a mystery. We don't understand it. It's a puzzle. It's something unknown. Something that's shrouded in uncertainty. And if you have that definition in your mind as we approach this text in Colossians, you're gonna be confused.

Paul uses the word mystery two times in these verses. And that English word mystery is really just a transliteration of the Greek word musterion. And the idea behind the Greek word is not something mysterious, not something unknown. It actually means something that has been revealed. And sometimes I hear people say, well, the Bible says that this is a mystery, so we shouldn't really try to understand that. We should just accept the fact that it's mysterious, it's a mystery, we can't understand it. And that's really too bad because they've got the wrong definition of mystery. The mystery in these verses isn't something we can't understand, it's something that has been revealed, something that has been made known.

And that's Paul's whole point here. This is something you need to know as a Christian. The whole idea here in chapter one is that God is working out things in the church. that have eternal ramifications. And the mystery is really all about how God is carrying that out. So we need to understand it. This is critical information right here in this morning's verses.

So let's ask the Lord to teach us as we enter in upon that. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you that you've given it to us so that we can understand it, so that we can know the things that we need to know. And that's so true every time we come to the Word and this morning as well. So, Lord, I pray that you would instruct us. I pray that you would give us attentive minds because your Word communicates to our our thinking, our understanding, and I pray that we would be just very, very engrossed in what it is that you have communicated to us here because it's important.

You wouldn't have put it in your word if it wasn't important, and so I pray that you would just give us hungry hearts to hear your word this morning, and that you would unfold it in a way to us that is clear and intelligible. I pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Now, chapter one is packed. There's so much in this chapter. And as I was kind of, you know, wanting to write a bit of a review and get the context in mind, I kept ending up with, you know, it would have taken the whole entire time just to do that. But I still want to step back and get the big picture of what Paul has been talking about.

And one of the things, one of the large sections of Colossians 1, of the first chapter, is Paul explaining his prayer for the Colossians. He tells the Colossian believers that he's praying for them. Remember, Paul had probably never met these believers, but he had heard about their salvation in Jesus Christ. And so he wants to write to them and tell them some things, but he specifically begins by telling them that he's praying for them. Well, why is that? Why is he praying for them?

Because prayer, we need to understand prayer is a simple thing. We had a prayer meeting on Friday night, which some of you were able to come to. Sorry, it was really last minute notice, but it was a wonderful time of being able to just, as a body, present our requests to God. Because that's what prayer is. Prayer is presenting a request.

It's asking God to do something. asking God to undertake in something that needs to be done or accomplished, right? And Paul knew that for the Colossians, their faith in Jesus Christ was the starting point, the beginning point. But it wasn't the end, right? God still had work to carry out and accomplish in them. And understanding that sheds a lot of light on things.

Because as a Christian, you're not just waiting here in this world for the Lord to take you home. I don't know, do you ever get that, well I'm just waiting for the day I go to be with the Lord, and that's a wonderful thing to expect and wait for, and some of us are closer than others, of course none of us knows. I have a bet going with Mike, I said if I die first, you can do my funeral. But he says he's going to beat me, but we don't know, right? And what we need to understand is that the Lord has a purpose for us here. We're not just waiting to go home, as wonderful as it is.

But what's the other thing that's implied by praying for the Colossians? The first thing is that God is actually doing something in their lives, that there's something that needs to be done or accomplished, right? But the other thing that's implied by prayer, by asking God to do something, is just in the fact that you don't make requests for things that are already done or already guaranteed. You request things that need to be done, things that may or may not happen. Does that make sense? So what's the point?

The point is that Paul knows that not all believers grow up and mature. Some believers remain in infancy, tragically, until the day that they go home, right? And that's not the Lord's desire for you as a Christian, and that's not Paul's desire for the Colossians either. But spiritual growth is not guaranteed, and so Paul prays for this, and that's the goal.

That's the goal that he's praying towards. I really want to draw your attention in chapter 1 to verses 10 through 12, kind of that portion there in chapter 1. Because right there, Paul, he's explaining what he's praying for in them, and he describes the kind of life or the kind of walk that's really the earmark of a mature Christian. He describes a walk that is worthy of the Lord, pleasing to the Lord, bearing fruit in every good work, increasing in the knowledge of God, strengthened with all power according to his glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience, joyously giving thanks to the Father. And so Paul is praying that the Colossians would mature into this kind of Christian life, the kind of Christian life that's described there.

