Colossians 1 vv 21-23 Part 2

Introduction

I still quite often come across two startling heresies around churches … not DELIBREATE ones, you understand, but these two do seem to have a bit of a tendency to creep in almost unawares.

One of them used to be common but pretty much un-named … the tendency to say that doctrine, that is the tenets and teachings of the Christian faith don’t really matter, and in fact probably shouldn’t be bothered with too much because it will make you very dull, narrow and un-Christian.

The other is a named heresy, but pretty much not recognised as such … and here we are talking about the Marcionite heresy … which amounts to rejecting the Old Testament.

Today in our verses in Colossians 1, Paul makes it very clear that doctrine should be bothered with because it is glorious and really does matter, and also that the Old Testament plays an important part in our understanding of what the Lord Jesus and the message of the New Testament are in fact all about.

Let’s dig into Colossians 1:21-23 for this second and final time in two weeks.

1) Reconciled, v. 22a

V. 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 …”
The incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection and glorification of Christ in His physical body (which we looked at last time) have done THIS for you, says Paul.

         •        A) HE has reconciled you
Reconciled - ἀποκαταλλάσσω (apokatallassō) – means to transfer from a certain state to another which is quite different, so it means to put things right again and to restore to favour.

Of course, we know where the other ‘R’ words fit into that reconciliation.

Christ pays the Ransom price with His blood at the Cross.

That Ransom price gets paid as we are Redeemed.

Once Redeemed we are Restored and Reconciled to God.

And when the Spirit of God breathes on us to bring us to saving faith we are Regenerated, born again, into a living hope (as Peter writes) through the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

You can see the point here, can’t you?

HE has reconciled us to Himself.

HE has taken those who have alienated themselves from Him by what Paul calls out here as their evil behaviour, and which every authentic believer recognises in themselves … and it is then HE Who has reconciled those who’d chosen enmity to redeem them and turn His enemies into His beloved friends.

And it COST Him to do that, because this is achieved it says here …

         •        B) By Christ’s life and death
It was 

i)               In His body

His physical life, lived as human flesh and blood, is crucial to His reconciling you to God.

We were, these verses are saying, all those things to do with being alienated from God.

All those things to do with being enemies of God in our thinking.

All those things to do with our evil behaviour.

Things that characterise human life in the body after Eden.

But He came and lived in a human body and beat the tendency that had been endemic in human nature to fall into those things.

We saw last time that it had become true of humanity, since the fall, that (as Genesis 6:5-6 puts it) “The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, 

and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was 

only evil 

all the time.

 6 The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, 

and his heart was deeply troubled.”

Now that’s the background and that is the tragic essential nature of the humanity that He came to.

But He came to it.

And He came to it with all its inclinations, not to show it up nor to rejoice in its failures and wreke judgement, but to redeem it.

In His BODY.

So as Hebrews 4 puts it:

“Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven,[f] Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess.15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. 16 Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

There is something essential both in the incarnation and in the sinlessness of the Saviour for our redemption and reconciliation.

The next time some prospect of some tasty sin starts playing around the edges of your mind, remember He is the one who was tried and tested in His human body just the way we are.

The next time some tasteless thing to say or think or do comes dancing around the edge your mental field of view … you just try heading that off in the mere human strength we have by nature and that He was at that point stuck with in His human body being tried and tested just as we are in our natural state and condition!

I say try it, because I’m not at all confident about how you will get on with it!

No mean challenge.

No easy situation.

But as Hebrews 4 is saying

“we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin

And that is crucial to His having a perfect record of human behaviour before God, so that His perfect record of righteousness frees Him from earning any penalty for sin of His own, thereby enabling Him to take up and carry mine, and creating the potential for His record of perfect human, embodied righteousness to be donated to me as He carries my sin on the Cross.

His human life in the body was CRUCIAL to reconciling sinners … that’s you and me when we’re honest and stop pretending … reconciling people like you and me to our Holy God.

ii)          By His death

And the way this was accomplished was particularly by the death part of His incarnate life.

