And you, who once were alienated and enemies in mind by wicked works, yet now has it reconciled
The letter has just spoken of God reconciling all things. Now it turns to the readers themselves and tells them what they used to be. Two questions follow. Where did the trouble lie — in God, or in us? And why does the verse say "once"?
The verse's phrases mark different parts of the problem. One writer asks where we stood, and then what we were doing there:
Alienation would be connected with our position as being removed from God. But what were we doing there? We were enemies in our minds by wicked works.
Another writer puts them in order. Alienation of heart comes after the wrongdoing, not before it:
We do not only have a wicked nature in us ("children of wrath"). More than this, we have done wrong, thought wrong, spoken wrong. And besides that, our hearts are alienated — the sure consequence of sin. Did you ever see a servant or a child do wrong, and be glad to meet his master or parent afterwards? Does not the sense of having done wrong keep them away from those they have sinned against? Yes. There is alienation of heart, because we do not want God to come and say to us, as He said to Adam, "Where are you?" First comes desire, then the act of sin, then the mind turned away and at enmity.
The verse puts the hostility in us: we were "hostile in mind." So who needed to be reconciled?
The testimony of Scripture is as distinct as possible. It never speaks of God being reconciled to us. "If, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son" (Rom. 5:10). It does not say that God was reconciled to us. The death of Christ was essential to the reconciliation. But man was the enemy of God, and man was the one who needed to be reconciled.
That does not mean God was indifferent to how we lived. It means the estrangement never ran both ways:
On our side the alienation was not only in life but in heart also. On God's side, He felt the alienation in life far more sharply than we ever could, but there was no alienation in His heart. In other words, while we as sinners hated God, He never hated us. Had He hated us He could have simply damned us and left it at that. Instead He has Himself made the reconciliation available to us. It came at so great a cost as "the death of His Son."
Reconciliation is not the same as forgiveness. A hostile mind is not a debt God can simply cancel:
Reconciliation brings us out of the condition of enmity and distance that marks everyone by nature. In other words, reconciliation has not so much to do with what we have done, as with what we are. It follows that reconciliation is not a matter of forgiveness. There can be no forgiveness for a condition of enmity towards God. The only way God could take it up was by death. Through the Lord's death, He has taken us out of the place of enmity and brought us into the place of nearness and acceptance before God.
The next words say Christ reconciled us "in His body of flesh by His death." Was His coming to live among us not enough?
While He lived, this work was not yet done at all. The incarnation, blessed and precious as it is, never reconciled man to God. It showed us the Person of the One who was to reconcile. In itself it was an important step towards the reconciliation. But in fact there was no reconciliation yet for a single soul. The cross of Christ accomplished it all.
The reconciling of all things in heaven and earth is still ahead. So where does that leave believers, living in a world that is not yet reconciled?
All things are going to be reconciled in earth and in heaven. But we are already reconciled, in the middle of an unreconciled creation. God does not leave us as part of this unreconciled creation. It groans, and we groan too, but we are reconciled to God. So now we see why there is the patience and long-suffering, and the joyfulness too. These two things may seem very unsuited to each other, though the place we are in is very suited to glorify God. Reconciled is a strong, full word. It means everything is brought into God's presence as God would have it. And we are reconciled.
- Distance. "Alienated" names where we stood — removed from God. "Hostile in mind, doing evil deeds" names what we were doing there.
- Direction. The hostility ran one way. We hated God; He never hated us, and Scripture never says He was reconciled to us.
- Depth. Reconciliation deals with what we are, not only what we have done. A hostile mind cannot be forgiven, so God dealt with it by death.
- Death. Not His life among us, but "His body of flesh by His death." Christ's life showed us the Reconciler; the cross did the reconciling.
- Today. Believers are already reconciled, inside a creation that is still waiting. That is why patience and joy can sit together.
in the body of his flesh through death; to present you holy and unblamable and irreproachable before it,
Paul has just written about a reconciliation that reaches all things in heaven and on earth. Now he turns to the readers themselves, and answers two questions. What did it take to bring them back to God? How does God see them now?
Reconciliation here covers everything, but not everything at once. What is still future for creation is already settled for believers.
All things are going to be reconciled in earth and heaven — created things; but the saints are reconciled. We are a reconciled people in the midst of an unreconciled creation. God has not left you part of this unreconciled creation. It groans yet, and we groan too; but we are reconciled to God... "Reconciled" is a strong full word — everything brought into God's presence, as God would have it; and we are reconciled.
The phrase points to Christ's real human body. But the verse does not stop there. It adds "by his death."
Notice again the words "the body of His flesh." His becoming Man was not enough on its own, and could not be; no, nor was all the fullness of the Godhead living in Him in bodily form. For guilty man it had to be "through death." It was not through Christ's birth or His living power, but "through death" — not by what He did, blessed of God as it all was, but by what He suffered... At any rate, "in the body of His flesh through death" contradicts the idea that His becoming Man was the means of reconciliation.
That death dealt with more than a list of offences. It dealt with what we were.
We are cleared from everything that once belonged to us as the fallen children of Adam. In "the body of His flesh through death" God carried out the judgment of all that we were. That same death provides the basis for the coming reconciliation of all things in heaven and on earth.
"Holy and blameless and above reproach" is not repetition for emphasis. Each one carries its own weight.
We have three words to show the perfect character of this reconciliation. The first is "holy" — a word that says in the strongest way possible that the believer is perfectly fit for the holy presence of God. Then we have "blameless." In Hebrews we read that Christ "offered Himself without blemish to God" (Heb. 9:14), and that is the same word. So we gather that the believer, in his standing, is before God what Christ was when He offered up Himself: without blemish. Last comes "above reproach" — more exactly, "without charge" or "accusation": one against whom no charge can be brought.
