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Book of Colossians 1:26-29 Christ in You the Hope

[Study Aired September 1, 2026]

“Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints: to whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory: whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus: whereunto I also labour, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily” (Colossians 1:26–29).

What Comes Due Here

Five studies have carried a question they would not answer. The first raised it at verse 5, where the hope was said to be laid up in heaven, and then closed by calling that hope a Person. The second tightened it, setting an inheritance still ahead beside a kingdom already entered. The third deepened the Person without resolving the question. The fourth found the same hope named as a thing a man might be moved from. Each time the study refused to settle it and named these verses as the place where it would be settled. We are here.

It matters where these four verses fall. They close the chapter. Everything Paul has said to this point has been ground taken before a word of the error is spoken — a hope laid up, a fitness granted, a Christ first in all things, a reconciling landed on enemies, a minister spent for a body. In the next chapter the teachers finally speak, and they are answered by what already stands behind them. These verses are the last of that ground, and the deepest. They say what the thing possessed actually is.

A second question was left one verse back. The last study ended on “to fulfil the word of God” and refused to choose between a fullness of extent and a fullness of disclosure, because the phrase that would settle it stands in verse 26.

Both are answered in what follows, though not equally. What the hope is and where it is, this passage settles. Whether a man’s hold upon it can fail is not settled here, and we will take it up later.

Four verses, and they move in four steps: a mystery hidden and now shown; the content of it named; a ministry aimed at every man without rank; and a labour that runs on strength not its own.

Hid From Ages, Made Manifest

Paul does not describe the word he was given to fulfill. He names it.

“Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints.”

The clause is set beside “the word of God” to tell us what that word is — an apposition, one phrase laid alongside another. So what the fulfilling amounts to has to be read off what the word is said to be. Everything said of it here is one movement: hidden once, and now brought into the open.

That is what answers the last study’s question, and it is not the word itself that answers it. “To fulfil” is plēroō (G4137) and the word will stretch several ways — Paul uses it of preaching carried through to the end of a circuit, “I have fully preached (G4137) the gospel of Christ” (Romans 15:19) — and a word that stretches cannot decide anything. Paul’s own sentence decides it. He says the word he was to fulfill is a mystery hidden and now shown, and a thing like that is filled full by being opened.

The gospel still has to travel. What this says is what the travelling accomplishes. There is a reach here — “among the Gentiles” in the next clause, “every man” three times in the verse after — and the going out is how the opening gets done. The word is filled full by being opened, and it is opened by being carried.

Then the harder half of the sentence. “Hid” is apokruptō (G613), and the tense Paul uses describes a thing done and still holding — concealed, and having stayed concealed. He uses the same word of the same mystery writing to the Ephesians, where it is “the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid (G613) in God” (Ephesians 3:9). Elsewhere he calls it “the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began” (Romans 16:25).

However, hidden is not absent, and Paul is the one who forbids us to say it is. In the same sentence at Romans he says the mystery long kept secret is “now made manifest, and by the scriptures of the prophets… made known to all nations” (Romans 16:25–26) — the showing comes by writings that were there the whole time. He opens that letter calling his gospel the thing God “promised afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures” (Romans 1:2). Where he states the hiding at greatest length, he states it by comparison: the mystery “in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit” (Ephesians 3:5). Not nothing then and everything now, but a measure then — spoken by prophets and written in the scriptures — and the reality itself now.

An earlier study found this shape in a Person. “No man hath seen God at any time” — and yet God was not unknown before the Son came; He had been spoken of for ages. What the Son added was not the first word about the Father, but the Father Himself made known: the Son “declared him” (John 1:18). The mystery comes the same way. It was written of, and now it is shown.

Hidden from whom? From “ages” and “generations.” The second of those can only mean people living one after another, and Paul says as much to the Ephesians, where the mystery was not made known “unto the sons of men” (Ephesians 3:5). So the first means the same — stretches of time, not the ruling powers some would read into the word.

To Whom God Would Make Known

Being manifest is a thing done. Someone did it.

“To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles.”

