It was a few minutes after three in the morning, and the children’s ward at the teaching hospital was quiet except for the beeping of a drip machine two beds down and the sound of somebody’s mother snoring gently on a mat beside the wall. Nkechi was sitting upright on a plastic chair next to her son’s bed, her wrapper pulled round her shoulders against the air conditioning. He had finally fallen asleep after six hours of pain. It was his third sickle cell crisis that year.
She had done everything the doctors told her. She had kept him hydrated, kept him warm, given the folic acid every morning, made the clinic appointments even when it meant losing a day’s pay. And still, on Tuesday afternoon, he had come home from school pale and frightened, holding his knees, and she had known before he said anything.
Across the aisle, the mother of another child had been watching her for most of the night. Eventually she leaned over and whispered, “Madam, I saw you here in March. And in July. How are you still standing?”
Nkechi did not have a neat answer. She was not sure she was standing. Her back ached. Her savings were gone. She had cried in the hospital toilet that evening where her son would not see. But as she sat there in the dark trying to think of something to say, an image came into her mind that she had not thought about for years: her grandmother’s water pot.
It stood in the corner of the kitchen in the village near Nsukka, a big round pot of red clay with a chipped rim and a hairline crack near the base that her grandmother had sealed with something dark. It was the ugliest thing in the house. It was also the most valued, because in the hottest weather of the dry season, when the sun beat on the zinc roof and every other container held warm water, the water in that clay pot was always cool. Visitors asked for it by name. Once, when Nkechi was small, she had asked her grandmother why she did not replace such an old, cracked thing. Her grandmother had laughed. “My daughter, nobody comes to this kitchen for the pot. They come for what is inside it.”
PunchlineNkechi did not say any of that to the woman across the aisle. She just said, “God is helping me.” But she kept thinking about the pot until the sun came up.
A mystery hidden for ages
When Paul wrote his letter to the Colossians, he was a prisoner. He mentions it at the end: “Remember my bonds” (Colossians 4:18). He had never visited Colossae. The church there had been planted through the ministry of Epaphras, one of Paul’s fellow workers. And yet, from his chains, Paul wanted these believers to understand something that would hold them steady when false teachers came offering them a more impressive spirituality. In the middle of the first chapter, he writes about his own suffering and calling:
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; 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.
Notice where this famous phrase begins. “Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you.” Paul is not writing from comfort. Whatever he means by filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions, he certainly does not mean that Christ’s atoning work was incomplete. He means that the suffering of Christ’s servants in spreading the gospel continues until the whole body has heard. Paul is in prison because he preached to Gentiles. And it is in that setting that he speaks of a mystery.
In the New Testament, a mystery is not a puzzle to be solved by the clever. It is something God had kept hidden and has now revealed. And Paul tells us what this mystery is. It is “among the Gentiles.” For centuries, the nations had been outsiders to the covenants of Israel. Paul reminds the Ephesians that before Christ they were “having no hope, and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12). Now the riches of God’s glory have reached them. And the content of the mystery is three words in Greek, Christos en hymin: “Christ in you.”
Earlier teaching in this series has looked at union with Christ and what it means for our identity. Here I want to focus on the last part of Paul’s sentence, because it is the part that matters most at three in the morning in a hospital ward. Christ in you is “the hope of glory.”
What the Bible means by hope
In everyday speech, hope is a weak word. “I hope it does not rain.” “I hope the fuel price comes down.” “I hope he calls.” It means a wish without any certainty attached. If that is what Paul means, Christ in you would be a nice sentiment and nothing more.
The New Testament word is elpis, and its meaning is much stronger. Biblical hope is confident expectation of a future good that God has promised. It is uncertain only in the sense that we cannot yet see it. It is certain because of who has promised it. Paul tells the Colossians that he gives thanks “For the hope which is laid up for you in heaven” (Colossians 1:5). It is laid up, stored, reserved. Hebrews calls it “an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast” (Hebrews 6:19). An anchor is not a feeling. It is a heavy piece of iron fixed to something solid.
