Fr. Stephen De Young: Verse 21: “And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now he has reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and blameless and above reproach in his sight.” So, yeah, we’ll stop there. So step one, he’s saying, “And you”—“and you” meaning this includes you. [Laughter] It’s not just the cosmos in this big sense, but also “you whom I’m writing to.”

“...who previously were alienated,” meaning: “alienated” here means non-citizens, strangers. This is part of the Gentile probably image, deciding that you’re strangers. “...and enemies in your mind by wicked works.”

Q1: Enemies of whom?

Fr. Stephen: Enemies of God! Enemies of God.

Q1: First I thought it might be of each other.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, no, they’re enemies of God. So it’s not just that: Oh, some bad stuff happened and you need to be purified. That’s part of it, but the trees need to be purified because some bad stuff happened. He’s saying to them: You—you were active participants! You were active. That’s why he brings up the wicked works. You were actively out there doing the sin, doing the evil, active participants in sin, and that sin was tainting the creation around you.

So he’s saying, “even you.” You can translate that kai at the beginning that’s translated “and,” as “even”: “even you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works—yet now he has reconciled.” He even reconciled you. [Laughter]

“...in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and blameless and above reproach in his sight.” So what does he mean by “in the body of his flesh through death”? Meaning this is the reference to how St. Paul talks about baptism. You died with Christ. He says, “I have been crucified with Christ” in Philippians that we just read. “Reckon yourselves dead to sin but alive in Christ.” So you died with him: that person, that wicked person, that evil person is dead, and so now—now you can have this new start where you’re holy and blameless and above reproach. So all those wicked things you were doing, all those wicked works, your whole mindset of who you are, your whole old self—gone, dead. And now there’s a new, holy creation.

Why is it important that you’re now blameless, holy, above reproach? Now you’re fit to enter the Temple, to enter God’s presence, because you’re now this.

Verse 23: “If indeed you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and are not moved away from the hope of the Gospel which you heard, which was preached to every creature under heaven, of which I, Paul, became a minister.” So there’s a bunch of things here. So there’s first of all: “If indeed you continue in faithfulness…” We’ll just go ahead and re-translate it: “If you continue in faithfulnes.” So notice St. Paul… I don’t know how you read this and come to the conclusion that St. Paul believed that if you were once saved you were always saved. [Laughter] “If indeed you continue” pretty much kills that. I mean, “If indeed you continue in faithfulness, grounded and steadfast, and are not moved away”—so it’s possible to be moved away—“from the hope of the Gospel.” That doesn’t mean you stop hoping in the Gospel. You move away. The hope of the Gospel, that’s the end of the road, meaning you moved away, as in, you go in another direction, not toward the way in which the Gospel pointed you. “...which you heard, which was preached”—notice—“to every creature under heaven.

Q1: That’s a big one.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, not “preached to every person,” not “preached to every thinking being”: “every creature.” “Creature” means everything created: birds, trees, grass, technically rocks and dirt.

Q2: Does that mean demons?

Fr. Stephen: That would be under the earth. But “under heaven” means it also doesn’t include angels.

Q2: Oh, so angels weren’t…?

Fr. Stephen: Right? Christ didn’t die to purify angels or demons. So it’s every creature under heaven.

Q3: How is it preached to…?

Fr. Stephen: [Laughter] Right!

Q3: You have to deal with the fact that most people haven’t even heard anything about Christianity yet.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah. We’re used to thinking about the Gospel in very American Christian—read “Protestant”—terms. So we think “the Gospel” is telling you how to get saved.

Q3: Yeah, we do.

Fr. Stephen: [Laughter] Right? And that can’t be what the Gospel is. You know why? Because in the book of Acts, every time one of the apostles preaches the Gospel, the first thing people say to them is: “What must I do to be saved?” Meaning, they must not have just told them, or these people are all just really dumb. [Laughter] Like, if I lay out for you how to be saved, and you say, “What must I do to be saved?”—wires are crossed. [Laughter] So that can’t be what the Gospel is. The Gospel is who Christ is and what he’s done, what he’s accomplished.