Most readers feel a gap between this description and their daily life. The verse says how God sees the believer. That view should shape our experience; our experience does not measure it.
Long before the reconciliation of all things, believers are already presented "holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight" (v.22). This is the way God sees them in Christ, and not according to their personal daily experience. Only by grasping the perfection of our blessing and position "in Christ" will our experience come to match it in any measure.
The next verse adds an "if." What does that condition actually touch?
Here an "if" comes in. It does not cast doubt on the reconciliation — there is no flaw there, for God has carried it all out according to the fullness of the Godhead. What is in question now is our presentation in glory, and none of us have reached that moment yet. So with some it may have been profession only.
Two things stand behind the whole verse: God's purpose and Christ's death.
God's purpose is the source of our blessing. Christ's death is the means of our blessing. How full, how secure, how perfect must it all be — according to God's own thoughts and for His eternal glory.
- Means — Christ becoming Man was not enough on its own; only His death could reconcile guilty people to God.
- Done — creation still waits. Believers are already reconciled — a reconciled people inside an unreconciled world.
- Cleared — the death judged not only our sins but everything that belonged to us as fallen children of Adam.
- Presented — holy means fit for God's presence. Blameless means without blemish, like Christ's own offering. Above reproach means no charge can stick.
- Held — this is how God sees us in Christ, not a report on our daily feelings. Grasping it is what pulls our experience into line.
if indeed ye abide in the faith founded and firm, and not moved away from the hope of the glad tidings, which ye have heard, which have been proclaimed in the whole creation which [is] under heaven, of which *I* Paul became minister.
Paul has just said that God reconciled the Colossians to present them holy and blameless before Him. Then he adds a condition. That little word "if" troubles many readers. Does Christ's finished work hang on our staying power? And what is "the faith" Paul tells us to continue in?
The condition does not reopen the question of whether Christ's work holds. It shows what a person would throw away by leaving Christianity. It leaves God's keeping untouched.
If we abandoned Christianity, we would lose our advantage. We would be rejecting the grace that presented us to God. This does not touch election or the perseverance of the saints at all. You find this kind of language all through the letters. It only proves that God keeps us personally, and keeps us morally. His faithfulness guaranteed that He would carry out His purpose.
So the verse works as a test. Continuing does not make a person reconciled; it shows that he is. (Older translations render the ESV's "stable and steadfast" as "grounded and settled.")
It is the test for everyone who claims to be a Christian. If he continues, it proves that he is reconciled, and in God's sight holy, blameless and above reproach. Certainly, if one is born again, he will continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast... If one does not continue, this proves he had never been reconciled. This sad condition answers to the seed sown on rocky ground. Appearances were good at first, but it soon withered away (Matthew 13:5-6, 20-21). True faith becomes grounded and settled, and it keeps a person from being moved away. In fact, faith makes the hope of the gospel more and more precious as time goes by.
Paul does not write "continue believing." The small word "the" changes what he is asking for.
It is not simply "continue in faith." The expression is "the faith" — the full range of things presented here, with the believer grounded and settled in them... So everything Paul was made a minister of, shown in this letter, is "the faith." It is the whole circle of revelations given to him from first to last — some shared with the other apostles, some given to him alone.
The Colossians had good order and steady faith. A warning still followed.
What it really proves is this: no amount of blessed order or steadfastness can safeguard a soul that lets in wrong thoughts and corrupt principles. Such principles cloud, weaken, or lower the glory of Christ... No soul, whatever its blessing past or present, can afford to trifle with anything that upsets the Person or glory of Christ.
"Hope" here is not vague optimism. It has a location and a Person.
What is "the hope of the gospel"? It is in a heavenly Christ who died for us, giving us the assurance of being with Himself there. The hope of Israel was the earth; this "hope of the gospel" is above. Without knowing it, the Colossians were truly losing sight of their heavenly hope. This was happening because the thought of adding philosophy or religious rules to Christ tends to strip a person of Christ.
The danger was not open unbelief. It was religion that ties people back to earth.
Some people were trying to lure these saints away from their heavenly hopes. They pressed them to take up strict self-denial, feast days, and religious rules, which tied them to earth. Such teaching did not match the gospel they had heard, and of which Paul had been made a minister.
Did every person on earth hear it? The phrase is about how far the message was sent, not a count of people already reached.
The words "in all creation that is under heaven" mean that its witness went out over the whole world as people knew it then... The word "creation" is not the one used for each single creature. It means creation in a general sense, and the missing "the" in Colossians 1:23 confirms this... Yet it had truly been proclaimed then, because Christ's servants had gone out and preached everywhere in the world as it was known at that time.
Paul then names himself a minister of that gospel — the first of two services he describes in this chapter.
Notice these two ministries: the preaching of the gospel in all the creation under heaven, and Paul's service as minister of the church. These two ministries are distinct, but we see them combined in the person of Paul.
- Reconciled — verse 22 presents you "holy and blameless" on the ground of Christ's death. The "if" that follows does not touch God's keeping.
- Tested — continuing does not make you real; it shows that you are. The one who walks away shows he was rocky ground all along.
- Grounded — hold "the faith": the whole circle of truth given through Paul, not just a believing frame of mind.
- Unmoved — the hope of the gospel is a heavenly Christ. Adding philosophy or religious rules to Him ties the heart back to earth.
- Proclaimed — the same gospel that steadies you went out into all creation under heaven, and Paul put his own name to serving it.