I’M THE FATHER of two adult children. I’m the grandfather of two adorable grandchildren. Parenting and now grandparenting have each provided plenty of joy and plenty of challenges.

There’s one challenge, however, that I’ve never had to face: I’ve never given birth to a child and never will. Obviously. I’ve been with my wife as she gave birth, and things felt pretty miraculous from my end. But she, of course, didn’t experience things quite the same way.

How do women do it? I can’t speak from direct experience, but surely some of it has to do with the fact that they know that the pain and toil are temporary. They know that joy awaits them on the other side of suffering.

The process of delivering a child into the world may look quite different today than it did in the apostle Paul’s day, but the pain and joy are the same. That’s why he can use the metaphor of childbirth to teach the relationship between suffering and hope. Listen to what he tells the Christians in Rome, as translated in the Common English Bible:

We know that the whole creation is groaning together and suffering labor pains up until now. And it’s not only the creation. We ourselves who have the Spirit as the first crop of the harvest also groan inside as we wait to be adopted and for our bodies to be set free. We were saved in hope. If we see what we hope for, that isn’t hope. Who hopes for what they already see? But if we hope for what we don’t see, we wait for it with patience. (Rom 8:22-25, CEB)

The whole creation, Paul says, is groaning like a woman in labor. As he does in his letter to the Colossians, Paul is describing in picturesque terms how the entire created order is suffering the fallout of human sin. Creation groans. And as part of creation, we groan too, for life is often difficult and not what it was created to be.

But in hope, we know that this isn’t the end of the story.

Paul shifts to an agricultural metaphor: “we have the Spirit as the first crop of the harvest.” What the Bible calls the “firstfruits” were the earliest, best portions of a larger harvest, offered to God in thanksgiving and in anticipation of the full bounty that would be enjoyed when the harvest was complete. Similarly, in writing to the Corinthians, Paul calls the resurrected Jesus “the first crop of the harvest of those who have died” (1 Cor 15:20). The language is reminiscent of Paul’s description of Jesus in Colossians as “the firstborn from among the dead” (Col 1:18). Thus, the resurrection of Jesus and the presence of the Holy Spirit are both signs of what is yet to come, grounding our hope that the gospel promise can be trusted. We are already in Christ, and one day we will realize in our bodies what the resurrected Jesus realized in his.

With that in mind, listen again to what Paul tells the Colossians:

Once you were alienated from God and you were enemies with him in your minds, which was shown by your evil actions. But now he has reconciled you by his physical body through death, to present you before God as a people who are holy, faultless, and without blame. But you need to remain well established and rooted in faith and not shift away from the hope given in the good news that you heard. This message has been preached throughout all creation under heaven. And I, Paul, became a servant of this good news. (Col 1:21-23)

God sees the Colossians (and us) as holy, faultless, and without blame, because they are already in Christ. But they are not yet who they will be at the return of Jesus and the completion of his kingdom. Their standing before God is a gift of grace now; they have been reconciled through the cross. But Paul warns against taking this standing for granted. Though their place has been established, they need to stay rooted in the gospel they’ve already been taught by Epaphras.

And again: that faith, that hope, is in the knowledge that they are now part of a story much bigger than themselves. Remember how in earlier verses, Paul talked about reconciliation and the cross in cosmic terms? Similarly, he now speaks of the gospel message as having been “preached throughout all creation under heaven.”

Paul knows full well, of course, that the gospel has not actually been preached everywhere in the world; indeed, he still longs to continue his evangelistic work and identifies himself as a “servant of this good news,” a slave to the gospel. But he wants to make sure that the Colossians don’t lose the big picture. Their reconciliation is part of the larger story of the reconciliation of all things, and that too is part of their hope.

. . .

BUT WAIT. IS Paul saying that the Colossians could lose the faith and their salvation? That if they fall for the temptation of false philosophies, their reconciliation will be nullified? Or to put it even more sharply: if they don’t live the right way, are they going to hell?

As you might imagine, the question of whether Christians can lose their faith has been hotly debated over the centuries. Some say yes; some say no. Some say yes — but if they do lose their faith, they weren’t really Christians to begin with. And so on. And I can’t possibly answer the question in a way that will satisfy everyone.

But the question itself can sidetrack us from Paul’s pastoral purpose. What he wants the Colossians to ask themselves is not whether they can lose their salvation. Rather, he wants them to ask, If what Paul says about us is true, if we really are who he says we are in Christ, then how should we live? And he wants them to endure in living that way no matter what challenges they face, because they have the hope that comes from knowing they’re part of a story with a glorious end, a story being written by God.

That’s our hope, too. Let’s embrace who we are in Christ, so we can become more and more the people we will one day be.