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Scripture Reading: Col. 2:2, 9; 3:4, 10-11; 16, John 1:18; Heb. 1:3
In this chapter we want to see the third great mystery in the Bible. This mystery, which is the mystery of mysteries and the center of all the mysteries, is the mystery of God. The mystery of the universe and the mystery of man in reality are just one. The mystery of the universe is God, and the mystery of man is also God. In a general sense, God is the mystery of the universe; in a particular sense, God is the mystery of man. God is the mystery of the universe and of man. Furthermore, God Himself is a mystery. This mystery is simply Christ.
This is the mystery of God preached by the apostle Paul (1 Cor. 2:1). This is not the shallow revelation that so many have preached; it is the mystery hidden in the depths of God. This mystery is not any superficial aspect of the gospel; it is the intrinsic reality of the complete gospel of God. This reality is Christ as the mystery of God.
If we want to know how Christ is the mystery of God, we need to study the first two chapters of Colossians. Colossians 1 and 2 tell us what kind of person Christ is.
Colossians 1:12 says that Christ is the God-allotted portion of the saints. In the Old Testament, God allotted the land of Canaan, the land flowing with milk and honey, to the tribes of Israel; each tribe received a portion. This portion became the inheritance and blessing of the children of Israel. Today in the New Testament, Christ is our God-given portion as our inheritance. This portion, this inheritance, is the spiritual blessing that we have received.
Colossians 1:15 says that Christ, who is the Son of God’s love, is the image of the invisible God. The image here is not a physical image but an expression of all that God is. Christ as the Son of God’s love has God’s life and nature, so John 1:18 and 14:7-9 say that He expresses the Father. Because He expresses the Father, He is the image of the invisible God. God is invisible, but the Son of God’s love, having God’s life and nature, can express God; therefore, He is the image of God. This is the relationship between Christ and God.
Colossians 1:15 goes on to say that Christ is “the Firstborn of all creation.” Christ is the first One among all creatures. This speaks of Christ having the preeminence among all creatures. With regard to Christ being God, He is the Creator; but with regard to Christ being man, He is a creature. Since He became a man and partook of the created blood and flesh, to be sure He is part of creation. Among the creatures, after the first Adam fell, there was a last Adam. If Christ was not a creature, how could He become the last Adam? If He was not a creature, He could not have become the last Adam. Adam is the name of a created one. You cannot say that the first Adam was created, yet the last Adam was not. To say this is not logical.
According to the original text of Colossians 1:15, we cannot deny that in God’s creation, Christ is the first created One, who has preeminence in all creation. If He was not the first created One, He could not have the first place in all creation. For Him to have the first place among all creatures, He needed to become the first created One. Praise the Lord that He is not only the Creator but also a creature! Furthermore, He is the first of all creation because He wants to have the first place in all creation. He was a created man so He could die and shed blood for us. If He was not a creature but was only God the Creator, He could not have died, because God can never die. Some people say, “Our Christ is only the Creator.” In this case I want to ask, “Does the Creator have blood? Does the almighty Creator have flesh and blood? If He had no blood, how could He shed blood for us?” (Acts 20:28).
Dear brothers and sisters, we should not be deceived. Of course, our Lord is the Creator. However, He is also a creature. This is why He is all-inclusive. Because He is a creature, He could die. He actually died by being crucified. Furthermore, He was buried in a tomb. If He was only the Creator and not a creature, would it not be absurd for Him to be buried in a tomb?
Thank and praise the Lord that He also resurrected! In His resurrection, His physical body was transformed into a spiritual body. First Corinthians 15 clearly says that through such a resurrection He as the last Adam became the life-giving Spirit. Although He is the life-giving Spirit, He still has humanity. When He went back to the disciples after His resurrection, He went with a resurrected body. He showed them His hands and His side, and He told them to touch His side and the nail marks on His hands (John 20:19-27). He is indeed the Spirit, but He still has a human body, so surely He has humanity. Therefore, today He is still the Son of Man in heaven (Acts 7:56); in His coming back He will still be the Son of Man (Matt. 25:31); and even in eternity He will also be the Son of Man (John 1:51).
Colossians 1:16 tells us that Christ is the Creator of all things. All things in the heavens and on the earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or lordships or rulers or authorities, were created in the power of Christ’s person, in the power of what Christ is. All creation bears the characteristics of Christ’s intrinsic power. All these have been created through Him, for Him, and unto Him.
Furthermore, verse 17 tells us that “He is before all things, and all things cohere in Him.” Christ is not only the Creator of all things but also the One in whom all things cohere. He is the cohering center of all things. All things exist together by Christ as the holding center, just as the spokes of a wheel are held together by the hub at their center. Verses 15b through 17 speak of the relationship between Christ and the old creation.
