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Book of Colossians 1:24-25 Filling up That Which is Behind

[Study Aired August 25, 2026]

“Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body’s sake, which is the church: whereof I am made a minister, according to the dispensation of God which is given to me for you, to fulfil the word of God” (Colossians 1:24–25).

Whereof I Am Made a Minister

The last study stopped on a hinge. Verse 23 ends with Paul naming himself: “whereof I Paul am made a minister.” He says it again two verses later, and the repetition is not habit. In verse 23 the thing he ministers is the gospel — the word heard, preached, and not to be moved from. In verse 25 it is the church: one man, one commission, and two objects – a message and a body.

Between those two sayings stands the hardest sentence in the letter so far. Paul says he fills up “that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ.”

The series has spent two studies making that sentence impossible. The third study said the fullness is closed: “there is nothing left over to go looking for.” The fourth study said the reconciling was one act and over — not begun, not offered, not made available on terms.

Nothing left over; that which is behind. The words collide, and we ought to feel the collision before we handle it.

It is worse than an inconsistency for the Colossian readers. Teachers are at the door of this church telling them that what they hold is not sufficient — that a fullness must be sought beyond Christ, through a higher knowledge, or a discipline, or beings ranked between themselves and God (Colossians 2:8, 2:18, 2:21). Paul is about to say that he supplies what is behind in the afflictions of Christ. If that means what it sounds like, he has handed the teachers their argument in his own hand and signed it.

Either the last two studies overstated, or there is something behind that is not behind in the cross.

Paul does not begin with the difficulty. He begins with joy.

Who Now Rejoice in My Sufferings

“Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you.”

The man writing is in prison. The second study found him there, praying without ceasing for a church he had never seen; here he tells them what the praying costs. “My sufferings” — his own, and he does not soften them.

However, he rejoices. Not endures, not accepts — rejoices, chairō (G5463), the ordinary word for gladness.

This is what the second study saw coming. Paul prayed there that the Colossians would be “strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power” — and the whole of that power issued in something unspectacular: “unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness” (Colossians 1:11). We said then that the hardest thing the divine strength does in a man is hold him steady, and cheerful, under what does not move. Here is the man who prayed it, chained, and cheerful.

Nor is the joy in the suffering itself. Paul is not a man who has learned to like pain. The joy has an object, and he names it in the same breath: “for you.” The sufferings are pointed at somebody. He speaks the same way elsewhere, and always with a direction fastened on: “I take pleasure in infirmities… for Christ’s sake” (2 Corinthians 12:10); “the things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel” (Philippians 1:12).

A man may be glad in what is bitter if the bitterness is spent on something. Paul says his is.

That Which Is Behind

Now the clause that makes the trouble: “and fill up (G466) that which is behind (G5303) of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body’s sake, which is the church.”

Everywhere else Paul speaks of filling up a lack, he means one thing, and it is not repair. Epaphroditus hazarded his life “to supply (G378) your lack (G5303) of service toward me” (Philippians 2:30). The Philippians’ love was not deficient. They were far off and could hand him nothing, and a man came and carried to Paul what the distance had withheld. He speaks the same way of Corinth — “that which was lacking (G5303) on your part they have supplied (G378)” (1 Corinthians 16:17) — of the collection that “supplieth (G4322) the want (G5303) of the saints” (2 Corinthians 9:12), and of his own need met out of Macedonia: “for that which was lacking (G5303) to me the brethren which came from Macedonia supplied (G4322)” (2 Corinthians 11:9). Four places, one picture: something owed could not reach where it was needed, and a person carried it there. Not the repair of what was flawed. The delivery of what was distant.

That has to be said carefully, because the words will not all bear the same weight. The verb in verse 24, antanaplēroō (G466), stands nowhere else in Scripture, so Paul’s habit with it settles nothing — there is no habit. Two near relatives of it do stand elsewhere, and he uses them more than one way: of men who hinder the gospel “to fill up (G378) their sins always” (1 Thessalonians 2:16), which is a measure filled to the brim and not a want supplied, and elsewhere of a prophecy brought to its term — “And in them is fulfilled (G378) the prophecy of Esaias” (Matthew 13:14). The word by itself decides nothing, and a survey that showed only the instances suiting us would be worth nothing.