And the big question is why? Why does that matter? Why does it matter that they actually mature into this? Why does Paul take the time? He says he continuously prays for this. He's constantly and continually praying for the Colossians and not just the Colossians, right? He actually asked them to pass this letter around. He was praying this way for all believers, right? And why is it so important that the Christian grow up and learn to walk in this way?

What's the problem with just living your Christian life the way that you want? What's the problem with just, you know, I mean, doesn't grace mean that doesn't matter what I do? I've got eternal salvation that's guaranteed, that's in the bank. Who cares what I do, right? But it's true, it's true that this is not an issue of losing your salvation or not, right? That's guaranteed.

Paul's not praying for that, that's already happened. They put their faith in Jesus Christ, they're eternally saved. He's not asking the Lord to keep them saved. He's asking the Lord to mature them, to grow them up. This is really a question of whether or not God's purpose for you here as a Christian is being fulfilled. God has redeemed us out of this world. He has reconciled us to himself through the blood of the cross. And that's what verses 13 and 14 talk about, right? It says, for he rescued us. And that word there in the Greek for rescued, it's almost like dragging or carrying someone out of danger's way.

He brought us out of the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son. in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. And what we really have in view here, if you notice it, right, we have two kingdoms, you could say. We have the domain of darkness and we have the kingdom of the Beloved Son. And we have been transferred out of one and into the other.

And we're coming up to chapter two, verses 20 through 21, Paul writes, if you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, this is a really strange phrase, right? Why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourselves to, and he goes on, right?

But the fact is that we don't live in this world. In a judicial sense, we have died out of this world. In other words, we're detached from it. So that's true, but at the same time, we still walk around in this domain of darkness. So we walk around in this domain of darkness, but we don't belong to it. We belong to something else, and we've been rescued out of this world.

And yet we still live in this world. This is the difficulty, learning to understand how this all works. And we need to answer the question, what is God's purpose in rescuing us out of this dark world but still leaving us in it? That's a really important question to answer for yourself, right? Because we're not just looking to the day that we go home. The Lord has a purpose for you here and now.

Now notice what Paul says about Jesus in verse 18, because this is where this connects. In verse 18, I don't have this on the PowerPoint, just follow along in your Bible, he says, he is also head of the body of the church, okay? And I wanted to get into explaining this a little bit more, but if you look in this section here where Paul is talking about Jesus, the first thing he shows us is that he's the creator of this entire universe, this whole created realm, what we call the first creation, right? And then in verse 18, he turns and says, and he's also head of the body of the church.

Right? Which implies this whole domain of darkness and the kingdom of the beloved son. They're two domains, two realms. And Jesus Christ being the head of the body, the church tells us that this is a whole new thing. This is a whole new creation. And Jesus is the head of that body. But while Jesus is the head of the body in heaven, we as the church, we are spiritually positioned with him in heaven, right?

But we are left here on the earth. We walk around here on the earth. And that leaves us in this strange position, but we have to understand that God has a reason for it. And what we want to do here is just look at two reasons that we see in scripture for why the Lord has us here. The first thing is that the church is present in the world to be a witness to the Lord Jesus Christ, right? Remember back in verse 17 here where it says that Jesus is holding all things together.

Well, what's that all about? There's a parallel verse in Peter, 2 Peter 3, 7, but by his word, the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. You see how the same thing is there? What's happening? This present heavens and earth, this present universe is being reserved or kept. It's being held together, but not forever, right? Because there will come a day of judgment and destruction. Right? Jesus is restraining, though. He's restraining that catastrophic judgment that will fall on the world. But why?

And Peter gives us the answer two verses down. He says this, He's patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance. And so, this this fact that Jesus is holding all things together has an awful lot to do with the fact that he is being patient and he is waiting he is wishing for all for any who will respond to come to him and receive his gift of salvation, right? And the church, you and I, play a major role in that. We play a very critical role in this whole work that the Lord is carrying out right now.

What did Jesus say to his disciples before he went to heaven? This is one of his last statements. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you shall be my witnesses. both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and even to the remotest part of the earth. We are in that remotest part of the earth. We're a long way from Jerusalem.

And the church has been a witness to the Lord Jesus Christ here as well. Part of the reason that the Lord keeps you here in this dark world is so that through you, the world would see something of the Lord Jesus. That's what it means to be a witness. The Lord wants the world to see something of Jesus in you. And if we're not maturing and learning to walk by faith, then there's no witness. The witness to the Lord Jesus Christ requires maturing and growing in the faith.

