Christ in You: The Hope of Glory
Rev. Aniekan "Mbomboyo" Okokon ·
To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. — Colossians 1:27
In everyday speech, hope is a wish with a smile on it. In Paul's speech it is something else: a certainty that has not yet been seen. "Hope that is seen is not hope", he says, because you do not hope for what you already have in hand. But the thing hoped for is sure. And in Colossians he tells us where the certainty lives. Christ in you.
The glory that is coming
Glory, in the New Testament, is the finished state of the believer - conformed to the image of the Son, raised like Him, with Him, forever. Paul lays it out as a chain: foreknown, predestined, called, justified, glorified. Every link is in the past tense, including the last one, because from God's side it is already done.
Why Christ in you is the hope of it
A guarantee has to be worth as much as the thing it guarantees. God did not give you a promise on paper. He gave you His Son, living in you by the Spirit, as the down-payment on your glory. The life that will one day fill your resurrection body is already in you now. Glory is not something added to a believer at the end; it is the unveiling of what was planted at the beginning.
What this hope does
- It steadies suffering. The present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory to be revealed in us - and the "in us" is already begun.
- It refuses despair. However far you feel from glory, glory is not far from you; He is in you.
- It sets the direction of growth. You are becoming what you already contain.
- It gives death its right size. Death cannot touch Christ, and He is in you.
A person, not a feeling
When hope fails you, as feelings do, go back to the fact. Not "do I feel hopeful?" but "is Christ in me?" If He is - and if you are His, He is - then the hope of glory is not something you have to summon. It is Someone you already have.