God is the one who makes it known. “God would make known” — gnōrizō (G1107), and the willing is His. The word reached the saints because God willed that it should; they did not climb to it. An earlier study watched every verb of rescue run one direction — always the object, never the agent — and another watched that pattern reach the apostle himself. Here it reaches the knowing. What the teachers at the door of this church were selling was a knowledge to be attained, secured by discipline or vision or ascent. Paul says the knowledge in question is given, and given at the pleasure of the giver.

Nor is it rationed. “The riches of the glory of this mystery” — an earlier study prayed for a knowledge filled to the brim so that the counterfeit would have nothing left to offer, and here is what the filling is filled with. Not a bare fact, but riches; and not riches merely, but the glory of them.

It is “among the Gentiles.” The mystery is not that God has a people. It is where He has now set them. Paul spells it out to the Ephesians in the same breath as the hiding: “that the Gentiles should be fellowheirs, and of the same body” (Ephesians 3:6).

One unevenness in the verse should be seen and not made more of than it is. The mystery is “made manifest to his saints,” and in the next verse it is preached to every man. That is not two classes of the saved but two acts — a thing disclosed, and a thing announced. Paul narrows the disclosure further still when he describes it at length, “revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets” (Ephesians 3:5) — narrower than his saints, which shows the term is marking how the mystery arrived and not who ranks where. Paul is describing his own commission: it was opened to him so that he could preach it. What was given to some is published to all.

What is published, Paul now names.

Which Is Christ in You, the Hope of Glory

“Which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

The first study said the hope is not a thing but a Person, and pointed here for the proof. Here it is. What do the riches of the glory of this mystery amount to? Paul answers with a name, Christ.

That first study leaned on a word that seems to pull the other way. “Laid up” at verse 5 is apokeimai (G606), and the pictures it gathered were pictures of things. A servant hands back money, “which I have kept laid up (G606) in a napkin” (Luke 19:20). Paul at the end of his course: “there is laid up (G606) for me a crown of righteousness” (2 Timothy 4:8). A sum and a crown, set aside and produced at the day. A strange word to use of a Person kept in store.

Look at what the word is doing in those pictures. The napkin and the crown are named by the sentences around them; the word supplies neither. It says only how a thing is held — reserved, untouched, produced at the day. It stands four times in all, and in every one of them what is kept is named by something other than the verb, including the place where what is kept is no possession at all: “it is appointed (G606) unto men once to die” (Hebrews 9:27). So the word cannot tell us the hope of verse 5 is a thing, because it never tells us what kind of thing it holds. Verse 5 says the hope is kept. It does not say what the hope is. That is what verse 27 is for.

The harder trouble is in the verse itself. Paul does not write Christ in you, the hope. He writes “the hope of glory.” Glory sits between Christ and the hoping, as though Christ were the guarantee and glory the prize. If that is right, the first study said too much.

Paul does speak of Christ living in a man, and not only here. He prays for it — “that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith” (Ephesians 3:17). He says it of himself — “I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me” (Galatians 2:20). Christ in you is no phrase peculiar to this verse.

Then what is glory? We must not overstate, because Scripture does speak of a glory ahead of us and given to us — “the glory which shall be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18). The point is not that glory is nothing. The point is that glory is nothing you could take away from Him and still have.

That is where this letter has already put us. A head and a body are not two parties passing goods between them. The third study said the company raised into His life shares that life without displacing Him. The fifth said the afflictions falling on the members are Christ’s own, because the body is His — the voice on the road did not say why persecutest thou my people. It said, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” (Acts 9:4). What is the Head’s is not handed across to the body. It is His, and the body is in it.

The afflictions come to us that way, and so does the glory. Peter sets both in one breath, writing as “a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed” (1 Peter 5:1). A partaker — one who shares in a thing, not one who is handed a thing. And revealed: the same hidden-then-shown this whole passage runs on. Paul says it of us plainly — “When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory” (Colossians 3:4).

Read Colossians 3:4 slowly. The one who appears is Christ. We appear with Him. The glory is His appearing. Paul says the same to another church without disguising whose it is: we are called “to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thessalonians 2:14). Obtained — and His. Glory is received, and what is received is Christ Himself brought out into the open, in a body that belongs to Him. Nothing stands between Christ and the hope, because there is nothing there to stand.