And that's part of the reason that Paul is praying for this for the Colossians. The second purpose in the Lord rescuing us out of this world, but leaving us here in it, is that God is preparing the church to be presented to Christ holy and blameless. There's a great parallel to this thought in Ephesians 5. And Paul's talking about marriage, you're probably familiar with his passage, but But then he begins to talk about the Lord Jesus Christ in the church because that's the picture, right?

It's Christ in the church that demonstrates how marriage is supposed to work. He says, husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her, so that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she would be holy and blameless. God's aim for you as a part of the body of Christ, the bride of Christ, is that you would be made suitable to his son. That you would be presented holy and blameless, no spot or wrinkle. And Paul talks about presenting believers to Christ as a pure bride, right?

2 Corinthians 11, 12, for I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy, for I betrothed you to one husband so that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin. But we have to understand, we have to recognize in this passage that Paul has a concern, right? He's not actually totally sure whether he will be able to present the Corinthians to the Lord in that way. That's clear in the text because in 11 verse three, the next verse, he says, but I'm afraid that as a serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led away from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. Here's the point, and we gotta be really clear on this.

While every Christian, everyone who's put their faith in Jesus Christ, his death on the cross for them and his resurrection from the dead, every Christian has been rescued out of this dark world, and they have the guarantee of eternal life, and they stand justified before the Father, not every Christian will be presented to Christ as a pure and spotless virgin. There are going to be Christians who arrive before Christ who've never learned to walk in dependence on the Lord Jesus Christ. Christians who were deceived, as Paul talks about here to the Colossians, they've been deceived by philosophy and empty deception. Things which have the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion.

Do they have a righteous standing before God? Yes. Are they eternally saved? Yes. But what we're talking about here is whether their walk matches their righteous position. Not every believer has that. But that's what the Lord desires. He wants to prepare the church as a people who walk in a way that is consistent with their righteous standing in Christ.

And I hope you see the connection between what I'm saying here and what Paul wrote in verses 21 and 23 here in Colossians chapter 1. He says, and although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, yet he has now reconciled you in his fleshly body through death. So you're reconciled to God, you stand before him justified, but it has a purpose, in order. to present you before him holy and blameless and beyond reproach. And then we have verse 23, if. And this is where it's critical that we understand what Paul's talking about.

Because if we take this if, right, if indeed you continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast, and we say that, you know, every believer is guaranteed to be presented before him blameless, you know, holy and blameless, then we put a condition on your eternal salvation. The if indeed you continue in the faith, it has to do with your walk, not your position. Otherwise, Paul is making your eternal salvation, your position, dependent on continuing in the faith. It's not our position that depends on continuing faith, it's our walk, it's our condition that depends on that.

So hopefully that gives us a little bit of a handle on why God has left us in this dark world, right? The first thing is that we're here to be a witness, right? The purpose of drawing others to salvation in Jesus Christ. The other purpose is that there's a preparatory work going on. The Lord desires to prepare you as a Christian to be presented to Christ as a pure bride, holy and blameless. And I want you to keep those in mind Because what we're gonna see, have you set all that up? We're gonna see how both of those purposes are fulfilled by what Paul here calls the mystery. Because if you set out to try to fulfill those two things in your effort, you will miserably fail. I guarantee it.

But Paul is gonna tell us exactly how these things are to be fulfilled. And so in verses 24 through 27, Paul talks about this ministry that God gave him. And essentially, Paul's mission or his ministry was to proclaim this mystery to the church. And in verse 24, Paul begins to explain his ministry with this strange statement.

He says, now, I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh, I do my share on behalf of the body, which is the church, in filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions. And you want to say, really, Paul? You rejoice about your suffering? And Paul, what's this about filling up what's lacking in Christ's afflictions? Doesn't that phrase almost sound heretical to you? Like Jesus didn't get the job done, you know? But Paul had a deep understanding of what it meant to share in Christ's sufferings.

And think about it, from the moment that Paul met Jesus on the Damascus road, what did Jesus say? What was his first words? Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting the church? No, why are you persecuting me? Right? Do you ever think Paul spent a bit of time pondering that, just that single phrase? The suffering that Paul himself was inflicting on the church at that point in his life personally touched Jesus. And Jesus said, Paul, why are you, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And over and over in the New Testament, the Christian suffering is described as being Christ's suffering.

Romans 8, 17, and if children heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed, and the sense there is that we do, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him. We share in his suffering. This is not just our suffering. We share it with him. Philippians 3, 10, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings. being conformed to his death. And Paul's saying that Christ's suffering on the cross completed the work of reconciling us to God. But there's something more. There's continuing work in the church. And all those who have been reconciled to God need to be brought to maturity.

