Once you were an enemy. Now you are reconciled. The whole Christian life lives in the space between those two words — and refuses to drift.
The Christ Hymn ended with a portrait of Jesus that should have stopped you in your tracks. He created everything. He is before all things. In Him all things hold together. He is the firstborn from the dead, supreme in everything. That passage was about Him.
Now Paul turns the camera. It is about you. And it is about us — the body He holds together when everything else feels like it is coming apart. Colossians 1:21-2:5 is the hinge of the letter. It tells you what you were, what Christ made you, and what it will cost to stay standing. Walk it slowly. Every word is load-bearing.
Once: The Honest Diagnosis (1:21)
And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds,
Colossians 1:21, NASB1995
Three words. Read them and do not soften them.
Alienated. You were not a neutral party. You were not a basically good person waiting for better information. You were cut off — outside, estranged, far from the God who made you.
Hostile in mind. The estrangement was not a misunderstanding. It was enmity. The hostility lived in your thinking, in the place where you decide what is true and what you will do about it. You were not confused about God. You were at war with Him.
Engaged in evil deeds. The hostile mind produced a life. Behavior is never the root — it is the fruit. Paul names the fruit anyway, because honesty about the deeds is what keeps the diagnosis from becoming abstract.
This is not Paul exaggerating to make a point. This is Paul refusing to flatter you. Until you feel the full weight of once, the word now will never land. Cheap grace is grace offered to people who were never told what they actually were.
Now: What the Cross Accomplished (1:22)
yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach—
Colossians 1:22, NASB1995
“Yet.” One small word, and the whole sentence turns. Everything that came before it was true of you. Everything after it is the work of Another.
Notice how Paul nails the reconciliation down to a body. In His fleshly body through death. This was not a spiritual abstraction or a change in divine mood. A real man, with real flesh, died a real death. The false teachers at Colossae wanted a Christ too lofty to bleed. Paul will not have it. The reconciliation cost blood, and the blood was His.
And look at the verdict it secures. He presents you holy — set apart for God. Blameless — without defect, the word used for an unblemished sacrifice. Beyond reproach — no charge can be filed, no accusation will stand. Three words of guilt in verse 21. Three words of acquittal in verse 22. That is the exchange.
You did not earn one syllable of it. Not by who you used to be, not by what you have cleaned up since. The standing is His gift, grounded in His finished work. So when the accuser fires — you are a fraud, you are disqualified, you have blown it again — your defense is not better self-talk. It is what God has already declared.
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
1 John 1:9, NASB1995
Scarlet sins, made white as snow. That is not your aspiration. That is your status. That is who you are now.
Continue: The Proof That It Is Real (1:23)
if indeed you continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel that you have heard, which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, was made a minister.
Colossians 1:23, NASB1995
“If indeed you continue.” That word makes some readers nervous. It should not — but it should make every reader serious.
Paul is not teaching that your reconciliation is provisional, hanging by the thread of your performance. He is teaching that genuine faith has a tense, and the tense is present continuous. Reconciliation is the door. Continuing is the walk. The faith that truly received Christ keeps holding on to Christ. The branch that is truly in the vine keeps abiding. Perseverance does not earn the standing — it evidences it.
Paul stacks three images here, and each one is worth pausing on:
- Firmly established — a building term. A foundation laid and set. You are not improvising your faith day to day; you are built on something that was poured before you arrived.
- Steadfast — a posture of immovability. Pressure leans on you and you do not slide.
- Not moved away from the hope — the danger named plainly. You can be carried off. Not by a single dramatic renunciation, but by drift — by being slowly nudged off the hope of the gospel one fine-sounding argument at a time.
This is the rhythm of every Christian life: anchored in what Christ did, walking forward in what He is doing, refusing to drift from the hope held out in the gospel. And mark the last phrase — Paul, an apostle, calls himself a minister, a servant of that gospel. If Paul is a servant of it, you do not get to be its casual consumer.
The Servant’s Joy in Suffering (1:24-25)
Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I do my share on behalf of His body, which is the church, in filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.
Colossians 1:24, NASB1995
Paul does not rejoice because pain feels good. He rejoices because suffering for the church means something. He is in chains as he writes this. He has been beaten, stoned, shipwrecked, hungry, exposed. And he counts it joy.
Read the hard phrase carefully. Christ’s atoning afflictions lack nothing — the cross is finished, the price is paid in full. What still “lacks” is the carrying of that finished gospel into a hostile world, and that carrying costs the messenger. Paul takes his share of that cost gladly, because the body of Christ is worth it. When suffering comes to you — and it will — the world asks why me? The servant asks a better question: for whose sake?
The Mystery Made Known: Christ In You (1:26-27)
that is, the mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations, but has now been manifested to His saints, to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Colossians 1:26-27, NASB1995
A “mystery” in Scripture is not a riddle. It is something God kept sealed until the appointed hour, and has now thrown open. Here is the disclosure: Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Sit with the scandal of it. Gentiles — outsiders with no covenant claim, no pedigree, no standing — receive the indwelling Christ Himself. Not Christ admired from a distance. Not Christ as a moral example. Christ in you. And that indwelling presence is your “hope of glory” — the guarantee that the work begun in you will be finished in glory. If that is true of you, silence is not an option you are permitted.