So the two verses stop fighting. The hope is in heaven because Christ is in heaven, and our life is hid there with Him — “ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). The hope is in us because Christ is not only in heaven. He is above us and He is in us, and the glory we are waiting for is Him, brought out into the open. Verse 5 kept the hope safe. Verse 27 tells us who it is. They were never two hopes.

“In you” can be read two ways — Christ in each man, or Christ among a people. The Greek word is en (G1722), and Paul used it a few words earlier in “among (G1722) the Gentiles” — the same word, rendered two ways in one sentence. We need not settle which is meant. Either reading puts Him here and not only above, and that is all we claimed.

Every Man, Three Times

Having said what he preaches, Paul says who he preaches it to, and he leaves nobody out.

“Whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.”

Three times in one verse. Paul is answering teachers who dealt in the few — an inner circle, a higher knowledge, a climb for those able to make it. He answers with a ministry that draws no such line. Warning is for every man. Teaching is for every man. And the presenting he has in mind is of every man.

We must read that reach the way this series has already read it. Four verses back Paul said the gospel “was preached to every creature which is under heaven” (Colossians 1:23), and both the first study and the fourth refused to turn that into a head count. Scripture speaks that way of a gospel going out — “their sound went into all the earth” (Romans 10:18). The same care is owed here, and it is owed in both directions. Paul tells us in the same breath how far the presenting reaches: “whom we preach.” The verse shuts nobody out and ranks nobody. It does not give us a tally, and we will not take one from it — not that every man is finally presented, and not that some are not. What it says is that no man is outside the aim of this preaching.

Then something easy to walk past. At verse 22 it was Christ who would “present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight.” Here it is “we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.” The same word, paristēmi (G3936) — the fourth study weighed it and used this very clause in doing so: when one man presents another before God, that hour is still ahead. What has changed is who does the presenting. There, Christ; here, Paul.

They are not rivals, and the verse says why in its last words. The presenting is “in Christ Jesus,” and the next verse says the striving runs on Christ’s own working. Paul brings no man before God on his own account. An earlier study found him a steward, handling goods that were not his; he brings men in on the same terms.

“Perfect” is teleios (G5046). It does not mean without flaw. It means finished — come to what a thing was headed for. James shows it by what he sets against it: “let patience have her perfect (G5046) work, that ye may be perfect (G5046) and entire, wanting nothing” (James 1:4). The perfect thing is the thing with nothing still missing. The KJV itself turns the word into a matter of growing up where Hebrews sets it against infancy: “strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age (G5046)” (Hebrews 5:14). Paul asks the same for this church at the close of the letter, through the man who first brought them the gospel — Epaphras, “always labouring fervently for you in prayers, that ye may stand perfect (G5046) and complete in all the will of God” (Colossians 4:12).

Striving According to His Working

The presenting is the apostle’s to do. What it costs him, he says last.

“Whereunto I also labour, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily.”

Two words for the effort, and neither is mild. “Labour” is kopiaō (G2872) — to work until you are worn out. It is the word the Lord used of men worn down under a load, “all ye that labour (G2872) and are heavy laden” (Matthew 11:28), and the word Paul used of a life spent under reproach, “we both labour (G2872) and suffer reproach” (1 Timothy 4:10).

“Striving” is agōnizomai (G75), the word of the contest — “every man that striveth (G75) for the mastery is temperate in all things” (1 Corinthians 9:25). Its noun turns up two verses later: “what great conflict (G73) I have for you” (Colossians 2:1). The man is spent, and he says so.

Then the ground moves under the sentence, and none of the effort is taken back. He strives “according to his working (G1753), which worketh (G1754) in me mightily.” The working is God’s, and so is the strength that works it. Paul puts both halves together in one breath elsewhere: “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh (G1754) in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12–13). Work, because God is working in you.

That is the same order the fourth study found at verse 23, where the Colossians are called grounded and told to be settled — the one done to them, the other asked of them, and the two never pulled apart. Here it stands in the apostle himself, and the asking is not softened by the giving. Paul labors until he is worn out, and the strength he does it with is not his own.

