Colossians 1:21-23 –
21 And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, 22 he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, 23 if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.
Introduction
Having spent the past several weeks on 1:15-20, we’re about to begin a new section of Paul’s letter. Before we get there, though, let me give you a quick recap of what we’ve covered so far.
After a brief introduction (1:1-2), Paul wrote out his prayer of gratitude to God for His gifts of faith and faithfulness in the lives of the Colossian Christians (1:3-8). From there, Paul shared with the Colossians his main prayer for them; namely, that God would grant them all they needed to live lives “fully pleasing to Him [to God]” (1:9-14). And then, again as we’ve been considering for some time, Paul rooted all of that (along with all that’s to come), in the preeminence of Jesus. He wrote at length of Jesus’ supremacy over Creation and Recreation (1:15-20).
Ultimately, Paul called the Colossian Christians to persevere in faith through persecution and false teaching, and, most importantly, he told them how to do so. He charged them to keep their eyes fixed on Jesus, the Preeminent One, who holds all things in His hands. His great burden was that they’d make sure Jesus, not themselves or their problems, was at the center of the story they were living out of.
Beginning in v.21 (our passage for this morning), then, Paul moved from declaring transcendent truths about Jesus back to applying them to his readers. He moved from second person pronouns (He) back to third (you).
Lord willing, we’re going to spend two weeks on this passage. This Sunday, I’m going to focus on vs.21-22 and the great exchange it describes. Then, next Sunday, Pastor Colin is going to focus on v.23 and the call to perseverance in faith.
There’s a past, present, and future component to this passage. Consequently, there’s a past, present, and future big idea for this week as well: All people are born with a sinful nature (past), our only hope is to be reconciled by Jesus (present), and all who are reconciled will be made holy (future). And the main takeaways are to fight for humility, share the gospel, and hope in future grace.
Born Sinful (21)
I’ve shared this story with a number of you, but it bears repeating here. One evening at the Farmer’s Market a woman came up to me holding the “Gospel for Kids” booklet we hand out. She thought it was important to let me know that someone put a book at our church table that said of kids, “Because we do not love God as we should, we deserve to be punished.” She found that to be entirely false and offensive. What’s more, she assumed I’d agree and be glad she brought it to my attention.
In a profound way, I really believe that much of the enflamed social and political turmoil we’re currently experiencing is captured in that brief encounter; that is, over the question of mankind’s essential nature. Whether she could articulate it or not, the division between us was directly tied to our answer to the question: Are humans naturally good or bad?
I’ve recently read two clarifying books on this idea. Carl Truman’s “The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self” and Thomas Sowell’s “A Conflict of Visions” both recognize this problem and its profound impact on our culture. Although Truman writes from a Christian perspective and Sowell from a secular one, both persuasively argue for the same basic conclusion: Mankind is fallen in nature and needs help restraining his self-interest.
With Sowell, I’d suggest there’s more than sufficient empirical evidence to support the claim that we’re born with sinful natures (he phrases it differently; doesn’t call it “sinful”). But at the end of the day, Truman is right in that it really comes down to whether or not we believe the Bible accurately describes the human condition.
We can debate definitions and evidence. What we can’t debate though is what God’s Word says about the matter. What Paul says in v.21 is echoed over and over and over and over throughout the entire Bible.
Of the Colossians, which is to say of every person since Adam’s Fall, Paul said exactly what we find consistently taught from Genesis 3 on, “you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds…” (21).
And to remind you of the rest of the Bible’s teaching on this matter, consider just a few of the many verses.…
Genesis 6:5 The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
Ecclesiastes 7:20 Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.
Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?
Romans 3:23 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…
1 John 1:8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
I could go on, but the point remains: If you believe the Bible is God’s word and that it means what it says, then there’s simply no way to deny that alienation from, hostility towards, and evil against God is our natural condition.
For Paul to claim that of the Colossians, for him to declare that they were alienated from God, is to claim that they were living in opposition to the very reason for which they were made—fellowship with God. To be alienated from God means being separated or estranged from Him. It is to be at enmity with God. It is a tragic declaration that they had been entirely severed from their very purpose in life.
The next two clauses, “hostile in mind” and “doing evil deeds,” give the reasons for and result of their alienation.
That they were hostile in mind means their thoughts were opposed to God. It means they believed lies and hated the truth. It means they were confused and conceited in their thinking. It means they didn’t know God, His will for them, or even themselves. It means the things they were thinking made God angry.
And that they were doing evil deeds means their actions flowed out of their busted, rebellious thoughts. The did what they ought not to have done and refused to do what they should have. They chose folly over wisdom and death over life. They did what God hates and not what He loves.
