The Wayside Pulpit No.85
Filling up that which is lacking
"The hope of the
Gospel . . . whereof I Paul am made a minister, who now rejoices in my
sufferings for you, and fill up that which is lacking of the afflictions of
Christ in my flesh for the sake of His Body, the Church." (Colossians
1:23-24)
Each one of us, as members
of the Body of Christ, has the privilege of "filling up that which is
lacking" of Christ's afflictions "in our flesh", and
once we understand that, hurtful though it may be, it is on behalf of the His
Body, the Church, we shall want to join with Paul in rejoicing. Paul was the
forerunner in this respect. He was set apart by God to be a type for the rest
of God's children. "I desire that you faint not at my tribulations for
you, which is your glory", he told the Ephesians. (
It is difficult to be
joyful when we are reproached for righteousness sake. It is far from easy to
rejoice when afflicted, either verbally or physically, as a result of
faithfulness to our Lord and Saviour. But the early Apostles knew something
that enabled them to rejoice. They saw the Body of Christ in their spiritual
eye, and reckoned on its growth in terms of their afflictions. Nothing has
changed. It is the same today. We should be encouraged to learn this lesson. It
eases the pain.
Here is a little
"hidden manna" for the spiritual gourmet who enjoys having his palate
tickled by choice morsels of understanding from the Scriptures. Back in 1968
the Lord told us that Paul's number was 202. At the time this meant little to
us. It was an unexplained puzzle. But as time went by a few facts began to
emerge. First of all we saw in 2 Corinthians 11:23-27 a catalogue of Paul's
sufferings, and by adding up all the items he listed it came to 202. This ties
in with what has been said above.
The next revelation came
from reading Gray's Anatomy, where we learned that the adult human body has
exactly 202 bones. (Babies have 206, but some of these weld together, as in the
cranium.) The message was clear. "We are members of His Body, of His flesh
and His bones," says Paul in Ephesians 5:30. [Some texts omit these words,
but, we believe, on insufficient authority.] One remembers that Eve was created
out of one of Adam's bones, picture language for later times.
The third revelation came,
by happy chance, by counting the words in the longest sentence in the Bible,
(discounting mere lists of names etc.,) Ephesians 1:3-14. There are exactly 202
Greek words in this most profound statement of God's great purposes. Paul was
the forerunner of these things, but in this sentence he also spoke of the final
great goal and achievement of God's purposes, "to fill up, in the fullness
of the seasons, all things in the Christ, in heaven and upon earth." This
is God's reason for taking out His election, the Body of Christ, that He
might use it as His corporate minister in accomplishing this great goal in the
coming ages. Finally, it can be seen that 202 is composed of 153, the
number of "the sons of God" and 49, 7 times 7, the epitome of
spiritual perfection.