Colossians 1:21-23 –

²¹And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, ²²he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, ²³if 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 sam...