During my teenage years, had you asked me if I’d go to heaven or hell when I died, I’d most emphatically have answered, “heaven.” If you pressed me for my rationale, I’m most emphatically have answered, “because hell is for truly evil people.” In v.21, Paul teaches that I was right and wrong. I was right to think hell is for truly evil people. I was wrong to assume I wasn’t among them.
We really need to come to grips with that idea, Grace. If we’re honest, it doesn’t really seem like that, does it? Do you really think of yourself as having been (or being) hostile in mind and evil in deeds? Do the unbelievers in your life truly seem wicked? Non-Christians, if you’re being honest, this seems pretty offensive even, doesn’t it?
Of course, there are some who do more evil than others (sometimes, much, much more). Paul certainly wasn’t denying that. But his point was that starting there means missing the point. The problem with my teenage thinking was that it was exclusively on a horizontal plane. I was only comparing myself to other people. But Paul calls his readers to think on a different plane, a vertical plane. He wasn’t telling the Colossians Christians that they were alienated from God because of the way they stacked up against other Colossians, but because of the way they stacked up against God. In relation to God, everything looks very different.
It is true that 99.99% of us do less evil than someone. Probably most of us do less evil than the majority of the rest of the world. Again, however, even the briefest glimpse of the holiness of God will cause the best among us to join Isaiah’s cry, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts” (Isaiah 6”5)!
In other words, Paul’s claim that the Colossians (and all people) were hostile in mind and evil in actions, did not mean that they were (we are) as bad as they could be. But he did mean that they had fallen infinitely short of the glory of the holy God. And He did mean that their rebellion against God had completely alienated them from Him. They were guilty before God and under His just judgment, not because of how they compared to one another, but because of how they compared to God’s holy nature and commands.
Evil thoughts and actions, whole-being rebellion, leads to and results from our whole-being alienation from God.
Paul echoes the same basic sentiment in his letter to the Ephesian church (4:17-19), “in the futility of their minds. 18 They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. [sinful, alienation-resulting thoughts] 19 They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity [sinful, alienation-resulting actions].”
Again, the first point Paul wanted the Colossians to get is that they, along with everyone around them, were born into sin and therein had been alienated from God.
Before moving on to the next point, let me offer a few brief pastoral words on this one.
First, our corrupted natures, hostile thinking, and evil actions not only lead to our alienation from God, they also perpetuate it. The more we think wrongly, the more we will act wrongly, and the more we will pull away from God. The point, Grace, even as Christians, is an earnest plea for all of us to turn away from sin. Do not be OK with a mind that thinks things or a body that does things that are antithetical to God. It is true that we will be killing sin in us or it will be killing us (John Owen).
Second—please hear this one, Grace—as you look around and see the world upside down in so many ways, as you look around and see people everywhere who are clearly hostile in mind and evil in deed, remember, remember, remember that you too were once among them. Before you scoff or whine or bark, remember who you once were. That doesn’t lead to indifference to or silence regarding their sin, but it ought to first lead to a loving, humble longing for them to experience the same grace that you did in your sin.
Finally, third, there is nothing worse than being alienated from God. Paul wrote this letter to people in a really tough spot, but part of why he reminded them of what they once were, was to give them perspective. Just as Christ’s preeminence overshadows all our trials, so too does our past alienation from God (in the opposite direction). Fellowship with Jesus is better than deliverance from every trial, even as alienation from God is worse than any trial we might endure. Remember, if God can deliver you from a far worse trial, the worst trial of all, then He can certainly handle whatever you have going on in your life, no matter how hard it is.
Reconciled by Jesus (22a)
The question that leaves us with is: Now what? Given the fact that every mere man or woman born since Adam has been born alienated from and hostile to God, we’re right to wonder if that’s the end of it. Is it as simple as: We’re born that way and we die that way and the consequences are what they are? Or is there some way to escape our alienation and hostility?
The first five words of v.21 answer this question for us. “And you who were once…” What they once were (alienated, hostile, and evil), they are no longer. They found some way of escape.
That, of course, begs another question: How did they get unalienated, unhostile, and unevil? There really are only three possible ways: Deny the Bible’s teaching, attempt to fix it ourselves, or have someone else fix it for us.
As I mentioned last Sunday, in a very real way, all human history has been one long and entirely unsuccessful attempt by man at the first two—denying the need for getting unalienated and trying to save ourselves from it. Before looking more closely at the third option (which is the one Paul celebrated with the Colossians), I’d like to unpack the first two a bit more this morning.
Denial
Perhaps the most famous attempt to deny the reality of our alienation comes from German philosopher, Fredrich Nietzche. He claimed: “God is dead, and we have killed him.” He did so as a provocative way of pronouncing his belief that scientists and philosophers had successfully demonstrated the irrationality of belief in God.