And he’s just said that what he’s accomplished affects the whole cosmos, not just humans. Humans aren’t saved out of the world. It affects the whole world. And so you can proclaim—you can talk to the trees of Oklahoma… [Laughter] It can be proclaimed to the whole creation. This is in the “longer ending” of St. Mark’s gospel: “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to the whole creation.” It’s proclaimed to the whole creation. And what’s proclaimed is what Christ did, not, “Listen, Mr. Oak Tree: here’s what you need to do to get saved.” [Laughter] That, of course, makes no sense. And my dogs are all reprobates; they’re hopeless anyway. I can preach till I’m blue in the face.

So that’s what it’s talking about. And it’s not just humans who preach, because remember Romans 10. “How will they hear unless someone is sent?” He says, “And have they not heard. As it is written: The heavens declare the glory of God…”

Q1: The stars…

Fr. Stephen: “Light has gone out into all the world,” talking about the stars of the heavens proclaiming the Gospel. So the whole creation participates in the proclamation of the Gospel, too. So St. Paul is here focusing still on this cosmic aspect of the whole creation. Humanity is the odd man out, pun semi-intended, in that humanity is, like, actively rebelling, unlike the rest of creation. This is something you see in the psalms, too. It’s brought out in some Orthodox hymns. The rest of creation obeys God pretty well. It’s just us, and the demons, who have a problem! [Laughter]

So, yeah, that’s what St. Paul is getting at. This has been proclaimed to the whole creation—even you. Even you who were rebelling! But you need to stay true to the Gospel, which has been proclaimed throughout the whole cosmos, and of which, St. Paul says, he himself became a minister, meaning became a servant. So he’s serving that Gospel proclamation. Yes, sir?

Q4: So does this verse kind of confirm that animals, trees, and everything will be resurrected.

Fr. Stephen: No.

Q4: No?

Fr. Stephen: [Laughter] No. Because Christ did not become incarnate as a dog or a tree or a…

Q4: No, not that they’re saved…

Fr. Stephen: There will be, yes, in the world to come there will be dogs and rabbits and trees.

Q4: I mean, saved in the sense like…

Fr. Stephen: Right, not every tree that has ever lived will be brought back to life in the new heavens and the new earth, no, but in the sense that there will be trees, yes.

Q4: Okay.

Fr. Stephen: The new heavens and the new earth is not like a disembodied realm. There’s animals and plants.

Q4: I thought it was like: Trees would no longer die, and those that did die would come back up or whatever.

Fr. Stephen: Well, yeah, I mean, we don’t want to go too far down that road, because we don’t know all the details. We’re arriving at Speculation Station at that point.

Q4: All right.

Fr. Stephen: But, yeah, just like: What kind of fruit was it at the tree in the garden…? [Laughter] Pomegranate! No. So, but there will be those things in the new heavens and the new earth.

So that kind of, even though we’re not where they put the chapter break, St. Paul sort of ends up in himself. Starts up with Christ, ends up with himself: that’s one of his typical moves, where he puts himself at the bottom. Even after the “even you”: “even you,” and then he goes down even further, past the animals and the rocks and the trees, and then he says “even me” down at the base. [Laughter]

C1: Oh, wow.

Fr. Stephen: Verse 24, he shifts a little; he says, “I now rejoice in my sufferings for you and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of his body, which is the Church.” Here’s another verse where people go crazy! [Laughter] We’re getting a bunch of them tonight: Christ being the firstborn over all creation and now this one. Yeah, that phrase may hit you a little: “Wait, what’s lacking in… There’s something lacking?” [Laughter] “There’s something lacking in the afflictions of Christ?”