So what is the “glory” this hope looks toward? Paul tells us in the third chapter of the same letter: “When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory” (Colossians 3:4). Glory is the future in which Christ returns, our bodies are raised, creation is renewed, every tear is wiped away, and we share in His likeness fully. John says, “we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). Paul tells the Romans, “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18).
Now we can see why Paul links that future to the present presence of Christ. How do we know the glory is coming? Because the One who will bring it already lives in us. Christ in you is the guarantee. His presence now is the first part of the glory that will one day be revealed in full. If He has come to live in you, He will not leave the work unfinished. “He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6).
NuggetChrist in you is the guarantee of the glory to come. The One who will finish the work has already moved in, and He does not abandon what He has begun.
Hope that labours
Paul does not leave this truth floating in the air. He goes straight on to describe how it shapes his life: “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” (Colossians 1:28-29).
That is a remarkable picture of a man in prison. He is labouring and striving. The word striving is agonizomenos, from which we get agonise. It was used of athletes straining in competition. Paul is working hard. But he is working “according to his working,” by the energy of Christ that works in him mightily.
Hope does not make Paul passive. It makes him tireless. Because he knows where the story ends, he can pour himself into the present, teaching and warning and caring for people, without being crushed by the size of the task or the slowness of the results. The future glory gives meaning to present labour.
This is true for ordinary believers too. A mother caring for a sick child is labouring. A man working an honest job in a corrupt environment is labouring. A teacher, a nurse, a trader, a pastor, a carer for an ageing parent: all of them pour out strength day after day. If there is no future, that labour can feel like pouring water into sand. But if Christ is in you and glory is ahead of you, then nothing done in His name is wasted. Paul ends his great chapter on the resurrection with exactly that conclusion: since the dead will be raised, “your labour is not in vain in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 15:58).
Treasure in clay jars
Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians was written to a church that had begun to look down on him. Other teachers had arrived with polished speech, impressive letters of recommendation and a confident, successful style. By comparison Paul looked weak. He had been beaten, imprisoned and humiliated. He did not seem like a man with the power of God on him.
Paul’s answer is one of the most honest passages in the New Testament. He describes the glory of the gospel: “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). Then he says where this glory is kept:
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.
“Earthen vessels.” Clay pots. In the ancient world, valuables were sometimes hidden in plain clay jars, the cheapest containers in the house. Small clay lamps were sold in every market for a few coins. Nobody admired the jar. It was breakable, ordinary and easily replaced. Paul says that is exactly what we are. The treasure of Christ’s light and life is carried in fragile, cracked, ordinary human bodies and personalities.
And he tells us why God arranged it this way: “that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.” If the container were impressive, people might give the credit to the container. When the container is obviously weak, the power can only be God’s.
Then come four pairs that describe the Christian life with complete realism. Troubled on every side, yet not crushed. Perplexed, yet not in despair. Persecuted, yet not abandoned. Struck down, yet not destroyed. Notice that Paul does not deny the first half of any pair. He was troubled. He was perplexed. He did not always understand what God was doing. He was knocked to the ground. Hope does not pretend these things are not happening. But in every case, there is a limit beyond which the pressure cannot go. The clay jar is cracked, and it does not shatter, because of what it carries.
This is a great relief for believers who think that strong faith means never being perplexed. Paul was perplexed. Earlier in this same letter, he admitted that in Asia “we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life” (2 Corinthians 1:8). The apostle who wrote most of our New Testament reached a point where he did not think he would survive. And he tells us what he learned from it: “that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:9).
The inward man renewed day by day
Paul continues the same argument a few verses later, and here he comes to the heart of how hope sustains:
For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.
“For which cause we faint not.” Paul has just spoken of the resurrection: “he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus” (2 Corinthians 4:14). That is the cause. Because the resurrection is certain, Paul does not lose heart.
Then he makes an honest admission. “Though our outward man perish.” The body is wearing out. The strength of youth fades. Illness comes. Age comes. Paul does not pretend otherwise. “Yet the inward man is renewed day by day.” While the outer person decays, the inner person is being made new, every single day. Christ in you is at work in the hidden places. Your body may be weaker this year than last year. Your spirit can be stronger.
