The Mystery

 

To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”  (Colossians 1:27)

 

The gospel of God’s free and sovereign grace in Christ is a mystery hidden from the unregenerate man, hidden from every unbeliever, but revealed by his Spirit to his saints, “to whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. There are three things revealed in this verse.

 

The Riches of Glory

 

First, all the riches promised, proclaimed, and presented to sinners in the gospel are in Christ. The riches of the gospel are spiritual riches. They are called, “The riches of the glory of this mystery,” because the glory of the gospel is, in great measure, to be seen in the riches of grace it holds in store for sinners who trust Christ.

 

      What are these riches? They are the rich truths of grace, compared to gold, silver, and precious stones, by which God builds his holy temple (1 Cor. 3:11-16). They are the rich truths of the gospel: sovereign election, substitutionary redemption, almighty, irresistible, saving grace, and the infallible preservation of God’s saints in grace. The riches Paul speaks of are the rich treasures of grace laid up for sinners in Christ. In Christ there are immense and infinite treasures of grace laid up in store for God’s elect (John 1:16; Eph. 1:3; Col. 2:9-10).

 

      All the promises of God relating to this life and to the life to come are in Christ yea and amen, sure and infallible. In Christ we have free justification (Rom. 3:24-26), absolute pardon (Eph. 1:7), complete reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:17), eternal adoption (1 John 3:1-2), and eternal life (Rom. 3:23).

 

The Glory of the Gospel

 

Second, Christ is also the glory of the gospel. — “To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ.” The gospel is the revelation of the glory of God; and the glory of God is Christ. We see the glory of God in the face of Christ. That is to say, by faith in Christ every believer sees that which was revealed to Moses in Exodus 34: God’s glorious, sovereign goodness and inflexible justice in the exercise of his saving grace in Christ (Isa. 45:20). God’s glory is known and revealed only in Christ, the incarnate God, the sinner’s Substitute (John 1:18; 17:3; 2 Cor. 4:6).

 

The Hope of Glory

 

Third, The believer’s hope of glory is Christ. “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” We live in hope of immortality and eternal life in heavenly glory. The basis, foundation, and ground of our hope is “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” The cause of our hope is the grace of God in Christ. The basis of our hope is the finished work of Christ. Our hope itself is “Christ in you, the hope of glory.

 

      That is the subject of this chapter. The glory which the saints will have with Christ will be the enjoyment of him forever in heaven. This hope of glory in which we live is brought to light by the gospel (2 Tim. 1:9-10).

 

      Christ is our hope of glory. Christ crucified is the basis of our hope. But Christ crucified is not our hope. Christ in you is the hope of glory. It is Christ in us that gives us hope, the confident expectation of glory. Christ in you (formed in you, living in you, reigning in you) is the hope, the confident, pleasurable expectation of eternal glory.

 

      Religion that is all experience and feeling is worthless, useless religion. But religion that has neither experience nor feeling is just as worthless and useless. Hope, like faith and love, is an internal thing, something felt, experienced, and known in the soul. You can talk about faith all you want to, and define it with unmistakable precision, but until you experience it, you will never know what it is. You can read books about love, and even write books about love, but you will never know what it is until you experience it. And once you experience it, you will laugh at the definitions men give it. The same is true of hope. Hope is not a theory, a doctrine, or just something to talk about. Hope is something born in you, something felt in the heart and known only by experience.

 

            It is “Christ in you” that gives you hope. Until Christ is “formed in you” by the work of God the Holy Spirit in regeneration, giving you faith in him, his death is nothing to you. You have no hope, no forgiveness, no justification, no righteousness, no salvation. Without question, all these blessings of grace belong to all God’s elect from eternity in Christ because of our eternal union with him. We receive nothing in time, in the experience of grace, that was not ours eternally in Christ (Eph. 1:3-7; Rom. 8:28-30). But, experimentally, as long as we were “without Christ,” (That is how God the Holy Spirit describes God’s elect before their conversion.), as long as we were “without Christ” we had “no hope” (Eph. 2:12). But now, believing in Christ, we possess experimentally all that was given to us in eternity and obtained for us by the doing and dying of our blessed Savior. Now, because Christ has been formed in us by the effectual grace of God the Holy Spirit, because he has given us faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, we have hope. Now, we are “looking for (confidently expecting) the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life” (Jude 21).