Yeah, so what St. Paul is getting at here is not that, well, Christ did part of it and now I’m going to do the rest. [Laughter] Which may be kind of how it reads in English. But what’s lacking is lacking for St. Paul, not what’s lacking for Christ. So Christ did these things, but now we’ve got to get to the “even St. Paul,” and so Christ’s blood purifies the creation, but if it’s going to purify St. Paul as a person, he can’t fail to continue in faithfulness. He can’t continue in those wicked works. And so St. Paul sees the sufferings he’s undergoing—we’ve talked about this, probably another epistle written while he was in prison in Ephesus—that he sees his sufferings as being united—as uniting him to Christ who suffered for the sake of the Church. He says, “I’m now suffering for the sake of my work serving the Church; Christ suffered, pre-eminently, for the Church.” And so he sees him sharing in that experience, as being part of that being applied to him, meaning that’s part of him being purified. His sufferings he’s undergoing now in this life are helping to purify him and cleanse him and prepare him to be presented as holy and blameless before Christ in that hope at the end, when he stands before Christ. And that’s happening for him right now.

You asked previously about how the event of Christ’s crucifixion relates to this cosmic thing. This is how that cosmic thing, then, is experienced by St. Paul is in his actual life. So it’s not: “2,000 years ago Christ died on a cross, so I’m born purified from sin, and I’m all good.” [Laughter] That’s not how it works. That I experienced that cleansing and purification and that struggle for it in my life. That’s what St. Paul is talking about. It’s not that, objectively, cosmically, there was something lacking about what Christ did in terms of accomplishing that goal. It’s about St. Paul having that experience in his own life, which he was lacking up until that point. St. Paul was lacking holiness; St. Paul was lacking blamelessness. And so those things are now being filled up in him. He is now receiving those things through his suffering.

Verse 25: “Of which I became a minister”—meaning the Church, the assembly—“of which I became a minister, according to the stewardship from God, which was given to me for you to fulfill the word of God.” So St. Paul is reflecting on the fact that ministry in the Church has these two elements. On the one hand, he’s a servant of the Church, so he’s the servant of the community in Colossae, at Laodicea, and wherever else; but on the other hand, he’s also received this stewardship from God, and a steward is someone who has delegated authority. He isn’t actually the master; he doesn’t actually own things, but he’s the one whom the master who owns things appoints to administer them.

C2: He’s the manager.

Fr. Stephen: So he has this delegated authority, and he’s serving them at the same time. So there are these two elements to his ministry with them.

Verse 26: “The mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to his saints.” Now, I cut that in a bad place, so maybe you won’t hear the flow: “The stewardship from God, which was given to [him] for them.” So this is how those two relate to each other. He’s their servant; he’s also a steward over them, but that stewardship was given to him for them. He was given that authority for their benefit, to take care of them, like a nanny takes care of children. “To fulfill the word of God, the mystery which had been hidden…” So “the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to his holy ones, to his saints,” is the Word of God. It’s not talking about the Bible. The Bible was not hidden somewhere for generations, and then St. Paul brought it out and said, “Behold: the Bible,” and gave it to them to read to know how to get saved. That’s very clearly not what he’s saying.

The Word of God—he’s using “Word of God” here the same way St. John does.

C3: It means Christ.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, the Word of God, which is, again, what we just saw him talking about, starting back in verse twelve. The Word of God in the Old Testament is this Person.

And what does he mean by “hidden from ages and generations”? Well, it wasn’t exactly clear who this Person was. You read Second Temple Jewish literature, and there’s all these conjectures, like: “Is this some kind of angelic being? Is this another god? Is this the same God appearing a different way? Who is this Person? Is this, like, Enoch who went up to heaven? Who is this?” And you see the same thing in the gospels. Christ says to his followers, “Who do you say that I am?” “Well, some people say you’re Elijah, and some people say you’re a prophet, and some people say…” So he’s coming back to that same idea: You have the Word of God who appears.

And this is especially, in the Aramaic Targums, the Aramaic translations and elaborations of the Old Testament Scriptures, whenever that second Figure appeared, whenever it says somebody saw God or God appeared to somebody, they saw that as an issue, too, because they’re like: “Wait a minute. It keeps saying you can’t see him, and then they see him.” So they inserted the Aramaic word memra which means “word” in front of it, so they had all these people seeing the Word of God: “The Word of God unto angels comes to see…; the Word of Yahweh comes to see Abraham and Sarah. The elders of Israel, halfway up Mount Sinai, see the Word of God.” So in addition to the places that already talked about the Word of God as a Person, there’s these additional ones.

