The Mystery

Colossians 1:24-29

February 8, 2026 • Mount Pleasant UMC

I love a good mystery. I grew up reading the Hardy Boys and Encyclopedia Brown books and watching mystery shows on television. The best mysteries are the “who-done-it” kind, where you are trying to figure it out right along with the characters in the story. Along the way, you pick up clues and try to put them together like a jigsaw puzzle so you can see the picture clearly. And bonus points if you figure it out before the reveal.

The word “mystery” comes from a Greek word that means “to be shut,” referring to someone’s eyes. A “mystery” is something concealed, something you can’t see until your eyes are opened. And the original idea of a mystery didn’t have to do with who killed the executive or who stole the treasure. It had to do with faith. In the Roman Empire, there were these so-called “mystery religions” that had secrets you could only learn by becoming a part of the group, going through the initiation and being trained in that particular belief system. Honestly, we don’t know a lot about what many of them believed—because they were secret! It’s a mystery! We only know what other people said about them. But we do know that some accused Christianity of being a mystery religion. After all they had rituals like baptism and communion that only made sense to people “on the inside.” Some people perceived a secrecy around their worship services, but early preachers and teachers of the faith wanted people to know there were no secrets. The faith was open to all. One of those preachers, Paul, even went so far as to “spill the beans” on the mystery when he wrote to the Colossians. Here it is, he said. Are you ready? This is the mystery: it’s “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (1:27). Christ in you. That’s the mystery that is, in reality, available to be known by everyone who wants to follow him.

In these days leading up to the Lenten season, we are exploring what it means to be a true disciple, to follow our rabbi Jesus closely. And last week we began this journey by talking about how the first thing we should do is be with him. Hang out with Jesus. I hope this past week you’ve found some ways to just spend time with him as that is critical as we move to the next piece of following our rabbi: become like him.

Colossae was a town in modern Turkey, located about 9 miles southeast of Laodicea and about 100 miles east of Ephesus which was on the coast. Paul loved the Ephesians, but he had never been to Colossae. Another preacher, Epaphras, had preached to them and started the church there (1:7). Paul, when he’s writing this letter, is in prison in Rome, jailed because of his preaching about Jesus. And someone has brought concerns to him about Colossae, where the false teaching of Gnosticism was taking root. Gnosticism said there was “special knowledge” from God you could obtain, secret teachings that were only for certain people, mysteries you could learn. Paul wants to nip that in the bud before it takes over the church. Above everything else, he wants to focus them back on Jesus.

It’s because of that “secret knowledge” idea that Paul plays with the idea of a mystery. The word of God, Paul says, has been a “mystery” in a sense. God has been dealing with his people over a long period of time—centuries, millennia—helping them since Mount Sinai learn what it means to be the people of God. But there has always been this longing forward, knowing that something more was coming. That “more,” Paul has found, was Jesus, and now this mystery has been solved, the answer has been blown wide open—or, as he says it, it has been “disclosed to the Lord’s people” (1:26). In other words, Colossians, there is no secret knowledge. There is nothing more to learn. The Gnostics are wrong. Jesus is everything God wanted to say to us, everything he wanted to teach us. He is, as John said, “the word made flesh” (John 1:14). And the mystery is even better than that, because not only has Jesus come and lived and died and risen again. He now lives in each believer—he lives in you. I love the way J. B. Phillips translates this verse: “The secret is simply this: Christ in you! Yes, Christ in you bringing with him the hope of all glorious things to come” (1:27). The mystery has been solved! Jesus lives in each believer, shaping us into what he wants us to become.

