Sermon Tone Analysis

21 "Once you were alienated and hostile in your minds expressed in your evil actions.

22 "But now he has reconciled you by his physical body through his death, to present you holy, faultless, and blameless before him—23 "if indeed you remain grounded and steadfast in the faith and are not shifted away from the hope of the gospel that you heard.

This gospel has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and I, Paul, have become a servant of it.”

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Paul has concluded his section of praise to Christ (1:15–20),

an extended treatment of the greatness of

the Christian’s Saviour.

In that section we discovered that Jesus is supreme, that he is exalted far above all things.

We also saw that he is sufficient.

He is all that we need as a Savior,

for he is well able to save all His people to the utmost degree.

His power to save is limitless.

No case of human need, however desperate, is beyond him.

Now Paul moves on from considering who Christ is, the

splendour of His being and the

endless resources of His sovereign mercy,

to look instead at what Christ has done for His people.

This was enormously relevant to his original readers.

The church in Colosse was troubled by a new breed of teachers

offering a form of spirituality that posed a subtle threat to their spiritual well-being.

These men were careful not to say anything that belittled the Lord Jesus Christ and his achievement directly,

but Paul could see that this would be an inevitable consequence of their teaching.

By insisting that the believer should look beyond mere salvation for

an experience of ‘fulness’, the new teachers hinted that what Christ has done for us

is only effective up to a point.

We need something more to make our Christian experience complete.

Paul’s response in these verses is just as relevant to believers today,

because the Colossian syndrome has not gone away.

It has been repackaged in a variety of ways, but believers are still being enticed with

the notion that salvation is only a beginning.

We must move on to greater things, we are told.

In the end, if all we have is Christ and His salvation, something is missing.

In the previous section Paul’s response was to make much of Christ himself.

How can a person who is united to such a complete and excellent Savior be lacking something vital?

Now, in this new section, Paul makes much of salvation;

he emphasizes the greatness of it.

Far from being a necessary but relatively minor prelude to a blessing that would surpass it,

the salvation of a soul is an experience entirely without parallel.

The change that has come over every believer cannot be minimized.

No greater experience is possible in this life.

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Let’s get familiar with the text a bit.

At the heart of this paragraph is a favorite classic resource of Paul’s: a contrast between “once” and “now.”

“Once” the Colossians were estranged from God because of their evil thoughts and deeds (v.

21).

“But now” they are reconciled to God through Christ’s death and with the hope of being presented before God as blameless (v.

22).

But this hope is contingent on their continuing in the faith,

as Paul adds in a concluding warning statement (v.

23).

The gospel, the source of this hope, has had a powerful effect on the Colossians (1:6).

But it will secure what the Colossians hope for only if they continue in their faith (2:7).

This brief paragraph is marked by a shift in style.

The impersonal, third-person, descriptive style of vv.

15–20 is dropped

in favor of direct address in the second person:

once you.… he has reconciled you … if you continue.

The high theology of vv.

15–20 is being applied.

And, of course, the focus on reconciliation in vv.

21–22 shows that

it is the universal reconciling work of God in Christ (v.

20)

that is being especially applied here.

Because God in all “His fullness” is present in Christ (v.

19),

His death (v.

20) and resurrection (v.

18) have

the power to initiate

(“beginning,” “firstborn” in v. 18)

a new creation

(“the body, the church,” v. 18).

This new creation work rests on the universal reconciling, or “peacemaking” power of the cross of Christ.

It is God’s intention

to bring “peace” to His fallen and fractured universe,

to bring all things again into subjection to His sovereignty,

to bring all His enemies into subjection.

This intention will be finally accomplished only when Christ returns in glory

to establish the kingdom in its final form (cf. 1:22b; 3:4).

But God invites human beings in the present time both to

participate in this reconciliation (by being saved) and

to become agents through whom God’s work of reconciliation can begin to be carried out.

Because they have responded to this invitation, the Colossians have been turned from God’s enemies into his “friends” and

anticipate the day when they will stand before God fully transformed into His image—

if, that is, they continue to maintain their commitment to the gospel (v.

23).

So let’s look at each verse separately, that we might seek how it all fits together.

Think of what you once were dear believer.

21 "Once you were alienated and hostile in your minds expressed in your evil actions.”

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v21 describe the people who receive this reconciling action (v22).

If you go over to we see the same verb.

Here this is speaking about non-believers...

18 "They are darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them and because of the hardness of their hearts.”

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What unbelievers excluded from?

“the life of God”.

Go back (please) to .

Just as in this alienation from the life of God is connected with our thinking process.

“hostile in your minds expressed in your evil actions.”

This is the basic mind-set of the non-Christian that is hostile toward God.

Enemies in our minds.

It’s this alienation that makes reconciliation necessary!

We are in this condition, of being hostile to God, naturally because of our involvement in Adam’s original sin.

God responds in wrath, in that He is holy and perfectly just.

He is just when He responds in wrath against “your evil actions.”

(v21).

Our evil behavior is the result of our hostility towards God in our minds.