So this is the same thing. He’s now revealed in the Incarnation: this is him. Jesus Christ is the Word of God, is this second Person, now revealed to his holy ones, to his saints. And that is—again, the content of the Gospel is who Christ is and what he’s done. That he’s this Person, who was back there in all the generations, not a new person, from the beginning, creation, all that he’s just been through.

Verse 27: “To them”—meaning, to his holy ones—“God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” So I’ll retranslate “Gentiles” as “the nations,” as opposed to Israel: all the nations. “To them (to the saints), God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery.” The “riches of the glory of this mystery” being Christ, the Word of God, capital-W.

“...among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” So that’s what St. Paul is doing. He’s making this known in particular among the nations. St. Paul takes it out to the nations. Christ himself came to Judea. He says he came to the lost sheep of the tribe of Israel. So he himself did this with the Judeans, and now St. Paul is taking it to the nations, the 70 nations.

And notice he says, “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Remember the hope? The hope was of the Gospel. So again, the Gospel is Christ, who he is and what he’s done.

“Him we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.” This is again—I know I’ve hammered on this before, but this is again: St. Paul’s soteriology isn’t just: “You get saved and now you’re okay, and you go about your life and try to be a good person, and when you die you go to heaven.” This is: You strive and you work toward perfection. Perfection is not: you never make a mistake. Perfection is maturity, completion, telos in Greek, the end, the person God created you to be. And so it’s not just: “I came and I preached the Gospel to you and you accepted it and now you’re saved and now I’ve moved on to get some more people saved.” It’s he continues to exhort them in wisdom about living your life, pressing on. Combine this with that. It’s “if you continue in faithfulness.” This is the picture St. Paul is giving of salvation.

Verse 29: “To this end I also labor, striving according to his working which works in me mightily.” [Laughter] Which is an interesting way to…

Q5: But it’s the same thing he’s answering again?

Fr. Stephen: “Striving according to his working which works in me mightily.” This is the principle we talked about in Philippians again, of synergy, synergeia. He’s striving; he’s working, working hard to exhort, to bring the Gospel, to exhort them to continue to grow in maturity and to come to completion. But the reason he’s working so hard is that God is working in him to do it; he’s co-operating with what God is doing: it’s not St. Paul doing it. That’s why he emphasizes that God is working within him mightily, with strength; the strength and the power is God’s, working in him, and he’s just cooperating instead of resisting.

Okay. So we’ll go ahead and go on a little bit more, a few more verses. Chapter two, verse one: “For I want you to know what a great conflict I have for you and for those in Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh.” So we talked about Laodicea is the nearest big city. So he’s saying, “I have this conflict going on within me.” He saying that he hasn’t been there yet: they haven’t seen in him the flesh; he has not yet been to visit them in person.

Verse two: “That their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love and attaining to all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the knowledge of the mystery of God, both of the Father and of Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” So why is there a conflict? Well, because he hasn’t gotten to see them yet. So he’s really saying, “I really wish I could come see you”; that’s the conflict, because—the reason why he wants to come see them is he wants to help them, as he’s just been saying, in coming to maturity, that their “hearts may be encouraged”, that they “may be knit together with each other (in the community) in love, and come to the full assurance of understanding.” Let’s stop there.

So the “assurance of understanding”: “assurance” is a big word, for a lot of our non-Orthodox Christian friends. And in fact a lot of this stuff we’ve seen St. Paul saying, like you’ve got to continue in faithfulness or you’ve got to press on and strive toward the hope, that you’ve got to keep doing all this—they would even maybe have a problem with and say, “Well, that’s attacking assurance of salvation. That’s attacking the assurance.” St. Paul here says where assurance comes from. Assurance and confidence comes from knowing God. It comes from the knowledge of God. That’s what gives us assurance.