Striving Toward Maturity — With His Energy (1:28-29)
We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in Christ.
Colossians 1:28, NASB1995
Two verbs carry the work. To admonish is to tell a brother, in love, what he must stop. To teach is to show him, in love, what to do instead. Both are needed. Neither is optional. And the aim is not a crowd of converts left to fend for themselves — it is to present every man complete, mature, grown up into Christ.
For this purpose also I labor, striving according to His power, which mightily works within me.
Colossians 1:29, NASB1995
“Striving” translates a Greek word from the world of the arena — the root behind our English word agony. Paul labors to exhaustion. He fights, strategizes, spends himself body, mind, and spirit. This is not passive Christianity.
But catch the source before you draw the wrong lesson. He strives according to His power, which mightily works within me. The effort is total; the strength is borrowed. We labor hard. We do not labor alone, and we do not labor in our own tank. That is the only sustainable way to spend yourself for the maturity of others.
A Struggle for People He Has Never Met (2:1)
For I want you to know how great a struggle I have on your behalf and for those who are at Laodicea, and for all those who have not personally seen my face,
Colossians 2:1, NASB1995
The same word again — struggle, the agony of the contest. Paul is pouring himself out for a church in Colossae and a church in Laodicea, congregations that have never seen his face. He has never shaken their hands. He still agonizes for them.
That is what love inside the body of Christ looks like. It is not limited to the people in your pew. It reaches across distance, across the names you will never meet, and labors anyway. If you only invest where you get the relational return, you have not yet learned the kind of love Paul is describing.
Encouraged, United, Assured (2:2-3)
that their hearts may be encouraged, having been knit together in love, and attaining to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding, resulting in a true knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ Himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
Colossians 2:2-3, NASB1995
Here is what Paul wants for the body, and it is worth memorizing. Hearts encouraged — strengthened, not coddled. Knit together in love — the same word used for binding a wound, bound so tightly the seam holds under strain. Full assurance of understanding — not anxious, hand-wringing faith, but the settled wealth of knowing what you believe and why.
And the destination of all that understanding is a Person: Christ Himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. The Colossian errorists were selling secret knowledge, a deeper wisdom available beyond Christ for the spiritually elite. Paul cuts the legs out from under them in one sentence. There is no treasury of wisdom out past Jesus. Every treasure is hidden in Him. You do not graduate from Christ to something higher. You go deeper into Him.
Beware the Persuasive Argument (2:4)
I say this so that no one will delude you with persuasive argument.
Colossians 2:4, NASB1995
Now Paul names the threat directly. Notice he does not warn them against obviously wicked teaching. He warns them against persuasive argument — reasoning that sounds good, that flatters the intellect, that arrives well-dressed and credentialed.
Error rarely announces itself. It does not knock on the church door demanding that you deny Christ. It comes alongside Christ and quietly adds to Him, or subtracts from Him — one fine-sounding argument at a time. That is exactly how a believer gets “moved away from the hope” of verse 23. The defense is not cleverness. The defense is being so anchored in the sufficiency of Christ that an addition to Him registers immediately as a subtraction.
Good Order and a Stable Faith (2:5)
For even though I am absent in body, nevertheless I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good discipline and the stability of your faith in Christ.
Colossians 2:5, NASB1995
Paul closes the passage with two military words. Good discipline pictures soldiers in formation — ranks holding, no gaps in the line. Stability pictures a solid front that the enemy cannot break through.
That is the picture of a healthy church under pressure. Not a loose crowd of religious individuals, each managing his own private faith. A body in formation, knit together, holding the line, immovable in Christ. And it brings Paul joy even from a prison cell — because a church that stands together is a church the persuasive argument cannot pick off one by one.
Stand Firm. Stay Knit.
So bring the passage home. Three things, plain and direct.
Live out of now, not once. You are no longer alienated. You are no longer hostile in mind. Holy, blameless, beyond reproach — that is the verdict, signed in His blood. Stop carrying a name God has already removed. Stop letting the accuser re-file a charge the cross dismissed.
Continue — and let the continuing prove the faith real. Genuine faith has a present tense. Stay firmly established. Stay steadfast. Do not drift. And do not drift quietly, because that is the only way drift ever happens.
Be knit to your people. You were not reconciled into isolation. You were reconciled into a body — encouraged, united, holding the line together. Paul agonized in prayer for a church that never saw his face. The closing of this letter is one long roll of names: Tychicus, Onesimus, Aristarchus, Mark, Epaphras, Luke. Real people, knit together, holding each other up. Demas is named there too — and later deserts, because he loved the world. Two men in the same room; one finished, one did not. The difference was not talent. It was whether they continued.
Hear Paul’s last line, written in his own chained hand: Remember my chains. Grace be with you. The same grace that reconciled you, holds you, and empowers you is the grace that knits you to His people across every distance. Reconciled — and held fast. Now go and stand.
Teaching the Word. Watching the Times.
— SmithForChrist