So the four places above are narrower than the word. They are the places where such a verb stands joined to the noun that stands in verse 24 — hysterēma (G5303), a lack, a thing wanting — and the last two are a further relative again, prosanaplēroō (G4322). Within that narrower company the picture holds. Outside it, it does not.

Nor will the noun carry it alone. Paul can use hysterēma of a real deficiency: “and might perfect (G2675) that which is lacking (G5303) in your faith” (1 Thessalonians 3:10). The verb there is not this one. It is katartizō (G2675), to mend what is broken.

All of which corroborates and none of which proves, and it need not, because what decides the verse is not the lexicon.

Paul locates the lack, and the locating settles it. It is “in my flesh.” Not in the cross, and not in Christ. Whatever is behind, it is behind in Paul.

He names who it is for. The reconciling of verse 20 was Godward — “to reconcile all things unto himself,” peace made toward God through blood. What he names here is aimed elsewhere: “for his body’s sake, which is the church.” The cross settled a matter with God; these sufferings serve a people.

Then how are they Christ’s afflictions at all?

Paul of all men knew, and he learned it on the road. The voice that stopped him did not say why persecutest thou my people. It said, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” (Acts 9:4). He was arresting Christians and was told he was striking Christ. A head owns what his body bears, and Paul had that sentence burned into him before he ever wrote a letter.

So the afflictions are Christ’s because the body is Christ’s. He states it plainly to another church, and in the word he uses of Christ’s sufferings borne in His members, pathēma (G3804): “For as the sufferings (G3804) of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ. And whether we be afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation” (2 Corinthians 1:5–6) — Christ’s sufferings, borne in Paul, spent on other men. He asks for the thing by name: “the fellowship of his sufferings (G3804)” (Philippians 3:10).

Here the third study’s own words hold the two together. Of those raised with Christ it said that the company raised into His life shares that life without displacing Him. That is what stands at verse 24. Paul shares the afflictions of the One whose body he serves, and the sharing adds nothing to what was finished at the cross — he has already told us where the lack is, and it is not there. So the risen share a resurrection they did not accomplish. Nothing left over to go looking for, and something still behind to be carried; the work done toward God was settled, and the service owed to the body is running.

One thing the clause will not supply is a measure. Paul names no quantity of affliction, no total to be reached, no hour at which the filling is done. Scripture does speak elsewhere of a completion attached to suffering — the martyrs under the altar are told to rest “until their fellowservants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled” (Revelation 6:11) — but what is numbered there is sufferers, not affliction, and it is said of another scene. Whether any measure is to be held, and on what ground, this clause does not say. We let the silence be silence.

For His Body’s Sake, Which Is the Church

There are now two bodies in this letter, and Paul has set them three verses apart.

The reconciling was done “in the body of his flesh through death” (Colossians 1:22) — a body that could die, and did. The sufferings are borne “for his body’s sake, which is the church” — a body that cannot die, and is still in the world. The third study established who stands over the second: “he is the head of the body, the church” (Colossians 1:18).

The head is beyond reach; the body is not. A head does not watch its body from a distance — “no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: for we are members of his body” (Ephesians 5:29–30). What falls on one member is felt through the whole: “whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it” (1 Corinthians 12:26).

That is what makes Paul’s chains service and not misfortune. He is a member of a body, bearing in a Roman prison what the head owns as His own, and bearing it toward the rest of the members.

Which forces a question the passage will not let us leave alone. Is the filling up Paul’s alone?

The verse is emphatically his — “my sufferings,” “in my flesh,” “given to me” — and nothing said of other men may be got by dissolving those words. The principle just stated of the body does not stop at apostles, and Paul can use the name of Christ for the whole, head with members together: speaking of the many members he says “so also is Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:12). The very word for affliction that stands in verse 24 is laid on believers at large elsewhere, and laid on them with the same gladness verse 24 opens with: “we glory in tribulations also” (Romans 5:3). “We must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22), and John writes to seven churches as “your brother, and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ” (Revelation 1:9). It was granted to the Philippians “not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake” (Philippians 1:29) — granted, as a thing given.

So the bearing is the ordinary condition of members in a body whose head owns what falls upon them, and Paul’s is a particular case of it — the largest case in the New Testament, and still a case.

According to the Dispensation Given

“Whereof I am made a minister (G1249), according to the dispensation of God which is given to me for you.”

