COLOSSIANS 1, PART 5

Have you ever been alienated from someone?  Is it possible for people to escape it, I wonder?  Alienation can begin so easily.  Angry or hurtful words are exchanged or actions taken, feelings get hurt, anger is stirred up, grudges nursed, and the next thing you know months, maybe years, have gone by without speaking. After a while you can’t even remember what it was that caused it all.  But the damage has been done and life goes on without that other person in it.  Even if you regret it, it’s hard to make it right.

What about alienation from God?  Sometimes things happen in life that we don’t like and can’t explain and we blame God – illnesses, premature deaths, divorces, disabilities – a host of things can happen that cause people to turn from God.  We choose alienation out of anger or confusion.  That is a subject for another blog!

Paul says something in chapter 1, verse 21 that might surprise you.  He tells the Colossian believers:

“Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.”

Paul is addressing ALL the believers in Colosse in his letter.  I’m guessing not all of them were previously alienated from God because of the unexplained and tragic things that happened to them.  If he’s speaking to all of them, then he must have something else in mind when he speaks of alienation from God.

Webster’s Dictionary defines alienated as: “to feel isolated, or estranged”.  Synonyms include: divided, distant, cut off.

The truth is that what Paul says of the Colossian believers before they knew Jesus, is what he would say of us as well.

What would cause people to be estranged, distant or cut off from God?  The answer is simple - SIN.  

God is holy, perfect and sinless, but we are surely NOT.  Adam and Eve demonstrated that in the garden of Eden when with all the blessings of God at their disposal, they chose to do the ONE thing God had forbidden – eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  And they passed their sinful DNA down to us so that we cannot NOT sin!  And its sin that has alienated us from God.  The Israelites knew that when at Mt. Sinai God’s presence was so evident and they would not even go near the mountain out of fear of what God might do to them!

We are strangers to God’s way of thinking.  Sin corrupts our thinking about God making us “enemies in our minds”.  Wrong thinking leads to wrong actions.  When we’re out of harmony with God, alienated, divided and distant from Him, our natural condition is to be hostile to Him and to His standards.

Paul’s letter to the Romans has a lot to say about that.  

What may be known about God is plain to anyone who has eyes to see, because God has revealed Himself in His creation.  But men suppress the truth about this – and so are without excuse when they say there is no God.

Though, because of what God has revealed about Himself through what He has made, they KNOW He exists, they neither glorify Him or give Him thanks – so that their thinking becomes futile and their foolish hearts darkened.

So because they refuse to acknowledge God, He “gave them over” to live the way they choose, without Him, and to a depraved mind and all the actions that come with it.

What a terrible plight alienation from God causes.  This is where the Colossians were before they heard the gospel.  And it’s where everyone is today apart from faith in that same gospel, the gospel of the perfect life, substitutionary death, and resurrection of Jesus for sinners.

Though they were once alienated from God, these Colossian believers responded to the gospel by faith and are now related to God in an entirely different way.  Colossians, chapter 1, beginning with verse 22:

“But now, he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel.  This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.”

I love those verses that begin with the words, “but now”!   Alienated and enemies are no longer words used of the Colossians to whom Paul writes, because of God’s grace. 

Now, through the death of Jesus, a righteousness from God, the very righteousness of Jesus Himself, has been imputed to them.  Their sin credited to His account; His righteousness credited to theirs!  The result:  reconciliation instead of alienation through faith in the gospel!

Romans 3:22 says:

“This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.”

Unlike the Israelites at Mt. Sinai, the author of the book of Hebrews says this about those who have been reconciled to God through faith in Jesus:

“Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

And in Romans 8:1:

“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. . .”

Because of the gospel of Jesus Christ, proclaimed to them, which they believed by faith, the Colossian believers, who used to be alienated from God were now reconciled and declared righteous.  They were accepted by God and no longer condemned by their sin. 

So who are you alienated from?  If there is some person you need to reconcile with, then do that.  

But the far more important question is:

Are you alienated from God, doing your own thing, going your own way?  Maybe you don’t even think you’re that bad a person, but the reality is, according to the Bible, everyone without a relationship with God by faith in His Son Jesus IS alienated and an enemy of God because they refuse to take God on His terms.  

The good news is: you don’t have to STAY alienated.  Jesus is the way of reconciliation and restoration with God.  Put your faith in Him.

Romans 5:1

“Therefore, since we have been (declared right with God through faith in Jesus), we have peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into (His) grace. . .”