And every mother here understands this, because delivering the baby is only the first stage of labor and suffering, right? You've got a lot of years ahead of you before that baby's grown up and that's going to involve more, more labor and suffering. Not that it's a horrible thing, it's a wonderful thing, but it's labor and it's grievous to us at times.

Right? And there's suffering involved in that whole work of bringing a newborn child all the way to maturity. And Paul is talking in terms of that suffering. His ministry is about bringing baby believers to maturity. Right? But it's really Christ's labor in him. Paul's suffering is Christ's suffering. His labor is Christ's labor. And Paul can rejoice in all of this. He can rejoice in it because, why? Because his eye is not on the suffering, right? His eye is on the goal. He's looking toward the end goal. Where is this all headed? Notice what Paul says.

He says that his suffering is on behalf of the body, or for the sake of the body. He's looking forward to the day when the church is presented to the Lord Jesus. And all the labor that he is engaging in and all the suffering that it requires is completely worth it. It's completely worth it on the day that he presents the bride to Christ.

And Paul could rejoice because he knew that this momentary suffering was going to have eternal results. Eternal results that were totally worthwhile. And so what exactly was Paul's labor? What was his labor that caused suffering and grief to him at times?

He tells us in verse 25, he says, of the church, I was made a minister according to the stewardship from God bestowed on me for your benefit so that I might fully carry out the preaching of the word. There's a lot there, right? When you see the word there, I was made a minister, I want you to get the clergyman out of your mind, okay? The word minister just means servant, okay? And we might simply translate that first phrase, I was made a servant of the church, or a servant to the church.

Paul's mission was to serve the church. And this servant role was according to the stewardship from God bestowed on me for your benefit. Again, a lot of big words in there, what does that mean? But essentially, Paul is saying that the role that God placed him into is a role that is intended to benefit the church. This role of service to the church is a role that is intended to benefit the church. And not just the Colossians, right? But every generation of Christians. Jesus had personally instructed Paul in the truth that the church needed to know. And his service, his ministry, was to teach it to the church.

And we're still benefiting from Paul's ministry today because part of Paul's mission was to write these things down in scripture. That's why we have this letter to the Colossians, right? And he says that, he says, so that I might fully carry out the preaching of the word of God. And in that phrase there, the word preaching, Isn't actually in the original that a really direct translation that phrase would be to complete the Word of God Now now that doesn't mean that Paul was the the last author of Scripture, right?

John was the last one to write but it does mean that that Paul's revelation of the mystery that he's leading up to here, this mystery, the Logos or the message of God was completed by that revelation. The revelation of this truth puts the capstone on God's word. The truth of this mystery answers all the questions that were left unanswered throughout all of the Old Testament scripture. Is it really? Is it really that big a thing? Yes, it is. Look at verse 26.

That is, the mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations, but has now been manifested to his saints. This, what Paul is bringing to them, this message, was hidden all the way down through the ages. God had never revealed this. No believer throughout all of history had ever conceived of this fact, of this truth until now. This message that Jesus gave to Paul for the church was a brand new revelation.

This was brand new. Paul says that it is now being manifested, or we could say openly displayed, to his saints. And who are the saints? Who is that? Well, that's the church. At the point at which Paul is writing, that's the church. Saints don't let that word carry all the religious baggage that it has in our world. Saints is related to the word for holy, which really just means to be set apart. Hey, the church has been made up of all of those who are set apart to Jesus Christ. And the church is made up from every tribe and nation and tongue.

In verse 27 there, it says, to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of his mystery among the Gentiles. And the word translated Gentiles there is just the Greek word ethnos, which is often translated Gentiles, but that's only because Gentiles means everyone who's not a Jew. And of course this message is for the Jews as well, right? But this refers to all of the nations. And this message that Paul has brought to them is for everyone who believes in Jesus Christ as their Savior. no matter where you're from, no matter what nation or ethnicity you belong to.

So what is it? What is this message that is so important for the church to know? What is this message that answers all of these questions that were left kind of unanswered in the Old Testament? What is this message that answers God's purpose for leaving the church in the world right now? Okay, what is it that was not revealed until that point in history? What is the mystery?