Then comes a sentence that can sound almost offensive until you remember who wrote it: “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment.” Light? A few chapters later, Paul lists some of those afflictions. Five times he received thirty-nine lashes. Three times he was beaten with rods. Once he was stoned. Three times he was shipwrecked and spent a night and a day in the open sea (2 Corinthians 11:24-25). He knew hunger, cold, sleeplessness and danger from every direction. They hurt terribly. He calls them light only by comparison. Put them on a scale opposite “a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory,” and they barely move it.
PunchlineAnd notice the verb: our affliction “worketh for us” that weight of glory. Suffering in Christ is not wasted. God takes even what the enemy meant for harm and makes it produce something eternal.
How does a person live like this? Paul tells us: “While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.” This is a deliberate act of attention. We fix our gaze on what God has promised, even while our eyes are full of what is happening. The things we see are real, but they are temporary. The things we do not yet see are eternal.
How suffering produces hope
In Romans 5, Paul explains the process by which God uses trouble to strengthen hope rather than destroy it:
And not only so , but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope: And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.
“We glory in tribulations also.” Paul does not say we glory for tribulations, as though suffering were good in itself. He says we rejoice in them, in the middle of them, because of what God does through them. And then he describes a chain.
Tribulation works patience. The Greek word hypomone means endurance, staying power, the ability to remain under a heavy load without running away. You cannot develop that in easy seasons, in the same way that a muscle cannot grow without resistance.
Patience works experience. The word is dokime, proven character, the quality of something that has been tested and found genuine. Like gold that has gone through the fire, the believer who has endured comes out with a faith that has been shown to be real, to themselves as much as to anyone.
Experience works hope. Here is the surprise. You might expect suffering to produce cynicism. Paul says that, in the hands of God, it produces hope. The believer who has been carried through one dark valley has evidence that God carries His people. The next valley is still dark, but now there is a memory of the last one.
“And hope maketh not ashamed.” This hope will not disappoint. It will not leave us embarrassed on the last day for having trusted it. Why? “Because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.” The final ground of hope is God’s love, poured into us by the Spirit, and our endurance rests on that. Hope stands on love.
That is what Nkechi meant without knowing how to explain it. Each crisis had worn her down physically. But each crisis had also left her with another memory of God’s faithfulness: a nurse who was kind at the right moment, money that arrived from an unexpected source, a peace that came over her in a corridor when she had nothing left. She was not standing because she was strong. She was standing because something inside her had been proved, again and again, to be real.
A living hope when grief is real
Peter, writing to scattered believers facing hostility and suffering, opens his first letter with praise:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.
“A lively hope.” A living hope. It is living because it rests on a living Christ, raised from the dead. Peter describes the inheritance this hope looks to: incorruptible, undefiled, unfading, reserved in heaven. And then he describes us: “kept by the power of God through faith.” The inheritance is guarded for you, and you are guarded for the inheritance.
But Peter does not pretend that hope removes pain. “Though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations.” Heaviness. Grief. Distress. Believers with a living hope still feel the weight of trials. Peter simply sets that weight within a larger frame: it is for a season, and it is producing a faith more precious than gold.
We need to hear this carefully, because some believers have been taught that if they really had hope they would never feel sad. That is not the Bible’s teaching. Jesus Himself, who knew He would rise on the third day, said in Gethsemane, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death” (Matthew 26:38). At the tomb of Lazarus, minutes before He raised him, “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). Paul does not tell bereaved believers not to grieve. He tells them, “that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13). We do sorrow. We sorrow differently.
The psalmist shows us what this looks like from the inside. He is miserable, and he talks honestly to his own soul: “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance” (Psalm 42:5). He does not deny that he is cast down. He questions it, and he points his soul toward God. That is a pattern for us.
There is also wisdom to add here. Some seasons of heaviness are more than ordinary sorrow. Long-term caring, chronic illness, bereavement and trauma can lead to depression, exhaustion and anxiety that need more than a verse. If you find that you cannot sleep, cannot eat, cannot function or have begun to think that life is not worth living, please speak to someone: your pastor, a trusted friend and a doctor. Seeking that help is an act of hope. And if you are walking beside someone in that place, do not hand them a quick Scripture and walk away. “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2). Sometimes the hope of glory reaches a suffering person through the casserole you bring, the hospital bill you help with, or the night you sit beside them so they can sleep.
