While the Colossian church had certainly heard of Paul, they had not met him. Paul described his mission on behalf of all believers. Paul’s first highlighted that he suffered for them. Suffering through trials is a part of the Christian walk (Jas 1:2) and is needed to bring us to maturity. Paul was not saying that his suffering made up for something Christ’s suffering didn’t accomplish. Jesus’ suffering and death was sufficient for our salvation (Col 1:20). Jesus never said His suffering would remove our need to suffer, instead, He told us we would suffer for His sake (Phil 1:29; 2 Cor 1:5). Paul is suffering in ministry just as Jesus said he would (Acts 9:16). Paul was sent to unbelieving Gentiles (all non-Jews) to make the word of God fully known. The mystery hidden for ages now revealed to His saints is not that salvation was available to everyone, God had promised a universal saviour through the seed of woman long before the nation of Israel was established (Gen 3:14-21). The mystery was that God would establish the church where Jews and Gentiles would be fellow heirs and part of the same body (Eph 3:6). Not only does Jesus save us but He lives within us. A major part of the false teaching threatening the Colossian church was the idea of special or secret knowledge that was only available to some. But Paul showed that was wrong because Jesus Christ is available to everyone. Paul’s aim in ministry was to present everyone mature in Christ. Paul lived his life for others, working and struggling in order to help them mature in their Christian walk. Most importantly, he did what he did with complete dependence on God for the strength to continue.

What does your ministry CV look like? We are not all called to serve as Paul did but we are called [and gifted by the Holy Spirit] to serve (Rom 12:4-6). What are you doing to serve your local church? Could you do more?