Verse 18 tells us that Christ is the Head of the Body, the church; He is the beginning, the Firstborn from the dead. This means that in resurrection Christ has the first place in the new creation, the church. He is the Head of the Body, the beginning, and the Firstborn from the dead, the first to be resurrected from the dead to have the preeminence in the church. This shows us His relationship with the new creation.
God has two great creations in the universe: one is the old creation, and the other is the new creation. In the old creation Christ is the Firstborn of all creation that He might have the first place in the old creation. In the new creation Christ is the first to be resurrected that He might have the first place in the new creation. Because He has the first place in both the old creation and the new creation, being the first in all creation, He has the preeminence in all things in the universe. This is because it pleased God to have all the fullness dwell in Him (v. 19).
Colossians 1:20-22 tells us that on the cross Christ accomplished redemption for us and all things. He made peace through the precious blood that He shed on the cross to reconcile us and all things, whether the things on the earth or the things in the heavens, to God. Not only did we need God’s redemption, but due to the fall of Adam as their head, all things also needed God’s redemption. Through His death and the shedding of His blood once for all, the all-inclusive Christ accomplished the full salvation that we and all things needed. This shows us the relationship of Christ to God’s redemption.
Verse 27 tells us that Christ has become the hope of glory in us, the believers. Today Christ within us is our life and everything; He is also our hope for the future. He is within us as life that we may have a hope, which is the redemption of our body for our whole being to enter into His glory (Rom. 8:21, 23; Phil. 3:21). This speaks of the relationship of Christ with His believers.
Then Colossians 2:2 tells us that such a Christ is the mystery of God. This means that, as God’s story and God’s everything, Christ declares God in full. Verse 3 says that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Him. The mention of wisdom and knowledge here has its background. According to history, the influence of Gnostic teaching, which included Greek philosophy, had invaded the Gentile churches in Paul’s time. Those who were influenced by such teaching considered themselves as having much wisdom and knowledge. They spoke many things concerning God and Christ that were not according to the truth. Hence, Paul told the Colossian believers that all the treasures of genuine wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ. Here, wisdom and knowledge refer to all the “stories” of God. All the stories of God are wisdom and knowledge. All the wisdom and knowledge pertaining to God’s stories are hidden in this Christ who is the mystery of God. This being the case, Colossians 2:6-7 tells us that we who have received Christ Jesus the Lord should walk in Him and be rooted and built up in Him and should not listen to the empty words of philosophy and philosophical doctrines of the Gnostics.
Colossians 2:9 says, “In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” This is a very great verse in the Bible. All the words used here, such as all,fullness, and Godhead, are very special. The Greek word for Godhead is theotes, which is very similar to the Greek word theiotes used in Romans 1:20 for divine characteristics with only a one-letter difference. Both are derived from the same Greek word. Therefore, the King James Version translates both words as “Godhead.” Theiotes denotes the divine characteristics manifested through the created things, while theotes denotes the deity of Christ. I have used wood grain as an illustration. The meeting hall in Irving, Texas, was built with oak, which is a unique product of Texas. The Texan oak has a very striking grain. It is a distinctive feature of the Texan oak, or we may say, it is a characteristic of the nature of the Texan oak.
Characteristics are always manifested. In contrast, substance is not manifested. Substance is a stronger word than nature because substance has not only the nature of a certain thing but also the very essence of that thing. All the fullness of the Godhead means “all the fullness of God’s essence.” Here it is not speaking about God’s intrinsic nature or divine characteristics but the very substance of God. God’s substance is simply God Himself, so we can translate it as “Godhead.” Godhead refers to God Himself.
Colossians 2:9 says that all the fullness of the very substance of God dwells in Christ bodily. Christ is truly not so simple; all the fullness of God’s very substance dwells in Him bodily. He is all-inclusive and comprehensive. The Son of God’s love, the image of God, the Firstborn of all creation, the Firstborn from the dead, the Redeemer, and the Godhead are all not simple, not to mention the mystery of God. All the fullness of God’s substance dwells in Christ bodily. Hence, Christ is the mystery of God, the story of God.
Christ is God who became flesh to become a man. His Godhead and divinity are complete, and His person and humanity are also genuine. The title Christ means “the anointed One” (Dan. 9:26). Christ was anointed by God (Luke 4:18) to be God’s anointed One to accomplish God’s redemption and fulfill God’s eternal plan. God’s eternal plan is for man to be His expression. This requires God to work Himself into man to become man’s life, to be united with him, and to live Himself out from within man. However, because the man who was created for God’s plan fell, God Himself needed to become a man to die and bear the sins for man that He might redeem man back to be God’s vessel so that God can live in man and be his content and express Himself from within man. Christ was anointed by God for the very purpose of carrying out this plan of God. This is the great, divine commission. This great, divine commission requires Christ to have the dual status of God and man, fully equipped with the divine nature and power and the human nature and character. Hence, Christ needed to be both God and man, to be completely God and genuinely man.