The word is diakonos (G1249), a servant — and the first study has already met it. Epaphras was “a faithful minister of Christ” (Colossians 1:7), the same word, and we said of him then that he was a sower and not a source. Paul claims nothing higher for himself here than he granted to Epaphras there.

Nor does he claim it as his own doing. “Am made” — he did not make himself one. The letter opened the same way, with “an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God” (Colossians 1:1), a commission received rather than achieved. The second study watched every verb of rescue run in one direction — delivered, translated, made meet, always the object and never the agent — and here the pattern reaches the apostle himself. Paul is done to, like the rest.

Then the ground of it: “according to the dispensation (G3622) of God.” The word is oikonomia (G3622), the managing of a household by a man who does not own it — the word the Lord puts in a master’s mouth, “give an account of thy stewardship (G3622)” (Luke 16:2). Paul takes the title for himself and his fellows and states in the same breath the whole of what it requires: “stewards (G3623) of the mysteries of God… it is required in stewards (G3623), that a man be found faithful” (1 Corinthians 4:1–2). The goods are another’s. He is trusted with them, and answerable for the handling of them.

It is “given to me.” Paul says it almost word for word to the Ephesians: “the dispensation (G3622) of the grace of God which is given me to you-ward” (Ephesians 3:2).

Once more, “for you.” Twice in two verses Paul has aimed what he holds at somebody else — the sufferings for you, the stewardship for you. Nothing he was given was given him to keep.

To Fulfill the Word of God

The stewardship has a purpose, and Paul names it last: “to fulfil (G4137) the word of God.”

The word is plēroō (G4137), and it will bear more than one sense here. It can mean to carry a thing out to its full extent, as Paul says of his own circuit of preaching — “I have fully  preached (G4137) the gospel of Christ” (Romans 15:19). It can mean to bring a thing to its full disclosure, so that what was folded is now open. The verse as it stands does not decide between them, and Paul’s sentence does not end at verse 25. What follows is an apposition — “even the mystery which hath been hid from ages” — and that is the next study’s ground. We name the question and leave it standing rather than settle it out of a clause we have not yet read.

What does not wait on the choosing is whose word it is. It is “the word of God,” and the first study established what such a word does. It is a living seed that bears its own fruit; a sower may cast it and sleep, and it springs up “he knoweth not how” (Mark 4:27). God said of it, “it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please” (Isaiah 55:11).

So the minister fulfills a word that was never going to fail. He is not its power; he is its steward. Paul suffers to carry it and rejoices to suffer, and the accomplishing was never his.

What These Verses Establish

Read as a whole, the two verses set a man beside the finished work and show what is left for him to do — which is not to finish it.

Paul rejoices in sufferings pointed at other people. He fills up what is behind of Christ’s afflictions, and what is behind is behind in his own flesh and not in the cross: a service the body needed, carried to it by a member. He serves a body whose head owns everything that falls on it, and he is not the only member of whom that is true. He holds a ministry he did not confer upon himself, under a stewardship he was given, aimed at people he had never met, for a word that accomplishes what God pleases.

The order the series has found three times holds again, now in an apostle rather than a congregation. The ministry was given before it was exercised; the stewardship was handed over before any account was rendered. What is new is the direction of sight. The first two studies looked at what the Colossians possess, the third at the Christ in whom they possess it, and the fourth at what the possession is for. This one looks at what it cost the man who carried it to them. It finds him in chains, and it finds him glad — not because the chains were light, but because they were spent on the very people reading the letter.

Threads Held for Later

One clause is left underdetermined on purpose. “To fulfil the word of God” will bear either a fullness of extent or a fullness of disclosure, and the phrase that would settle it stands in the next verse. We take it up there.

The rest of the ledger is unchanged. The hope of verse 5 and the “Christ in you” of verse 27 still stand apart, and the knot is tied at 1:27. How a man is moved, and what he ceases to hold when he is, waits where the letter warns against a teacher who takes the umpire’s seat and against “not holding the Head” (Colossians 2:18–19). What he forfeits waits further on again, where Paul names both sides of the reckoning: “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) — and the question waits there. And the body — the body of His flesh in verse 22, His body the church in verse 24 — comes due where the letter says that in Christ “dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9).

Next study: (Colossians 1:26–29)

“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.”