Hope for this week
How does the hope of glory become strength for an ordinary week?
It begins with what you choose to remember. Jeremiah watched Jerusalem burn and wrote a whole book of laments. But in the middle of it, he wrote this:
This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. It is of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. The LORD is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him.
“This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope.” Hope often begins as an act of memory. You deliberately bring to mind what God has said and done. His mercies, His compassion, His faithfulness that is new every morning. You may need to do this on purpose, several times a day, because pain is very good at filling the mind with other things.
Hope also grows in prayer. Paul prays for the Romans, “Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost” (Romans 15:13). God is called the God of hope. Hope is His gift, and we may ask Him for more of it.
Hope grows in company. The mystery of Christ in you was revealed to a church, among the Gentiles, and Paul’s word you is plural. Christ lives in His people together. Believers who isolate themselves in suffering often find their hope shrinking. Believers who let others carry them find that the hope of the whole body holds them up when their own grip is weak.
And hope purifies. John writes, “And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure” (1 John 3:3). A person who knows where he is going begins to live in a way that fits the destination. Hope is not escapism. It reshapes how we speak, spend, work and love in the present, because we are getting ready for a future with Christ.
Paul gathers this into a single line in Romans 12: “Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer” (Romans 12:12). The three belong together. Hope gives joy. Patience carries us through. Prayer keeps us connected to the One who is our hope.
Nkechi’s son was discharged five days later. He is twelve now. The crises still come, though less often since the doctors started him on a new medication. She still sits by his bed on hard plastic chairs. She still cries sometimes where he cannot see. She is still tired more often than she would like to admit.
But some months after that night in the ward, she saw the same mother from across the aisle at the clinic, holding her own child’s hand in the queue. They greeted each other like old friends. And this time, when the woman asked her again how she kept going, Nkechi had an answer ready.
“Do you know those clay pots our grandmothers used to keep in the kitchen?” she asked. The woman nodded. “My grandmother’s one was cracked and ugly. But it kept the water cool when everything else was hot. She used to say nobody came for the pot. They came for what was inside it.” She paused. “I am that pot. I am cracked. But what is inside me is not mine. Christ is in me, and He keeps me. And one day I will see what He has been carrying me towards.”
Perhaps you are a cracked pot today. Your outward man is perishing. You are troubled on every side and perplexed more often than you would like. Do not be ashamed of the clay. God chose it deliberately, so that the power would be seen to be His. The treasure is still inside you. Christ is in you, the hope of glory, and that hope will not make you ashamed.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- What has “hope” usually meant to you: a wish, or a confident expectation? How does Colossians 1:27 change that?
- Which of the four pairs in 2 Corinthians 4:8-9 describes your life most closely right now?
- How have past trials produced endurance, proven character and hope in you? Can you name a specific memory of God’s faithfulness?
- Is there someone in a season of heaviness whom you could help carry this week? What would that look like practically?
- What do you need to “recall to mind” deliberately, as Jeremiah did, in order to have hope today?
This Week
Each morning this week, before you look at your phone, read 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 and pray Romans 15:13 for yourself by name. Then write down one specific mercy from the previous day, however small, in a notebook you keep for the purpose. By the end of the week you will have seven written memories of God’s faithfulness. Keep the notebook and add to it, so that in the next dark valley you will have something solid to recall to mind.
A Prayer
Lord Jesus, thank You that You live in me, and that Your presence is the guarantee of the glory to come. I confess that I am a clay jar, cracked and ordinary, and that I am often troubled and perplexed. Thank You that the power is Yours and not mine. Renew my inward man day by day, even while my outward man is weakening. Teach me to look at the things which are not seen. Use every trial to produce endurance, proven character and hope in me. Pour Your love into my heart by Your Spirit, so that my hope does not fail. Give me grace to carry others, and humility to let others carry me. I wait for the day of Your appearing, when I will see You as You are. Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.