Fullness (3): Maturing in Christ
- Rev Norman Cameron

Our subject is knowing and experiencing the fullness of Jesus Christ in our lives. The letter of Paul to the Colossian church has been our guide in this most important subject. So far in our previous two messages we have seen the importance firstly, of having a thankful spirit if we are to experience the fullness of God in our lives. Paul was a thankful christian – even as he was incarcerated in a prison cell. His heart and his writing overflowed with joy. Fullness is linked to having a heart of thankfulness to God for all that we have and enjoy in Christ.

Secondly we noted that fullness comes from having an obedient spirit. We saw that Jesus Christ is no mere human being, he is the God man, fully human and fully divine – supreme in creation, supreme in the church and therefore he ought to be supreme in the christian’s life. Supreme means without equal, supreme means first, supreme means having priority. He is Lord over all the earth. That can be easy to say and sing– but is he Lord in here in my heart. Is he Lord in how I live from day to day?

When our spirit comes into alignment with God’s Spirit then we experience a fullness we never knew before. That happens when we surrender to Jesus as Lord of our lives, but it happens on a daily basis as we listen and follow the daily guidance of the Holy Spirit the rest of our Christian lives. Peace and fullness never come when we are resisting the will of God in our lives. Peace and fullness come from a life of day to day obedience to Jesus.

If we are discontented in our lives, if we can hand on heart say I have not and cannot honestly say that I ever have experienced anything like the fullness of God in my life then part of the problem may be that you do not have a thankful spirit; and you may not have an obedient spirit. Or thirdly as we will see today perhaps you do not have a maturing spirit, for I want us to see in what we study today, that if we are not growing and maturing in Christ then this experience of God’s fullness will pass us by.

Let us read Colossians 1:24-2:5.

This is one of the most personal parts of Paul’s letter. Here he reveals his pastor’s heart to the church at Colossae. Remember this is a church that he did not plant and has not visited and yet he has a concern and a love for them as strong as other churches that he did help to found. As we look into Paul’s heart, which it seems to me is a heart overflowing with the fullness of God, is there something that we can learn from his attitude that will help us to attain something of the fullness of Christ that he experienced.

There is a lot in this passage but I want us to see the focus or the key verse as v.28.I want us to see this as the hinge of this passage around which everything turns. If we are to ask what was Paul’s ultimate desire or wish for this church, or indeed any church, well we have it in verse 28. “We proclaim Christ, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ”, or as The Message translation has it “so that we can bring each person to maturity”. Paul’s desire through his preaching and pastoring was that people would become as like Jesus as possible before they died. His desire was that they would mature and grow and exhibit the characteristics of Jesus Christ who lived among us as the perfect human being. This is what church is about, producing followers of Jesus Christ who emulate him, who display him to the world in their own lives. This is not just Paul’s desire, I believe it is God’s desire.

Stuart Briscoe puts it this way. “God’s desire is that His enemies become his children, and that his children should become adults, and that those adults should be mature.”

This is the testimony of the scriptures. In the sermon on the mount Jesus says “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect”. We will never achieve 100% perfection this side of heaven, but the desire ought to be there. 1 Peter 1:14-16 says “As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written (in Leviticus 11) Be holy because I am holy”.

God’s desire is that his enemies should become his children. His children should become adults, and adults should become mature. There are two growing trends in our modern culture. One trend is for children to grow up too fast and to be influenced and impacted by sexual material and activity at too early an age. The innocence of childhood is being lost at an earlier and earlier age. But there is another trend at the other extreme where adults are trying to remain as teenagers for longer and longer and are not taking responsibility for their lives. Marriage is being putting off, some are putting off working for as long as possible. Observers of this phenomenon have coined a term for these people – adultolescents.

This trend is becoming increasingly common in church life – people in their twenties and thirties who are not taking responsibility, who are coasting and not stepping up to the mark in spiritual terms. What Paul says here I think speaks into this kind of a situation for Paul is urging that the church grow in maturity. How did he mature? There are three things of note here.

1. There is a relationship between maturity and suffering (v.24)

“Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body which is the church”. This is one of the most interesting and debated verses in the whole of the NT. What does Paul mean by filling up in his flesh what is lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions? Is not the suffering of Christ complete and sufficient in itself. Can Paul or anyone add to what Jesus did on the cross to make our salvation any more complete?

Without going into a long discussion of the possibilities I think the most likely meaning of what Paul is saying here is that Jesus’ death on the cross is fully sufficient for our salvation and the dealing with our sin but that Paul, and we, are Christ’s body, his representatives here on earth. That body continues to suffer in a world that is still hostile to Jesus. That suffering is not suffering that saves anyone, but it is a suffering that we experience on Christ’s behalf as his servants. We are so united to Christ that we are his body corporate here on earth and a certain amount of suffering will continue to be experienced by his followers until the end times. God has set this time, but until that time his church, the body of Christ will experience suffering for we are his body here on earth – in that sense we fill up in our flesh what is lacking. If Christ were here bodily he would still be suffering in a hostile world. Joseph Tson, the Romanian pastor puts it well when he says “Christ’s cross was for propitiation, ours is for propagation” In other words Christ suffered to accomplish salvation, we suffer to spread salvation.

