Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Colossians · About this commentary
Christ in You, the Hope of Glory
Colossians 1:26-27
26 the mystery which has been hidden for ages and generations. But now it has been revealed to his saints, · WEB
The mystery is not a secret withheld but one now published — and its content is four words.
The mystery which has been hidden for ages and generations, but now has been revealed to his saints. The word mystery was the vocabulary of the initiation cults, where a secret was kept for the qualified few, and Paul uses it in exactly the opposite direction. The defining feature of this mystery is that it has been disclosed, and to the saints rather than to an inner circle.
Verse 27 says what God wanted done with it: to whom God was pleased to make known the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles. A secret whose whole point is that it has gone out to the nations is not a secret in the sense the teachers meant.
And then the content, and it is startlingly compact: Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Not Christ above you or Christ available to you on certain conditions. The preposition is the one the letter has been building toward — everything is in him, and now he is in them. What the Colossian teaching offered as a distant attainment reached by stages is stated as a present indwelling already possessed, and the hope of glory rests on it rather than on progress.
settled What this mark means