Consequently, he also believed that left philosophers like him with the responsibility of rethinking everything in the vacuum left by “God’s demise”—ethics, morality, human nature, justice, society, etc. Indeed, he spent much of his life attempting to work out what it means to live unshackled from the constraints of a sovereign God.
And right at the heart of his rethinking and reimagining the world was a declaration of freedom from all guilt and condemnation—since we can’t be guilty in any ultimate sense if there’s no one we’re ultimately accountable to.
Despite Nietzsche’s (along with the rest of the Moderns’) delusions of novelty and grandeur, that kind of hubris, that kind of prideful attempt to deny the undeniable, that kind of hostility of mind, had been going on all along.
Psalm 10:4 In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek him; all his thoughts are, “There is no God.”
Psalm 14:1 The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”
Psalm 36:1 Transgression speaks to the wicked deep in his heart; there is no fear of God before his eyes.
And in another letter (Romans 1:21-22), Paul wrote of all of Nietzsche’s predecessors, “although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools.”
The foolish, prideful, wicked, hostile and utterly futile denial of our guilt before God has been one of mankind’s two main attempts to respond to the alienation from God from the beginning.
But Grace, whenever and wherever this tactic is applied, it always fails—like denying gravity, like denying the inevitability of our kids eventually launching into adulthood, like denying teeth-rotting, diabetes-producing effect of eating a pack of Nerds Clusters a day just because they’re so good and on sale for a dollar at Mike’s Cheap Foods in Forest lake. The truth is, denying reality only makes it hit harder when it comes.
Save Ourselves
Mankind’s second main attempt to respond to our undeniable alienation from God is just as old and just as useless as the first. We cannot save ourselves from our enmity with God any more than we can deny it. And yet, from the beginning, we’ve tried.
There are many, many passages in the Bible we could turn to, to see the perpetual and impotent impulse of man to try to save himself from his ruin, but in my estimation one stands out among the rest. I know of no more poignant and powerful description of the irresistibleness and ridiculousness of man’s rescue attempts than Isaiah 44:13-20.
13 The carpenter … 14 … cuts down cedars, or he chooses a cypress tree or an oak and lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest. He plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it. 15 Then it becomes fuel for a man. He takes a part of it and warms himself; he kindles a fire and bakes bread.
So far, so good, right? All of that is reasonable and well within God’s good design for man’s dominion of the earth. Well, predictably and tragically, that’s not where it ends.
15 Also he makes a god and worships it; he makes it an idol and falls down before it. 16 Half of it he burns in the fire. Over the half he eats meat; he roasts it and is satisfied. Also he warms himself and says, “Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire!” 17 And the rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, and falls down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says, “Deliver me, for you are my god!”
18 They know not, nor do they discern, for he has shut their eyes, so that they cannot see, and their hearts, so that they cannot understand. 19 No one considers, nor is there knowledge or discernment to say, “Half of it I burned in the fire; I also baked bread on its coals; I roasted meat and have eaten. And shall I make the rest of it an abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood?” 20 He feeds on ashes; a deluded heart has led him astray, and he cannot deliver himself or say, “Is there not a lie in my right hand?”
It’s hard to imagine Paul not having this passage in mind when he wrote Colossians 1:21.
The fullness and futility of man’s hostility of mind and evilness of deed are on display every time we try to save ourselves.
I imagine that the carpenter of this passage looks more ridiculous to you than you look to yourself in your attempts, but I promise you, you look just as ridiculous when you attempt to clean yourself up enough instead of turning to Jesus for rescue from pornography; when you attempt to bargain with God instead of turning to Jesus for rescue from your addiction; when you attempt to love your kids more instead of turning to Jesus for rescue from your unforgiveness of your spouse; when you attempt to do more at church instead of turning to Jesus for rescue from your immoral relationship with your boyfriend/girlfriend.
Likewise, I imagine the god of the carpenter of this passage looks more uselessness to you than your fake god, but I promise you that your self-made god of savings or insurance or a relationship or sports or comfort or vacations or accomplishments or schooling or a job or a ministry or whatever, is just as useless.
Grace, I know you know, but I also know you don’t know (“I believe. Help my unbelief”): Being made in God’s image means we can’t truly deny our alienation, and being fallen and finite means we are powerless to do anything about it. But if neither of those things can help us, what’s left?
Be Redeemed
If those are our only options, then we’re in trouble; big, big trouble. But thanks be to God, the Bible’s central message and promise is that there is a third option: That God Himself would redeem us.
God loved the Colossians in such a way that He sent His only Son to save them from their hostile thinking, evil actions, and ultimately their alienation from God.
Although they were lost and powerless, 22 he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death…
The news gets greater when we realize that, just as the problem wasn’t unique to the Colossians, neither was the solution. In Romans 5:6 (NASB), Paul says it like this: “For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.”
