Christ in You, the Hope of Glory: What Colossians 1:27 Means

The card is still taped to the bathroom mirror.

You put it there in January. Christ in you, the hope of glory. The tape has gone yellow at the corners, and most mornings you read it the way you read the toothpaste label. This morning you stop. You look at the face in the mirror, the gray coming in at the temples, the worry line that did not used to be there, and you think: in here?

It does not feel like it. It feels like a Tuesday. There is a meeting at nine you are dreading and a tiredness that sleep has stopped fixing. If Christ is in there, He is very quiet about it.

Paul wrote that line to people who felt exactly this ordinary. And he called it the greatest secret God ever told.

The short answer: “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27) means that the risen Jesus Himself, by His Spirit, lives in every believer, and that His presence now is the guarantee of the glory to come. The Greek word for mystery, mystērion, does not mean a puzzle. It means a secret God kept and has now told, and the secret is a Person whose address is you.

The Secret God Told

Read it slowly: “To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” (Colossians 1:27)

Begin with mystērion. In English a mystery is something you cannot figure out. In Paul’s Greek it is nearly the opposite: a secret that was hidden and has now been disclosed, something you could never have figured out and no longer have to, because God has said it out loud. The verse before makes this plain: “the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to His saints.” (Colossians 1:26)

So a mystērion is not a locked door. It is a door God opened. For ages the prophets saw the Messiah coming and could not see this: that He would not only come to His people but come into them, and not only into Israel but into Gentiles, people with no covenant and no claim. That was the secret.

In You, or Among You

“Christ in you” is Christos en hymin. En can mean in, and it can mean among, and the you is plural. So the phrase can be read “Christ in you,” each of you, or “Christ among you,” the Gentiles as a people, which fits the “among the Gentiles” a few words earlier. Good scholars read it both ways, and some translations put the other reading in a footnote.

It takes nothing from you, because Paul says the personal thing elsewhere without any ambiguity. “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” (Galatians 2:20) That is singular, one man, no among possible. To the Corinthians: “Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?” (2 Corinthians 13:5) To the Ephesians, as a prayer: “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.” (Ephesians 3:17)

So read Colossians 1:27 either way and it stands. Christ among the Gentiles, a people who had no right to Him. Christ in the Gentile, the one brushing her teeth on a Tuesday. Both are the secret. Both are true of you.

The Hope of Glory

“The hope of glory” is elpis tēs doxēs. Elpis in the New Testament is not a wish. It is a confident expectation of something sure that has not arrived yet. Doxa, glory, is the weight and brightness of God Himself, and in Paul it is also what believers are headed for: “When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.” (Colossians 3:4)

Put the two together and you have something to lean on. Christ in you now is the hope of glory later. The One who is coming in glory has already moved in, and He does not leave a house He has bought.

What It Means for Hearing Him

This is the ground under every word about hearing God, including how to hear God’s voice. If Christ were only above you, hearing Him would be a matter of distance and volume. But He is in you. The Speaker lives in the listener. When the written Word stands up off the page as a word spoken to you, which is the difference between rhēma and logos, it is not crossing a great gulf. It is rising from where He already is.

Which is also why His voice so often sounds quieter than you expected. A guest in the hall calls out. Someone who lives in the house just speaks.

The Face in the Mirror

Nothing about me looks like glory. He is a hospice nurse coming off a twelve-hour shift, standing at a sink in a staff bathroom at seven in the morning, washing a hand that has just held a dying woman’s hand for an hour because her family could not get there in time. He looks up at the mirror. He is tired past tired.

Then, for no reason he can name, he thinks of the way she squeezed his fingers at the end, and he understands that it was not only his hand she was holding.

He dries off and goes out to his car.

Scripture to Know He Is in You

They do not depend on how the mirror looks.

• “To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” (Colossians 1:27)
• “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20)
• “Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you are disqualified.” (2 Corinthians 13:5)
• “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love,” (Ephesians 3:17)
• “You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” (1 John 4:4)

A Prayer for the One Who Lives in Me

You may be the one still standing at the mirror. Pray this before you go to the meeting.

Lord Jesus, You are in me. I do not feel it this morning, and I am saying it anyway, because You said it first. You are the secret God kept for ages and then told, and You told it to someone as ordinary as me. Thank You that You did not come to visit. You came to live. Be at home in me today. Speak from where You are, not from far away, and let me hear You in the room You already fill. You are my hope of glory, and You have never once left a house You bought. In Jesus’ name, amen.

The Mystery of Christ is the whole secret told slowly, in His voice: eighteen chapters on this one verse and the One it names.

And listen for what He has been saying from inside the house:

I am not a guest here, child. I live here. I have been speaking from the next room the whole time.

The glory is coming. The One who brings it has already moved in.