In St. Paul’s letter to the Colossians, he makes a statement that should give one pause: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church” (Col 1:24) The phrase “what is lacking” is hysterēmata which is not a complex word. It means “deficiency.”  Paul uses the word seven other times and it has the same basic meaning.

In Col 1:24 the phrase and use of hysterēmata is jarring and the plain sense of the verse is that something is deficient in Christ’s saving work. The early Church Fathers were very alert to that danger, and they are remarkably consistent on one central point: nothing is lacking in the saving power of Christ’s Passion. All then go on to say what is “lacking” concerns our participation, not His redemption. From that shared conviction, they developed several complementary ways of understanding the verse.

John Chrysostom and Augustine of Hippo stress a distinction noting Christ’s Passion is perfect, sufficient, and once-for-all yet Christ continues to suffer in His Body, the Church which is a key theme of Colossians. Chrysostom held that Paul is not adding to Christ’s redemptive suffering, but sharing in the sufferings that still belong to Christ’s Body. St Augustine was more specific: “Christ suffers what remains, not in His Head, but in His members.”

The Early Church Fathers consistently read this passage through the doctrine of the Mystical Body in which Christ is the Head and the Church is His Body. The idea is that what happens to the Body is truly connected to the Head. Augustine writes: “Paul can speak this way because he is in Christ. The sufferings of believers are, in a real sense, Christ’s own sufferings extended in time.” The key idea is that Christ chose not to suffer “alone,” but to include His members in His redemptive life. This is not because He needed help, but because He willed a communion of participation.

Another line of understanding found in Fathers like Cyril of Alexandria focuses on the subjective dimension.  The understanding is that redemption is objectively complete in Christ but it must be applied, lived, and embodied in each believer. In other words, what is “lacking” is not Christ’s work, but our full conformity to it.  In Paul’s case, his sufferings help build up the Church and bring others to accept the redemption that thus be saved.

Across the Fathers, there is a kind of theological instinct in that they resist any interpretation that suggests insufficiency in Christ, and instead reframe the verse as revealing something astonishing: Christ allows His members to share in His saving work. This is not out of necessity; it is grace.

A simple single sentence might be: Nothing is lacking in Christ’s sacrifice; something is lacking in our participation in it.

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Image credit: Jesus Christ Pantocrator | detail from the deesis mosaic in Hagia Sophia, Istanbul | PD-US