That’s what Paul meant back in 1:13-14 when he wrote, “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”
Indeed, Grace, “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (Ephesians 2:13). In Christ, through His blood, we are reconciled, delivered, redeemed, forgiven, and no longer alienated.
Be amazed. Marvel. Rejoice. Trust.
Ephesians 2:8-9 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
This is the effect of the preeminence of Jesus on those who will trust in Him.
Concerning this redemption Paul wrote of…two more things. First, there is significant glory in the timing of Paul’s declaration. The Colossians had recently experienced redemption as a result of something that happened many years earlier. Their salvation had been entirely accomplished on the cross. There was nothing more to be done. The grace of God in Christ is so strong that it spans decades.
Do you see that, Grace? Do you see how remarkable it is that Jesus was able to save a people that had never met Him by something He did ~30 years earlier? That’s amazing grace.
And that leads to the second thing. What was true ~30 years after Jesus’ death is no less true today! With no attenuation, with no degrading at all, the entirely sufficient, amazing, redeeming grace of God is available right now, some 2000! years later. Faith is still the conduit that brings to us the full measure of redemption that was accomplished “in his body of flesh by his death.”
If you will trust in Jesus today, you will immediately experience the same flood of the fullness of the redemption accomplished by Jesus that Paul commended to the Colossians so long ago. Trust in Him, Grace.
Made Holy (22b)
All by itself, all of that is a big deal. That we were hostile in mind, evil in deed, and entirely alienated from God, but God redeemed us from our sin and ended our enmity with Him through Jesus death, is good news indeed. It’s certainly way beyond what we deserve. But if that were it, it’s not entirely clear where that’d leave us.
There’s a big difference between merely being out of trouble with God and being in His good graces.
Every married person has experienced this on some level. When your spouse sins against you—especially if it’s in a particularly egregious way—forgiveness can often come before renewed trust. Likewise, if you commit a crime serious enough to warrant jail time, on the other side of your sentence you’re free from prosecution, but that doesn’t mean the store you stole from will/should hire you back.
The question, then, is: What’s the nature of Jesus’ reconciliating work? Does it merely free us from condemnation, leaving us potentially vulnerable to repeat our offense and renew our alienation? Or, does it accomplish something more still?
21 And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, 22 he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him…
Grace, this is a promise of the highest form of redemption. Not only (as I mentioned at the beginning) does it bring an awesome measure of present, reconciling grace, but it also brings unlimited future, reconciliating grace.
In a different sermon, there’s a lot more to be said here. But the main thing I want to draw your attention to in conclusion this morning is that through faith in Jesus we are immediately declared holy, blameless, and above reproach. That is, Jesus’ holiness, blamelessness, and irreproachability are instantly credited to our account as soon as we place our trust in Him. We remain hostile in mind and evil in deed to some degree, but the Father receives us as entirely righteous because we are given the righteousness of Christ. We immediately become His beloved sons and daughters through Jesus.
But that’s not all. Embedded in Paul’s final words in v.22 is an even greater promise. Jesus’ past death on the cross graciously reconciles us now without any righteousness of our own. But that same cross-grace of God also begins to transform us now, gradually filling us with a holiness, blamelessness, and irreproachableness of our own, so that at the time of Jesus’ future return, He will have made us fully holy, blameless, and irreproachable.
Ephesians 5:25-27 Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
What an exchange, Grace Church! Just think of it. Just think of what hope and help that would bring if we were to truly live in light of it.
My hope and prayer all week has been that God’s Spirit would be pleased to do what I’m certain my words cannot: Fill us all with the humility and gratitude this grace warrants, all the love and courage it takes to share this good news with those still hostile, evil and alienated, and all the wonder and hope it calls for regarding the promise of unlimited future grace.
Despite my best efforts, my words are not enough to help you see the glory that is here. My countenance isn’t consistent with the amazingness of this news. My prayers this week were insufficient for the need we have. My preparation wasn’t thorough enough for the depth of the text. My own trust in these promises falls short of what they deserve.
At the same time, you didn’t prepare well enough, you didn’t listen closely enough, your own personal preferences overshadowed some of what you should have rejoiced in, and you care more about who wins the Masters (or whatever) than the promises of God.
The point I’m trying to make is that we, like the Colossians, still have some measure of hostility of mind, evilness of deed, and experiential alienation from God in us; but God, being rich in mercy and abounding in steadfast love, can and has and will do for us, what we are incapable of doing ourselves. He has done it in Jesus. He will do it still in Jesus. He will, on the day of Jesus’ glorious return, present us holy and blameless and above reproach before him…
Let us, therefore, be humble, share this good news, and live in the awesome and certain hope of the grace that is ours forever and ever.