Saved… 

Part 8 – To show off the new human     

So what is this new human we’ve been saved to be? According to Paul in Colossians 1:26 it’s been a “mystery kept hidden for ages and generations” – but – “is now disclosed to the saints.” So the saints have been given hidden knowledge.

But hidden knowledge about what? Well, it’s to the saints, verse 27, that “God has chosen to make known the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” 

This “hope of glory” Paul speaks of was Jesus’ hope too, that we join him in the glory he’d always experienced with his Father (John 17:24). It was the same glory he looked forward to returning to after his human death too (verse 5). And now it’s the glory we seek and receive as well (Romans 2:7,10). 

And there’s no mystery anymore as to how that glory is made possible for us: it’s “Christ in you.” Well, that makes sense because “in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in a human body,” Colossians 2:9. To have Christ in us, therefore, means we have the fullness of Christ in his human form living in us – the exact point Paul makes in verse 10, that we’ve “been given fullness in Christ.”  

Which makes sense of 2 Corinthians 5:17 too, then, that “anyone in Christ is a new creation,” because what else could we be but a “new creation” with Christ’s fullness in his human form living in us? 

But for what purpose do all these new creations and new Christ-like humans exist? According to Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:10, “We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus (that put to death our old self), so that the life of Jesus (now living the fullness of his life in us) may also be revealed in our body.” 

So it’s not just for our sakes that Jesus is making us into “new humans,” it’s to show off his handiwork to others. Because in us he’s unfolding “the mystery kept hidden for ages,” of the glory that’s coming to us humans. And if people don’t know it’s happening right under their noses right now, they will when Christ appears and those transformed by the Holy Spirit into his likeness “appear with him in glory,” Colossians 3:4…(continues tomorrow)