Sermon for Pilgrim Church 25/7/21
“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.” (Col 1:21-23 ESV)
This passage applies the consequences of the last section to the church as a whole, as well as us as individuals. It is not simply that Jesus has reconciled the cosmos through his death, but he has reconciled you and me. The passage gives us insight into our past, our present and our future. Verse 23 has a condition of salvation. Let’s look at these things one at a time.
Verse 21 describes the past state of Christians, that is the state of people apart from Christ. Once we were alienated and hostile in mind. The passage does not actually say who we were alienated from. However, there are two passages in Ephesians which use the same word. Ephesians 2:12 reads, “remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.” As Gentiles, the church at Colossae was alienated from the people of God and the promises of God. They had no hope, unlike the Jews, who hoped for a Messiah. Ephesians 4:18 also uses the word alienated: “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.” This tells us that our alienation was from God himself. We did not know the true God.
Alienation from God fits in well with the state of being hostile in mind. This might be translated as having a hostile disposition or attitude. Elsewhere the Bible says that unbelievers are enemies of God (Rom 5:10) and James said that either you are friends with God or friends with the world. Unbelievers are friends with the world and therefore enemies of God (James 4:4). Being a non-Christian is not really a neutral place to be. Jesus said, “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters” (Lk. 11:23 ESV). British theologian P.T. Forsyth once wrote: “As a race we are not even stray sheep, or wandering prodigals merely; we are rebels taken with weapons in our hands.” Effectively, those who do not know God are not just ignorant of God but actively opposed to him.
Because the unbeliever is actively opposed to God’s rule, they demonstrate this by “doing evil deeds”. It is not so much that the evil deeds make a person an enemy of God, but rather being an enemy of God results in doing evil deeds. The hostile disposition that the unbeliever has by nature leads to people doing what is against the will of God. Once we all were people who did not want God telling us what to do. The life we lived was simply hostile towards God.
Something has to happen to change us and the state we are in. It is not possible to simply change yourself into a new person who loves God. Famous Reformer Martin Luther was a monk and a very good monk. He is quoted as saying, “Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience. I could not believe that he was placated by my satisfaction. I did not love, yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners.” All the morality in Luther’s life did not remove the sense of enmity in the mind. It did not remove the alienation. It only served to bring about a great hatred of God and his holiness.
But alienation, hostile disposition and evil deeds are in our past. Paul goes on “he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death”. In the OT, the blood of bulls and goats and lambs was shed in order to cover over sin. This system of blood sacrifices was set up by God to make fellowship with sinners possible. God says, “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life” (Lev. 17:11 ESV). Paul similarly describes the means of reconciliation with God as a blood sacrifice, but this time the blood shed is that of the Lord of all. We know that animal sacrifices were just a stop gap measure until the coming of Christ. God himself became a human and died so that sinful humanity can be reconciled to God. Notice here that the actions taken to reconcile humanity were all taken by God, not humans. Reconciliation is God’s work.
The death of Jesus brought about a change in humanity so that we are no longer enemies with God. Indeed, “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom 5:1). Our hearts are changed under the new covenant. “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Heb. 8:10 ESV). The result is a desire to please God instead of hostility towards him.
The purpose of all this is spelled out in the second half of verse 22: “in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him”. There is a parallel passage in Eph 5:25b-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 splendour, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (Eph. 5:25b-27 ESV). Notice first of all that God and/or Jesus (depending on how you read ‘him’ in these verses) presents the church to himself. This is God’s action not ours. We don’t make ourselves these things because it was accomplished in the cross already.
This is most likely referring to the future, to the Last Judgment. The final judgement of every human being is the place where you most want to be holy and blameless and free from accusation. These things are already true of the Christian, but they will be completed when Jesus returns. Holy, blameless and above reproach are a matter of status now, but when Jesus returns they will be ours in actuality. In other words, we won’t just be declared blameless but our actions will be blameless. We won’t just be called holy, our actions will be holy. We won’t just be said to be above reproach, there will be no more accusations from the devil against us. The implication is that Christians would ideally grow in the direction of these traits. Transformation of our character and actions is what you would expect as we believe the gospel. It makes no sense saying that you want to have these things and then living as if you don’t.