I’ll talk about this a little. I may have talked about this before in the Bible study, but we’ll go back to it. There seems to be an idea among some of our Protestant friends that, in order for me to have any kind of sense of peace in life and in death, it has to be impossible for me to turn my back on my salvation, because if it’s possible, then I can’t ever be at peace.

So this is the analogy that I use when talking to them about this. This state, and I think pretty much every other state in the United States right now, has no-fault divorce. Not everybody here is married, but has no-fault divorce, meaning any time someone’s spouse wants to, they can print out papers from the internet, sign them, drop them off at a government office, and, boom—they’re divorced. I do not spend a lot of my day sitting around worrying that my wife is going to divorce me. She could. She has access to a printer. She could go and do that. She could go and drop off—she could divorce any time she wants! She doesn’t have to give a reason: no-fault divorce. Any time she wants to, she can. But I never sit around and worry that she’s going to. Why? Well, because I know her. She’s not going to do that.

So the reason I know that Christ isn’t going to reject me or turn his back on me or abandon me is that I’ve come to know him. The knowledge of God gives that assurance. If you know who Christ is, you know he’s not going to abandon you or forsake you or turn his back on you.

Now let’s look at the flip side. I can, just as easily, divorce my wife any time I want to, in this country. I could go around and print out paperwork. But I don’t sit around and worry: “Oh my gosh, what if tomorrow I wake up and divorce my wife?” [Laughter] “How can I ever have security in my marriage or confidence in my marriage? I could divorce my wife at any moment!” I don’t go and like: “I need to sign away my power of attorney so I can’t divorce my wife, just to make sure I never do—because if I can, I will… but I don’t want to, but I will.” Right? [Laughter] Like, that just doesn’t make any sense!

The way we know—the way I know I’m going to continue to be faithful to Christ is the same way I know I’m going to continue to be faithful to my wife: not because the alternative is impossible, but because I’m not going to choose to do it. Or, more accurately in terms of my faithfulness to Christ—because I am going to sin—I know that when I do, and when I realize I have, just like if I realized that, at some point, I had been in some way unfaithful to my wife, I would apologize and do everything to make it right. I would repent.

So that’s where the two sides of assurance come: assurance in terms of who Christ is to me comes from coming to know him, as St. Paul says here; and assurance that I’m not going to do something I don’t want to do comes from the fact that I’m not going to do something I don’t want to do—or if I realize I’ve done something I didn’t want to do, I’m going to repent of it, because I didn’t want to do it. But so St. Paul is focusing on the one aspect of that: coming to know Christ, coming to know God, ever more deeply.

Notice how he phrases it, though, too: “the mystery of God, both of the Father and of Christ.”

C4: Yeah, I noticed that.

C5: That’s pretty vague.

Fr. Stephen: Right. So again, this is what he’s been talking about this whole beginning part: God is both the Father and Christ.

“...in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” So if you come to the knowledge of God and of Christ, you come to the knowledge of everything. Why? Because all things were created by, through, and for Christ, so as you come to know Christ, you come to know everything as it truly is, and understand everything as it truly is.

Verse four: “Now this I say, lest anyone should deceive you with persuasive words…” So he’s saying: “I’m making this clear, because someone might come to you and tell you something different and try to lead you in a different direction. “...for though I am absent in the flesh, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the steadfastness of your faithfulness in Christ.” So he’s saying: “I want to make this clear to you: this is what I want for you.” Anybody could show up there, since Paul isn’t there, and say, “Oh, that Paul, he’s given up on you. You need to go this way.” He’s saying, “No, I’m laying this out to you so you know who I am, where my heart is, how I feel for you, what I want for you, lest anybody show up and tell you otherwise. This is the truth.” So he says, “I’m not there physically,” but he’s there with them in the spirit and rejoicing with them over the good things that are happening there.

So I think this is where we’re going to leave off for this evening; even though it’s not a chapter break, this is a good place, because we’re going to shift in topics next time. So next time we’ll pick up in St. Paul’s epistle to the Colossians, chapter two, verse six. Thank you, everybody.