As God, Christ had the divine life and nature and was able to dispense God in His life and nature to man, enabling man to live out God’s attributes to express and glorify God. As God, Christ also possessed the unlimited power of God to do the unlimited work of God and to make all His work unlimitedly effective.
As man, Christ had the human life and nature so that He was the same as man in life and nature. Christ was like man in all respects, except that He was without sin. This enabled Him to sympathize with man and save man (Heb. 2:17; 4:15). Christ as a man with human flesh and blood suffered death through crucifixion, shedding human blood to make redemption for man’s sins. Because of the guarantee of the unlimited power of His divinity, the redemption that Christ accomplished in His human nature and human body had an eternal, unlimited effect, thereby becoming an eternal redemption (9:12). By His resurrection from the dead, the human nature and human body of Christ were uplifted through the union with His divine life and nature. His humanity was brought into His divinity, and His human body became a spiritual body (1 Cor. 15:44). Thus, Christ became the Redeemer who redeemed us from sin and the Savior who dispensed life into us. Thank and praise Him! Christ is both God and man; He is the God-man who has become such a complete and wonderful Redeemer and Savior.
In order to accomplish God’s eternal redemption and plan, Christ as God’s Anointed took two great steps. First, as God He was incarnated to become a man (John 1:1, 14), the last Adam (1 Cor. 15:45b), that He might die and accomplish redemption for us (Heb. 9:26-28; 10:12). Second, through death and resurrection He as the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b) that He may enter into us (John 14:20) to be our life (Col. 3:4) and to live in us (Gal. 2:20) that we may live Him out (Phil. 1:20-21).
By these two great steps Christ passed through incarnation and tasted all the sufferings of human life; then He died and was resurrected. From being God He became a man, and from being a man He became the Spirit. Thus He accomplished God’s eternal redemption and full salvation to carry out the commission for which He was anointed by God.
In resurrection Christ became the life-giving Spirit, who is the Spirit indwelling us today (Rom. 8:9-11). This indwelling Spirit is all-inclusive. The incarnated Christ is in this Spirit; the resurrected Christ is in this Spirit; even all of the Triune God is in this Spirit for us to experience. This life-giving Spirit as everything and as the reality of Christ is in us to be our life and all our supply within.
In 1966 I wrote many hymns in Taiwan, one of which was Hymns, #510: “I’ve found the One of peerless worth, / My heart doth sing for joy; / And sing I must, for Christ I have: / Oh, what a Christ have I!” In this hymn I pointed out over thirty items of what Christ is. Our Christ is all-inclusive! The last part of this hymn says, “My Christ, the all-inclusive One, / My Christ what shall I call? / He is the first, He is the last, / My Christ is All in all.” This is our Christ, who is the mystery of God.
Romans 1:20 says that through the created things we can know the invisible things of God, both His eternal power and divine characteristics. The divine characteristics include glory, truth, wisdom, light, love, and others. Through all the created things man is able to know all these manifested characteristics of God. However, the very substance of God Himself cannot be expressed by the created things. Only a living person — Jesus Christ — can fully express it. Therefore, if we want to know the substance of God, we must know Christ. God’s substance, which is all the fullness of the Godhead, dwells in Christ bodily (Col. 2:9). Christ is the embodiment of God. Hence, Hebrews 1:3 says that Christ is the “effulgence of His glory and the impress of His substance.”
What the created things express are only the outward manifested characteristics of God, not God’s intrinsic substance or God’s own being. The mysterious substance of God, the glorious deity of God, could be expressed perfectly only by the incarnated Christ. When Christ was living on the earth, all His move and work showed people God Himself, God’s substance. This is why John 1:18 says, “No one has ever seen God; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.” This only begotten Son who declared the Father is God’s embodiment. Hence, His disciples called Him God.
What Christ expressed was the overflow of the fullness of the Godhead, which was in Him. John 1:16 says, “Of His fullness we have all received.” This is not only riches, but even more this is fullness, being so full to the extent of overflowing to become an expression. Our Lord was so full of God’s substance within that He overflowed God’s substance to become God’s expression. Hence, He is God’s fullness and God’s expression.
Colossians 3:4 goes a step further to tell us that this all-inclusive Christ, who is God’s expression, is our life. This is not objective but subjective. It is something within us. Now this Christ is sitting at the right hand of God (v. 1) in the heavens, but He is also within us as our life and everything. This is truly too mysterious and too glorious! This life is the life of God, including all the riches of God. When we live by this life, we enjoy everything of God.
Following this, 3:10-11 tells us that this all-inclusive Christ who is life within us makes us a corporate new man. This new man is composed of all the saints who have Him as life. The content of this new man is not our natural man: not Scythian or Jew or Chinese or American or German or Japanese or Filipino or Malaysian. The content of this new man is Christ, who is the mystery of God and who is the life in all men. He is the life of the new man, and He is everything to the new man.