Our immortality was born of His mortality, as it were, as when He died He paid the price of sin, that having been paid then reconciled those who simply turn and trust Him to the Living God.

By His death.

The wages of sin is death, as Romans 6:23 teaches and Genesis 2:17 ff. so clearly illustrates (‘the day you eat it you will surely die’).

But the Lord had no sin that could demand the penalty of death from Him.

He died for others … for His people as their sin was placed on His record (as it were) and killed Him.

He died for OTHERS, in the place of those who’d sinned and deserved it and couldn’t save themselves from sin’s penalty and STING.

“The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law” writes Paul to the Corinthians.

But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” 1 Corinthians 15:56-57

Sin and its penalty defeated, leading to victorious resurrection and life … the Law and its curse banished by His atoning death, the sting of death is drawn and then the whole job is vindicated by the empty tomb.

Reconciled to God in His body by His cross.

Why?

To what end?

More than you’d think …

2) To present you blameless to God, v. 22b

I want to be careful here because I can’t be sure where life has taken you before now.

But wouldn’t you agree with me, guilt and shame can be dreadful things?

And our culture doesn’t seem to be doing very well with handling them.

Your psychologist – if you can get one these days – will tell you that feeling guilty is a complex emotion that results in many other hard to manage feelings. 

They would say that people who feel guilty may experience anxiety, stress, sadness, feelings of worthlessness, low self-esteem, regret, loneliness, or ‘critical self-talk’ ... running yourself down to yourself all the time.

But secular ‘self help’ (which comes down to ‘help your SELF’) and secular mental health guru-ism (which comes down to pretending you ‘re fine when you’re not) seem at the popular level to be down to telling folks what they deep down know isn’t really true about them.

And the tendency is for those voices to shout louder and louder that you’re fine as you are, until the inner voice that knows you’re otherwise gets drowned out in the cacophony.

Well here’s another way, and it’s God’s way built on the very heart of Christ’s essential purpose in life and death:

Colossians 1:22 “he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation”

Free from accusation?

How much is THAT freedom worth to us?

Am I talking to YOU here, when I say that is something that would be really precious?

We’re going to get to that, but let’s look first at this  strange but familiar concept of presentation …

a.    Presentation

In terms of the Greek here the word is παρίστημι (paristēmi) 'to stand by' someone 

to place or be placed beside them, and then by extension to present by placing by or on the altar, to make an offering.

But the context here is pretty much Hebrew, Old Testament stuff where this idea of reconciliation with God comes about through a whole world of ways of ‘presenting’ offerings to God.

Now, of course, Old Testament offerings were one thing, pointing forward to the New Testament realities in Christ.

So how does the New Testament view new covenant offerings?

In New Testament terms, it is believers bought by the blood of Christ Who come to present the way they live their lives … on account of all we’ve gained through Christ’s life and death … to God, and the offering the lord Jesus presents to the Father is the people He has bought with his blood getting stuck in and doing that.

Making those personally costly choices.

Taking those difficult decisions.

Serving the Lord with gladness, because He is worthy.

And the following qualifying clause makes it plain this sacrifice and worship issue is the context we’re meant to allow to govern what we make of this language of ‘presentation’, because what is presented is specified as being ‘holy and ‘without blemish’.

Christ sacrificed Himself in His body of flesh on the Cross to present His reconciled people to God as His own act of worship within the Godhead that had planned this from eternity past as the way of salvation.

To present you and me, if we are his Gospel people, to be holy.

b.    Holy

This word often appears in contexts where Tabernacle or Temple worship is involved.

It is used to refer to the ‘holy place’ (Exodus 26:33 etc.), the ‘holy altar’ (as in Exodus 29:37) and ‘holy offerings’ (as in Leviticus 2:3).

It is often used, therefore, in a worship context where what has been made acceptable to God is concerned.

