Underrepresented. I had sat for some time to find the right word. Everyone else had answered, and so I offered mine last. Looks of confusion and “Hum”s went around the room. I felt it was right, though, and so I stuck with it. We could say nothing more about it. One word, and only one word, was what the leader had asked for.
It had been an interesting meeting, our first one together as a formal “group.” Awkward silence filled the room at the beginning, as the leader had told us that this was our group, and so we would set the pace and tone. We would own it as our own. Soon enough, though, we found ourselves offering stories and listening in on one another’s journeys that brought us to this room this very night.
I offered mine, or rather, as much of mine as felt appropriate without stealing the time away from the others. Inside, I felt like my bones burned with the immediacy of the adventure I have been on with God over the last several years. The new life I’ve found in Christ has been… what word do I use?… what word suffices? The agony and ecstasy are both too profound to speak of. The “me” that is realer and truer than the “me” that is projected… how do you get that to come across? How can I be authentic enough that my skin is transparent and my inner life is seen. Is it even supposed to be seen?
When I had finished, I felt… underrepresented. Like I had laid out an incomplete picture of myself for others, expecting that they use that to know me. It wasn’t that it was untrue. It just was incomplete. And I have come to see this as simply being misunderstood. And being misunderstood is the most painful of all human experiences.
This is what Paul was talking about when he wrote to the church in Colosse that “your life is now hidden with Christ in God” (3:3). It is a life tied, bound, inextricably, to that of Christ’s, a life that is constantly “deepening and expanding” (Romans 10, The Message). And it is hidden not because it does not shine forth or appear even now glorious in the freedom and fullness in which you live it, but rather because it is too endless and infinite to be completely expressed in this life. The glory of a heart alive to God is blinding, and few in this world have the eyes that could bear it. It certainly is that way with the Lord God (see Mark 9:2-7 to see what I mean — even Jesus’s closest friends could not bear the glory of his life fully revealed). “The Kingdom of God,” writes Dallas Willard, “is in secret… in the presence of God’s secret seeing.” (Jesus mentions the “secret” and hidden way of the Kingdom four times in Matthew 6.)
But then Paul continues, and this is where it gets really good. He says, “When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you will also appear with him in glory.” (3:4). This is it. This is how we bear the pain of being misunderstood, the experience of just being missed in this life. Even in our most intimate moments with another, those say of sex where you feel so connected, there remains a pang of longing to be fully known. And Paul says that our real lives are still hidden with Christ just as He is “hidden” in the heart of his friends, not yet fully revealed to the world in his unveiled glory. Yet when He does return, we will be revealed as well. Think of it. The veil will be finally and forever lifted. Our fear of exposure will melt in exchange for the anticipation of being revealed, for we shall be like God. For those of us who belong to the Lord, we will be known, fully, to God as well as to one another, and we will be delighted in knowing one another that completely. It will not be our shame. It will be our glory.
Glory will be revealed in us (Romans 8:18) when we as sons and daughters of God are reavealed (v. 19). It will be a “glorious freedom” (v. 21) for which all of creation eagerly waits (v. 19).
Until then, the human heart longs and strives to make itself known to others, or else shrinks back in fear of that very thing and protects itself from it with performing and posturing. And it is usually a chaotic mixture of both. But as we are transformed more into the glorious image of Christ, with every increasing glory (2 Corinthians 3:18), we shall be growing constantly in our anticipation of finally and fully being known, our stories and our lives redeemed into something unapologetically and staggeringly beautiful. (It is helpful to remember, too, that even now we are known fully to God, 1 Corinthians 13:12.) Our greatest challenge becomes, then, the simple trust that the life we inhabit in Christ will, when He is ready, be revealed in all its splendor. We, as adopted sons through Christ (Hebrews 12:7). That adoption has not yet been fully realized. Our lives in God, full as they are, are only the firstfruits of His promised Spirit in us (Romans 8:23). Until then, we ache and groan along with the Spirit Himself for that day (2 Corinthians 5:1-5). The revelation of Jesus Christ will be the revelation of those of us who are His, as well, when we are released as grown sons and daughters in the great house of our Lord. We must allow our longing to turn to anticipation, as we wait for and put our hope in this (Romans 8:24-25, 1 Peter 1:13).
