What Does Colossians 1:27 Mean?

(27) **To whom God would**—*i.e.*, *God willed.* The expression is emphatic. It was of God’s own pleasure, inscrutable to man. So in Ephesians 1:9, we read “the mystery of His will.” Note also, in Ephesians 1:4-6, the repeated reference to the predestination of God in His love. **The riches of the glory.**—See Ephesians 1:18; Ephesians 3:16; and Notes there. **Which is Christ in you.**—This mystery specially committed to St. Paul to declare is. in Ephesians 3:6, defined thus, “That the Gentiles should be (or, *are*) fellowheirs, and of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ by the gospel”; and the nature of this promise is explained below, “That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.” Here the mystery itself is boldly defined as “Christ in you;” just as in 1Timothy 3:16, according to one interpretation of that difficult passage, “the mystery of godliness” is Christ Himself, “who was manifest,” &c. Here we have again a significant illustration of the difference between the characteristic ideas of the two Epistles. In the Ephesian Epistle the unity of all in God’s covenant is first put forth, and then explained as dependent on the indwelling of Christ in the heart. Here the “Christ in you” is all in all: the unity of all men in Him is an inference, but one which the readers of the Epistle are left to draw for themselves. On the great idea itself, in the purely individual relation, see Philippians 1:21, and also Galatians 2:20; in the more general form, see Romans 8:10; 2Corinthians 13:5; Galatians 4:19. **The hope of (***the*) **glory.**—So in 1Timothy 1:1, “The Lord Jesus Christ, which is our hope.” “The glory” is the glorified state of perfection in heaven, wrapt in the communion with God, and so “changed from glory to glory.” Again we note (as in Colossians 1:5; Colossians 1:23) the special emphasis laid on the hope of heaven. Christ is “our hope,” as He is “our life,” *i.e., *the ground of our sure and certain hope of the future, as of our spiritual life in the present.