Paul tells us in his letter to the Colossians that, without the indwelling Christ in our hearts, we possess minds alien to God and hostile to all of his ways.  Then he reveals God’s solution to man’s rebellion.  He calls it, “the Mystery of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”   Following is a summation of this mystery in a nutshell.

First, Paul prays for the Christians at Colossae to be filled with the “knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in  a manner worth of the Lord.”  The entire prayer in chapter one is worth reading.  Indeed we should pray this prayer for ourselves and others we know if we seek to mature in Christ.

Second, he assures us that God has “delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”  Here is one of the Scriptures theologians rely upon when they say that the kingdom of God has already come.  The kingdom has come in this spiritual sense, but as Hebrews teaches, we do not yet see all things in the natural subject to this kingdom.  This explains how the kingdom can already be (in the spiritual) and yet is not (in the natural).  There is coming a day when we will literally see all things subject to the Lord Jesus.

Third, Paul explains how Jesus reconciles all things to God by virtue of the fact that he himself is the image of the invisible God, that he created all things, and that the fullness of God dwelt in him bodily.  By virtue of these truths he was empowered to make peace between God and man by his blood on the cross.

Fourth, he tells how men who were once alienated from and hostile to God in mind have now been reconciled to God in Christ’s flesh by his death.  It is this “alien mind” which causes men to do evil deeds.  The remainder of Paul’s letter deals with fixing this problem.

The solution to man’s alien mind, says Paul, lies in partaking of the “mystery of the Gospel.”  This mystery has been hidden for ages, he says, but has now been revealed.  The mystery is Christ in you, the hope of glory.  “Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.”  Col. 1:28

Here, then, lies the key to all Scripture.  Here we come to understand the mind of God with respect to man’s duty and relationship to him.  Now take this key and fly back to the beginning, back to Genesis chapter 1 and God’s (Jesus’) creation of man.  There re-learn that God made man in His image.  His image.  His image.   Now return to Paul’s message.

Colossians teaches us that Jesus in the flesh “is the image of the invisible God” and that in him “all the fullness of God” dwelt.  But, Jesus never sinned.  Jesus never possessed a mind alien to God.  Here we learn that by some spiritual mystery Christ Jesus may dwell within us and that it is this particular indwelling by which we may one day be glorified!  This represents the culmination of man’s creation.  In Christ man comes full circle.  He was created with glory in the first man, Adam.  Through his six thousand year sojourn as a foreigner in a foreign land and with the tutoring help of God’s Law, he learned to discern good and evil.  But, he could not perfectly obey that Law in his own strength.  Thus that Law could never bring him to reconciliation with God on to salvation and then to glorification, being like God.  Now, Paul tells us, the only way to salvation and glory is Christ in you!  Next, we will begin to discover how this works its way out today in the world through each of us.