And that idea of holy is unpacked further with the following clause …

c.     Without blemish

Now here, it seems to me, is the key to the Old Testament sacrificial background.

This expression, even more clearly than the other language used here, evokes an Old Testament worship and sacrificial background.

The Old Testament sacrifices, it was specified, must be without defect (Exodus 29:1, Leviticus 1:3, Numbers 6:14, Ezekiel 43:22).

Now, Paul has told us that the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus was to be able to present believers as His offering to God and the record of holiness He has conferred on believers by the Cross makes believers acceptable as such a sacrifice.

These well-chosen words paint the underlying picture.

They are metaphors … painting the picture with words, describing unknown things by allusion to known things so that we can understand, in this case things we come to understand through the Old Testament sacrificial system.

So far so good.

But Paul now backs the lesson up using a word from a different world of ethics from another sphere of understanding.

It is the moral word that this all points to and describes now comes into the picture …

d.    Free from accusation

Blameless.

This word being used here now is a word used in moral discourse.

Paul uses the word, of course, both to describe the behaviour of believers in the present time (Titus 1:6-7) and of believers’ status before the Lord in the final judgement (1 Corinthians 1:8).

Blameless.

No more criticism coming against you that can hold water.

Those four last words there of course are completely essential: ‘that can hold water’!

In a world of lies that is always against us the followers of the Lord Jesus are always likely to get it in the neck!

But none of the Accuser of the Brethren’s darts can lodge in the armour that was purchased for us at the Cross.

Now when the accuser of the brethren comes to sit on your shoulder and whisper his Gospel denying accusations against you in your ear … you evict Him very smartly and redirect Him to the Cross.

Now when his human flunkies let you have both barrels in your face, you turn away and re-focus your eyes on the Cross of Calvary … and yes, you aim your prayers at Heaven’s throne for your critic’s salvation because we know that we were the same before we felt God’s mercy.

So tell me this: what sort of freedom and liberty does freedom from accusation bring into a life?

Well, for sure, it can be the best thing you’ll ever do for your mental health to say the VERY least of it!

And Paul KNOWS that the theme he’s on here is really crucial: look, there is something powerful and relentless about the waves of concepts Paul is dropping on the Colossians in this sentence: 

παραστῆσαι ὑμᾶς – to present you

ἁγίους καὶ - holy AND

ἀμώμους καὶ - blameless AND

ἀνεγκλήτους – irreproachable … but Paul hasn’t quite completed the impact  hammer blows with his words there at that point, because he is about to add that this presentation HOLY and BLAMELESS and IRREPROACHABLE is … 

κατενώπιον αὐτοῦ … before His FACE!

HIS face.

The commentaries get off on a long ramble here about which ‘Him’ in the Trinity is the owner of this face … but that pre-occupation with inter-Trinitarian relationships is a bit of a wander away from this context because none of them that I’ve looked at pick up on the idea here.

The idea here it seems to me is that it is before the face of the God that no man can see and live that the believer … by virtue of Christ’s life, death and resurrection reconciling them to the Holy One … is now PRESENTED!

This is HUGE!

How are we going to begin to grasp the enormity of what is going on here?

Let’s step back a little.

Some of us will be old enough to remember what a big deal it was when, one June morning in 2012, the Queen shook hands during a cultural event at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast with the former IRA commander Martin Mc. Guiness.

I want to suggest that you and I, in her position, might have found this very hard.

The IRA had, of course, waged a very nasty undercover war against British assets and interests in Northern Ireland since 1968, but as part of that they had killed a person close to her, even closer to her children, Lord Louis Mountbatten, holidaying on his boat in County Sligo in 1979.

I remember being shocked when Gerry Mc. Guinness was presented to the Queen and the historic hand shake took place, because I was well aware that in 1979 Jerry McGuinness had become the IRA chief of staff and that it was HE that had presided over incidents including the assassination of Lord Mountbatten in County Sligo, on the very same day as it happens that 18 British soldiers were also infamously killed at Warrenpoint in County Down.