Paul matured, and the church matures through suffering. In the scriptures and in our experience suffering helps to produce maturity. We happen to live in an age where we try and cut out suffering and make life as comfortable as possible. But Jesus says part and parcel of following him is the willingness to suffer for him. If our lives are too comfortable we are probable not following Jesus closely enough.

2. There is a relationship between maturity and proclaiming the mystery of the gospel, namely Christ. (v.25-28)

Paul’s desire is to present the word of God in its fullness (v.25). This word of God is a mystery kept hidden for ages but now revealed. When we think of a mystery we think of a whodunit, an Agatha Christie and so on. But in the NT a mystery is a secret that God keeps hidden and then reveals. The secret is that God saves us through grace and that grace is revealed fully and completely in his Son Jesus. We are not saved by observing the Law, as the Jews thought, for no-one can obey the law perfectly, we are not saved by being good or by giving sacrifices to pagan gods as the Gentiles thought, no we are saved by trusting in God’s Son alone. God planned this from the beginning of time but for many generations it was hidden, not clearly seen and understood until Jesus came.

Of course many people are still in the dark as far as this is concerned. But here is the way to spiritual maturity and to experiencing the fullness of God, it begins to happen as we understand the mystery, as we engage with God’s word and as that word leads us into a relationship with Jesus Christ. When this happens we discover the awesome truth according to v.27 that Christ is in us, the hope of glory.

Tragically for many people in our world, and even in our churches, this mystery remains a mystery and people cannot understand what the fuss is about - Christ being in us - because Christ in fact is not in them. They are still dead in trespasses and sins, eyes are still blinded, and ears are still deaf. Understanding the mystery is not a matter of intellectual ability or social status. You can be the cleverest person in the world and still not understand this mystery of Christ, you can be the richest person in the world and not understand the mystery, you can be the most famous and successful person in the world and not understand the mystery. But to those to whom God reveals the mystery there is joy, there is fullness, there are true spiritual riches, there is the opportunity to grow and mature in Christ. Jesus Christ is the beginning and end of it all. We are to be Christ obsessed. Is this not what St Patrick was as we see in what has been called St Patrick’s breastplate – “Christ be beside me, Christ be before me, Christ be behind me king of my heart. Christ be within me, Christ be below me, Christ be above me, never to part”

So far we have seen that we will not experience the fullness of God without some measure of suffering for Christ and we will not experience God’s fullness unless we have insight into the gospel and have a real relationship with Jesus Christ and see that Christ is in us, the hope of glory.

3. There is a relationship between maturity and striving in the work of the kingdom (v.29-2:2)

“To this end I labour, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me, I want you to know how much I am struggling for you….”

You know the christian life can be a struggle. However usually when we say we are struggling in our Christian lives I do not think we are using it in the sense that Paul is using it here. Usually we mean I am weak in my faith, I am struggling to pray, I am giving in to temptation and my relationship with God is distant. This is not what Paul meant. He meant he was striving, he was working hard in the gospel, he was praying more and giving more in the service of God. He was at the battlefront and giving it everything and because he was doing this he was experiencing the power and the fullness of God and so were the churches that he was struggling for and with.

Paul is the apostle of grace, the apostle who preached that we are not saved by our good works, and yet he was also the apostle who worked harder than anyone. Sometimes Paul and James are contrasted – Paul emphasising grace, James emphasising good works. But there is no contradiction when we read Paul properly. We see that Paul and James were singing from the same hymnsheet. Paul is not just the apostle of grace, he is the apostle of hard graft. We are saved by grace, but saved to do good works.

Look at the words he uses here, labour, struggling, energy. The greek for struggling is agonizominos, the greek for energy is energeian. These are the words which give us our English words agonise and energize. Paul is agonising in the work, he is energised in the work and it is an energy that is God given and God fuelled. The more we work the more God works through us. The more we expend the more God fills us up. This is how it works.

If we are listless and apathetic and struggling in our faith perhaps it is because we are doing so little for God. Use it or lose it is a good spiritual principle. In the parable of the talents that Jesus told the Master left money to each servant and said put this money to work. The one who put it to work was given more, the one who buried the talent “even what he had was taken from him” (Luke19:26). You know sometimes the Lord does help those who help themselves.

Are you struggling in the bad sense, is your faith cold and distant and lacking in vitality. Maybe it is time you got back to working for the kingdom, to exercising those spiritual muscles, to labouring and striving and giving and praying, and stop sleeping. Are you one of those adult adolescents, not behaving like a mature spiritual adult but more like a selfish teenager and then you wonder why God is not more real to you.

Does what the world offers excite you more than what Christ offers? In the words of an old hymn

“I would not with swift winged zeal on the world’s errands go, and labour up the heavenly hill with weary feet and slow.

O not for thee my weak desires, my poorer baser part. O not for thee my fading fires, the ashes of my heart.

O choose me in my golden time, in my dear joys have part.

For thee the glory of my prime, the fullness of my heart.”