Nor is any of this his alone, though the verse is his — “I also labour,” “worketh in me.” An earlier study asked the same about the filling up of Christ’s afflictions. Epaphras is said to do this very thing, in this very word: he labors fervently (G75) in prayer for them (Colossians 4:12). And both of Paul’s verbs from verse 28 — warning (G3560) and teaching (G1321) — are laid on the whole church later in this letter: “teaching (G1321) and admonishing (G3560) one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” (Colossians 3:16). The KJV renders noutheteō (G3560) warning at 1:28 and admonishing at 3:16, but it is one word in both. Paul’s is the largest case of it in the letter. It is still a case.

Now, how far does this reach the question the fourth study left open? That study said a man may be moved away from the hope while the hope itself cannot be moved — and it did not say what holds the man. Neither does this passage. What it does say is that the knowing was God’s to give, “God would make known,” and the ministry aimed at these men runs on God’s own working. The warning of verse 23 was never spoken into a room where a man’s grip was the only thing at work.

What a man forfeits, this passage does not say, and we will not supply it. The letter names its own places for that, and we go to them when we come to them.

What These Verses Establish

Read whole, the four verses take a thing hidden through ages and set it in the open, and then say what it is.

What was hidden was not unspoken. The prophets of old wrote of it. What is new is not that God had a purpose, but that He has now shown it. What He shows is riches and glory, and He willed that it be known. At the center of it stands a Person: Christ in you. The glory we wait for is that same Christ brought out into the open, in a body that belongs to Him. The hope kept in heaven at verse 5 and the hope living in us at verse 27 were one hope in two places, because the Person is in both.

That Person is preached without rank and without limit — warning every man, teaching every man, that every man may be presented finished in Him — by a man who works himself to exhaustion on strength that is not his own.

The order this series has found five times holds a sixth. The mystery was hidden before it was shown. The showing was God’s will before it was any man’s knowledge. The working was God’s before the labouring was Paul’s. The standing comes first and the walk after, and the walk never becomes the ground of the standing.

What is new is that the thing possessed is finally named. The first study found a hope laid up and did not open the vault. The second found a fitness granted. The third found the Christ in whom it is all held. The fourth found what the possession is for, and the fifth what it cost the man who carried it. This one opens the deposit. It is Christ, and He is here — and He is also above, kept, and coming.

Threads Held for Later

Two debts are answered, and one of them only in part.

What it means to fulfill the word of God is answered by the clause set beside it. The word Paul was given is named a mystery, hidden once and now shown, and that is what fulfilling it amounts to. The verb is left where it stands, able to carry either sense. It was never the thing that decided.

The question carried from the first study is settled as to what the hope is and where it is. It is not settled as to whether a man’s hold on it can fail, and this study has not closed that. How a man is moved, and what he ceases to hold, waits where the letter warns of a teacher who takes the umpire’s seat and of a man “not holding the Head” (Colossians 2:18–19). What he forfeits waits further on again, and not where the fourth study said it would. That study sent the question to “Let no man beguile you of your reward” (Colossians 2:18). However, the Greek there is one verb, katabrabeuō (G2603) — to rule against a man as an umpire rules. The KJV supplies your reward; no noun stands behind it. The verb is built on the umpire’s word and carries the prize inside its own shape, which is where the translators found it — but the verse never names the thing said to be lost. A question about forfeit cannot be answered out of a text that does not state what is forfeited. It goes instead where Paul names both sides of the reckoning, and names them: “ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance… But he that doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done: and there is no respect of persons” (Colossians 3:24–25).

The reach of the reconciling of “all things,” and how it sits with the powers Christ triumphs over openly, waits at Colossians 2:15.

The body — the body of His flesh at verse 22, His body the church at verse 24 — comes due where the letter says that in Christ “dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9). One thing this study has deliberately left alone belongs with it. That verse stands eight verses from “Christ in you,” and what it says of the Person needs its own ground and not one borrowed from here.

Next study: (Colossians 2:1–7)

“For I would that ye knew what great conflict I have for you, and for them at Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh; that their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ; in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. And this I say, lest any man should beguile you with enticing words. For though I be absent in the flesh, yet am I with you in the spirit, joying and beholding your order, and the stedfastness of your faith in Christ. As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.”