And what he wants us to become is simple to say, hard to do: he wants us to become like him. Pastor John Mark Comer says the Christian life is “the process of being formed into people of love in Christ” (Practicing the Way, pg. 73). Each piece of that is important for those in whom Christ lives. It’s a process; it’s not an instant transformation. We’re all in process, a lifelong process, and none of us have arrived fully yet. Some of us may be further along the journey than others, but we’re all still “becoming.” And that process is forming us, shaping us, molding and making us. As the prophet Jeremiah said (cf. 18:6), God is the potter, we are the clay. We are being formed—into people of love. Jesus said the greatest commandment is love God and love people (cf. Mark 12:30-31). His disciple, John, said that we can’t claim to love God if we hate our brother or sister (cf. 1 John 4:20). Love is the key, toward all people, not just the people we like. Becoming like Jesus is the process of being formed into people of love in Christ. It’s that simple. And that hard.

So if it’s a process, what might that process look like? What might be the shape of our “being formed”? How does “Christ in us” help us solve the mystery of becoming like him? Well first of all, if it is a process, it requires us to participate, to engage in practices that shape and mold us. We don’t become what some call “accidental saints” (Comer 80); we don’t just happen to wake up one morning and say, “Hey, I’m suddenly like Jesus!” It requires work, regular practices that create habits that shape who we are becoming. Now, I know that the normal American idea is that there are four things you have to do to be a Christian: go to church, read your Bible, pray and give. And I am not against any of those things; don’t get me wrong! All of those things are practices I engage in every day, every week. I believe they are vital for our spiritual life. Those things are the starting point. But I’m not sure that just doing the bare minimum really helps us become like Jesus (cf. Comer 81). That’s also why the church in America is struggling with the gap between Jesus’ teachings and our day-to-day lives. We haven’t really allowed “Christ in us” to become our reality (cf. Comer 83-84).

Look at it this way. With the winter Olympics now in full swing, let’s say I am inspired by the athletes and decide I want to become a downhill skier. I mean, that looks like so much fun! I have never skied a day in my life, but they make it look so easy that I go out to Academy Sports, buy a set of skis and head for the nearest downhill slope. I find my way to the top and I point my skis downhill and push off. In a few moments, depending on the length of the slope, you will likely find me in a heap of broken bones and scrapes and scratches at the bottom of the hill. Why? Because I thought I could “just do it,” as Nike tells me I can. But why can’t I “just do it”? Because to become a true athlete I would have to train. I’d have to learn about the sport, get all the right equipment, find a mentor who can teach me how, and start on a much smaller slope than these athletes compete on. And if that’s true for a sport, it’s even more true in the spiritual life. We can’t “just do it.” We need to practice, to (yes) read the Bible, to learn how to pray, to come alongside someone who is further along in the faith and learn what they have come to understand is true about Jesus. Sometimes that might be a person who is alive and other times it might be a mentor from another generation through studying their life. I have been able to see more “Christ in me” by seeing Christ in others. As one pastor says, it’s “training, not trying” (cf. Comer 108). We engage in practices that allow Christ to grow in us because we don’t become accidental saints.

Second thing to know, as I’ve already hinted at, is that we can’t follow Jesus alone. We need a community of people around us who can encourage us and challenge us and walk with us. And notice I said we can’t follow Jesus alone. Not shouldn’t. Can’t (cf. Comer 108). Jesus himself set the example: he gathered his disciples in an intentional community where they shared life together, learned together, aggravated each other, and learned to love each other so that they could love the world. He didn’t send them off by themselves; he gathered them together. That became so vital to them that even after he was crucified and they had no idea he was coming back, they still stayed together in a community. And after he was raised, he told them to stay together, to stay in community and wait for the arrival of the Holy Spirit (cf. Acts 2:1). Community was Jesus’ model; it must be ours as well.

So what do I mean by “community”? We all need to be surrounded by people who know our name and are brave enough to ask how we are really doing. In early Methodism, such groups were called Classes, a small group where twelve people met for accountability and spiritual growth. Attendance was not optional. John Wesley also designed even smaller groups called Bands that were confessional and confidential. I’m not saying we have to go back to those early models. My point is that Methodism has always been centered in community—groups filled with people who know our name and can love us really well, even by challenging us. In this church, that’s not likely to happen on Sunday morning unless you’re in a Sunday School class. But everyone needs some sort of small group who will surround us and walk with us and bring us a meal when times get hard.

Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who learned much about community as part of the underground church in Nazi Germany, believed that sometimes we get so wrapped up in our pursuit of the “perfect” church or “perfect” small group that we end up loving the ideal more than we love the reality. The fact is: there is no perfect church and there is no perfect small group. I’m just going to tell you up front: we will disappoint you and we will not always get it right. Sometimes we will get it really wrong. There was a brochure on the bulletin board at my home church when I was a kid, and while I don’t remember everything it said, one sentence has stayed in my mind: “If you find the perfect church, don’t join it. You’ll just mess it up.” We are not perfect; no church is. No group is. And so while it’s not easy to love the reality that surrounds us, as we learn to do so we become more like Jesus, loving God and loving people. Because he loves us even when we are not perfect. Thanks be to God, amen?

You’re not going to like the third thing I want to tell you about becoming like Jesus: Paul says it involves suffering. Remember that Paul is in prison when he is writing this letter, but he says he rejoices in such suffering because it means if he is there, the Colossians aren’t having to go through that (1:24). He is suffering for them. He is, in essence, drawing the enemy’s fire and if the enemy is focused on him, the Colossians aren’t being bothered (cf. Wright, Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters, pg. 158). He also stresses that the church will likely have to suffer as well; that’s part of what it means having “Christ in us.” What happened to Jesus might happen to us as well (Wright 159). After all Jesus said, “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first…If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also” (John 15:18, 20).

In our culture, we know very little of suffering or real persecution, but there are places in the world where Christians suffer for their faith, where they have to keep their faith hidden, where they cannot speak openly about Jesus. There are places in the world where believers regularly give their lives because of their faith. But we do face challenging and difficult times, times in our lives when we don’t understand why certain things are happening. And yet, if we’re honest, we will have to acknowledge that those are the times when we grow in our faith the most. Those are the times when we most have to rely on the “Christ in us” to get us through. James, the half-brother of Jesus, said, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance” (James 1:2-3). Paul said much the same thing: “We also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame…” (Romans 5:3-5). It is in our darkest moments that the light of Christ shines the brightest. The things we run from, try to avoid, dread and cry through are the things that have the potential to make us most like Jesus. Christ in you, the hope of glory.

So let’s come back to our definition of the Christian life: “the process of being formed into people of love in Christ.” Being with him and becoming like him—so that, as we will talk about next week, we can do as he did. It’s possible. We can become like Jesus if we will allow him to live in us fully. That is, Paul says, our hope.

I think I told you last week about the book I read on vacation about the life of Mother Teresa (Towey, To Love and Be Loved, pg.). Very early on in her life, she was called by God to serve the poorest of the poor in Calcutta. In fact, she had a pretty cushy life in a convent but left that life behind to reach out to the destitute and the dying in that Indian city. She called them “Jesus in distressing disguise.” She saw the face of her savior in the least of these. After her death, some of her letters were recovered that she had hoped would be destroyed after she was gone. These letters revealed that for most of her life and throughout her ministry, Mother Teresa had longed for a clear sense of God’s presence. She knew Christ was there and she knew without a doubt that she was doing what she was called to do, but she often found her prayers dry and her times of quiet contemplation silent. There was a spiritual suffering she went through that, in many ways, mirrored the physical suffering the people in her ministry endured. After her death, the priest who was keeper of her papers didn’t feel right destroying them. After conversation with those who knew her, it was decided to publish the letters in the hopes that someone, somewhere might find hope that someone like Mother Teresa was able to grow in Christ, in community, even in the midst of spiritual suffering. Christ in her, the hope of glory. Christ in you, the hope of glory.

Be with him. May your eyes be opened so you can become like him and follow the rabbi. Let’s pray.