And at the end of verse 27, Paul gives it in seven one-syllable words. This is the mystery. Christ in you, the hope of glory. We just have to pause and ponder those words because those seven words are earth-shattering news. I mean, we've been around the church so long, right, that we read those things, we pass right by it, oh yeah, Christ in you, the hope of glory. Turn it into a song or something, I don't know, but we don't think about them. But this is arguably the greatest revelation that God has ever given to mankind. This is huge. So what does it mean? What does that mean? Christ in you, the hope of glory.

Well, understand that Christ is not something new, okay? Christ is just a word, right? But it's the Greek word for the Hebrew word, Messiah. That would be the Greek translation of the Hebrew word for Messiah, and it's just Christos in the Greek, and we just transliterate it into English. But Christ is a title, and it's the same word as Messiah all throughout the Old Testament. And the Messiah has been foretold all the way since Genesis 3, right? The seed of the woman who had crushed the head of the serpent. The word Christ or Messiah simply means to be anointed. And well, what does anointed mean? Great, you know, a lot of help that is. But anointed means to be appointed to a specific role.

Best way to probably picture this is remember King David when he was, before he was king, right? He was a shepherd out in the fields and nobody thought David is even worth evaluating for this king business. But Samuel says, do you have another son? Because none of these guys are the one. And they bring in David and what does he do?

He anoints him. which is, symbolically, he poured oil on his head. But the point is that he was visibly displaying or demonstrating what God was doing. God was the one who was anointing or appointing David to a specific role, which was to be king. And Jesus is the parallel to that.

Jesus is the anointed king. He's not reigning as king right now, we're always very clear about that here, right? He's the coming king. But he is the king. Just like David had every right to the throne from the moment he was anointed, but he refused to take it for himself. Right? Jesus Christ is the anointed king, and he will return to reign as king. But that's what it means to be anointed.

But more than that, because before Jesus could reign as king, Right? He had a critically important work to do. What was that? What was the Messiah anointed or appointed to do all the way from Genesis 3? He was appointed to be the Savior, to save the world from their sins. And that was the mission that Jesus was appointed to come and fulfill. And that message is all throughout the Old Testament, right? So the fact that God would send the Messiah to be a savior is something new. Sorry, was not something new. That was old news. What is new is the rest of the sentence.

Christ in you, the hope of glory. That's the content that is so earth-shaking because, you know, for centuries, Old Testament believers have looked forward to the Messiah or the Christ, but they always looked forward to Him as being with man. That's the message that we receive over and over through the prophets that Christ the Messiah would come and he would dwell with men. That's the whole term Immanuel, right? God with us.

And that's what everybody expected and it's true. And one day Jesus will dwell on the earth amongst Man as as the as the Messiah and and that's and that's what believers look forward to for centuries and centuries But they had never dreamed of the Messiah being in Believers, that's that's a brand new truth and that's and that's clear.

But why is it so important? That's the real question, right? Why is that so important? What does that matter? What does that even mean, frankly, to have Christ in you? And this is where so many people fall back on that word mystery and the English kind of idea of it and a misconception because they say, oh, well, Christ in you, that's a mystery.

Oh, that's beyond our comprehension, you know, and we just sort of shrug it off. Now, it's true. Right? That is a huge truth. Can you fully wrap your mind around that? Probably not. No, but when God reveals something in his word, it's because he wants you to understand it. He didn't give this to you so we'd have a riddle for 2,000 years. He gave this to you because you need to know it, and you need to understand what it means.

Yes, it's challenging to our finite minds, but we shouldn't just shrug this off. So what is it all about? What does this mean? And really, the last part of that phrase explains it. Christ in you, the hope of glory. And we talk about this word hope fairly regularly. This is the Greek word elpis. And the basic meaning in the Greek is not, again, not like our English idea of, well, I sure hope so. This is expectation. This is a confident expectation. So the fact that Christ is in you gives you an expectation of glory.

And here's where we can fall back on our brother Hal, because what is God's glory? You see why this phrase is hard to understand, right? I mean, how do we comprehend God's glory? How can we comprehend God in you? And now, what does it mean to have the expectation of God's glory? But Howell would often define God's glory as his intrinsic nature or the sum total of his attributes.

Really, it's who he is. God's glory is just who he is, his nature, his character is glorious. That is his glory. And now we're getting at the root. This is the mystery, okay? That you as a Christian have been united to Jesus Christ, which means that you share in his nature. As a new creation in Jesus Christ, you share the nature of the Lord Jesus Christ, not his deity, his character. Which means what? If you share his character and his glory is his nature, his character, then you share his glory. But you say, well, I don't think so. Look at my character. I don't see his character. I don't see that glory.