These are incredible promises that spring from the fact that the Son of God died upon the cross for sinners. But the promises seem to have a condition attached: “if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard”. The promise of God is only fulfilled for those who continue in the faith. We can read this in a positive way, that is, we should assume that Paul had confidence that the church would continue in the faith. But because there were people infiltrating the church with false teaching, he warned them to be on their guard against this. The warning serves to insure that no one will fail to continue in the faith.
There is only one true faith (Acts 6:7; 14:22), that is faith in Christ. The way you continue in the faith is spelled out in the two phrases that follow: “stable and steadfast”, “not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard”. Stable is a building metaphor. It is used of laying a foundation. Steadfast might also be a building metaphor. If so, Paul is speaking about building on a solid foundation. The only foundation for faith is Christ himself. “For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 3:11 ESV). Don’t try to build your faith on something other than Jesus. What do people build faith on? Experiences, happiness, events in life that look like God’s blessing, everything going right for a time, a new job or an answer to prayer. Fill in your own examples here. These will fail at some point because not everything will go well forever. However, Jesus is our solid foundation that never fails. If our trust is in him and not in experiences or circumstances we will be stable and steadfast.
The second part of continuing in the faith is “not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard”. There are plenty of false gospels around the place. Paul knew that there were false teachers trying to lure the Colossians away from the gospel he had proclaimed to them. Although there are many false gospels there is only one true gospel. It is not written here, but we find it spelled out in 1 Cor 15:1-4. “Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you– unless you believed in vain. 3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.” These are facts, events in history, witnessed by many (as Paul goes on to enumerate in the following verses). If we stick with faith in the gospel with Christ as the foundation, then we will receive the promises of God and be holy, blameless and above reproach on Judgement Day.
I want to ponder this part of the passage a little longer. The alternative to staying with the gospel is moving away into error. A particularly common error is starting to rely on your own works as if these would be sufficient on the day of Judgment. Thinking of this brought to mind a story in The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom regarding one of her aunts. On this day, Corrie had received word that her aunt had only weeks to live. They went to her room to tell her the news. Corrie’s father tried to tell her she was about to die. He encouraged her that she had done many things and so could come to God with hands full. The other family members reminded her of her clubs, her writing, speaking and fundraising.
But our well-meant words were useless. In front of us the proud face crumpled; Tante Jans put her hands over her eyes and began to cry. “Empty, empty!” she choked at last through her tears. “How can we bring anything to God? What does he care for our little tricks and trinkets?”
And then as we listened in disbelief she lowered her hand and with tears still coursing down her face whispered, “Dear Jesus, I thank you that we must come with empty hands. I thank you that you have done all – all – on the cross, and that all we need in life or death is to be sure of this.” (The Hiding Place pp. 41-42).
The takeaway from this story and the passage we are considering is that our trust must be in Christ and not in ourselves. Only the death of Jesus can guarantee our acceptance before God on Judgement Day.
On the other hand, let’s consider why people fall away from faith. I listened recently to an interview with a man who has done research into deconversions, that is people who were once Christians and have abandoned the faith. He offered three main reasons why people stop being Christians.
First of all there are intellectual reasons. A person might find some discrepancy in the Bible they cannot figure out or they cannot understand how evil exists in the world or perhaps they perceive a problem with science and the Bible. These kinds of intellectual problems can cause people to stumble, especially if they have been taught that the Christian faith will fall apart if, for example, there is a mistake in the Bible.
The second thing is emotional hurt. People get hurt in churches because Christians betray them or Christians act like hypocrites or church leaders do something wrong. Emotional hurt seems to break some people because they were expecting that it would never happen in church.
Thirdly, people leave the faith if they feel that God does not live up to expectations. If a person lives a good life, serves God and gives up things for the gospel, they feel that this should be rewarded. When something bad happens, it seems like God does not keep his promises. There are examples of people becoming full-blown atheists because of this.
What are we going to do about these issues? I am not looking at how we can reconvert people, but how we can encourage one another to hold onto our faith?