And this is where this becomes complex, and we have to understand what's going on. Because the word hope, which means expectation, implies something we're looking forward to. So though we have this sure expectation of fully sharing in His glory, we haven't yet fully participated in that. And why is that? Because the difficulty, and what I mean by that, we haven't fully participated in that in experience. We fully share in that in position, but in our experience, right, what's the problem? We've got two natures.

We've got the fallen sinful nature that's still indwelling this earthly body, and then we've got Christ's nature as new creations in Christ Jesus. And for now, during this walk on the earth, sometimes we're walking according to our sin nature, and sometimes we're walking according to Christ's nature.

And that's the reason why the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, as manifested in our lives, is only partial at this time. It's not always the case that your life is manifesting the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's limited by the degree to which you depend on Him to live His life through you. Which is that Romans 6 truth that we've spent so much time on, reckoning ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Understanding that I've participated in His death, I'm dead to the sin nature that still dwells in me. and I am alive to God in Christ Jesus so that his life might be lived out through me. And we're free to do that every moment of every day, but we're still learning to do that, right? And so though we positionally share in Christ's nature and we share in his glory, our experience of that is incomplete at this point in time. It's intermittent. And we're having to learn to walk in dependence on the fact that we have been judicially joined to him, that he is our life, and that we do share in his nature.

And Galatians 2.20 is always where I go. to see this truth in really simple terms, right? I have been crucified with Christ. Why? So that I'm dead to the sin nature. I don't have to respond to it anymore. I do, but I don't have to. And he says, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. Is that all the time, Paul? Well, no. It could be, but there's a condition on my part. He says, the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God. And are you always walking by faith?

No. And that's the reason why the expression, the outward expression of the character and nature and the glory of the Lord is not always visibly manifested in us because we're not always walking by faith in that reality. And this is where it all ties back to the purpose of God for having us present here in this domain of darkness. Because we ask the question, what is God trying to accomplish through leaving us here? What's his purpose in delivering us, judicially, out of this dark world, but leaving us present in it?

And we said there's two things. First of all, the church is present in the world to be a witness to the Lord Jesus Christ, so that others would see him in us. And that is the most powerful thing to draw anyone to the Lord Jesus Christ, is that they see Jesus in you. Right? And then you've got to share the message of the cross with them. But the thing that draws them is to see that there is something different about this person. And it's otherworldly. It's not, it's, I've never seen something like that in this world. This is something else.

And that's part of God's purpose. And the other part is that God is preparing the church to be presented to Christ holy and blameless. And here's the thing. Christ in us is what makes that possible. That principle, that fact, that Christ is in us, that we are united to Christ, is what makes any of that possible. Because it's all about displaying his glory, right? What is the holy and blameless bride? Well, that's Christ's nature. That's his glory.

And how is that gonna be manifested in our lives? Not through our effort, not through our ability to be like that or live like that. We can't do that. It has to be him living his life through us. And We learn, we're learning. We're learning to walk by faith in that fact that Jesus Christ is our life, that we are judicially dead to everything of our old nature, and we are free every moment to live or to have Christ live his life through us. And it's all with the expectation, the assurance that someday that will be perfectly fulfilled. We will fully share in His glory. His life and His nature will always be manifest through us, but that doesn't happen until we go to be face-to-face with Him, right? But for now, as we walk in this dark world, we are learning to walk by faith, trusting Him to produce or to live His life through us, to produce a life in us that is glorifying to Him, that is truly pleasing to Him.

And that's really what the mystery is all about. It's not really a mystery. It's gonna take some time to learn that and understand that, but it is something we can understand. It is something we can learn, right? That we are joined to Jesus Christ, that he is our life, and that his glory is meant to be displayed through us in this dark world. And that is an awesome promise to hold on to.

Heavenly Father, I thank you for the mystery, the fact, the revealed fact that as believers, we have been joined to your Son, Jesus Christ, so that we're in union with Him, we're united to Him, we have a union, a life union with Him, so that we don't have to be controlled and dominated by the power of our sin nature. We're free to have Jesus live out His life through us. And you're using that in very, very important ways each day, every moment of our lives. And so I pray that as a body of believers here at Holly Hills, that we would more and more walk by faith, that we would more and more be the vessels of Christ's glory, the lights through which his glory is made known to the world around us, and that that would be something that is pleasing to you, so that at our presentation to you, you behold your Son in us. That's what you're seeing. And Lord, we just pray that you'd teach us this truth more and more deeply, and that we would cling to it by faith. In Jesus' name, amen.