Now, in spite of all of that, by 2007 Martin Mc. Guinness was to some pretty much reconciled to the UK state, and by then held the office of Northern-Irish deputy First Minister alongside Ian Paisley!

I’m trying to emphasise that it was a remarkable turnaround, and that remarkable turnaround is what led on to Mc. Guinness’s presentation to the Queen in 2012.

Moreover Martin Mc. Guinness, before his death in 2017, did go on the record to say that at that meeting they did apparently discuss the killing of the Queen’s  family member, Lord Mountbatten.

HOW could he possibly be allowed into her presence after the history of the battle to protect her from their murderous intentions and total enmity against her?

Because he had been reconciled to laying aside hostility in favour of the ballot box and brought the IRA he commanded along with him.

The hostility, the evil thinking, which had made the IRA and the British state enemies was done away with.

And apparently, according to Mc. Guinness (his word not mine) , the Queen was very gracious about Mountbatten.

It seems that forgiveness had broken out allowing reconciliation to take place.

How very costly this must have been … both had ‘flesh in the game’ … costly perhaps for both parties although my thoughts here are primarily of the Queen.

The thing is, it was no longer a time for accusation.

Reconciliation had broken out.

The enemy was being presented to and accepted by a once rejected and offended monarch and with reconciliation peace had broken out between them.

And it is something far greater than that which Paul describes for us in the situation here in Colossians 1.

Here the death of the incarnate Son of God is at stake, where lays down His life voluntarily to pay the price of the sin that arose from our thought-life, natural inclination-induced deep enmity against God.

Lays it down to reconcile us to the Holy One that we had deeply wronged and then …

And THEN some.

Then to make it possible for us to be presented to the King …

Holy, and

Blameless, and 

IRREPROACHABLE (this is far more)

BEFORE HIS HOLY FACE … His HOLY face, which no un-reconciled sinner can see and live.

And now I WANT this.

Now I know I NEED this.

So what’s the ‘catch’? 

3) The condition clause v. 23 

V. 23 “if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not
move 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.”
         •        A) Stay where you are
Continue where you are, says the Apostle.

The incarnate God has died and been raised again to life for you who believe, says Paul.

In fact He has done that to …
“present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation— 23 if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move 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.”

The implications for action then are obvious:

         •        B) Don’t move from where you are!
There is very little in this God-hostile world to encourage you to cling to Christ.

VERY little.

Let’s be realistic about the conditions in which we live to serve Christ … this is HOSTILE ground.

Take your stand, says the Apostle.

Waves of enemy … in thoughts and words and deeds … come flooding against your own defensive lines.

But their power is GONE because of what the Lord has done by His Cross and resurrection.

So don’t MOVE from where you are standing in your saving faith in Him.

Do not MOVE from there.
And one thing more.

Don’t be deceived over the truth about where you stand and, in fact, THAT you stand.

         •        C) Remember this is where you actually are!
“This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven’
You’ve got it.

You have RECEIVED it.

All you need has been done for you and put in your hand.

You are there!

You just need to stay there, is what Paul writes to these Colossian people who have turned to put their trust in the risen Saviour.

If you start to think you are in a mess, then you very soon will be!

The first place the enemy of souls attacked in the Garden of Eden was the way the humans thought about where they stood with God:

‘Did God really say?’

‘You will not surely die’

And with that the weed seed thought was well and truly planted.

AS we know to our cost, it wasn’t long before, that weed seed being nurtured, it put down root and delivered its own foul fruit and the rest is history … painful, awful, traumatic human history.

         •        Conclusion

I hope you’ll agree with me there are some really helpful, freeing and life-affirming truths to pick up from all of this.

But as we do pick these great truths up … can you see now that the Old Testament is not God’s last word, but the Old Testament IS what creates the framework of understanding that enables us to see what His last word on life and salvation IS all about?

And can you see the importance of a right understanding of the truth, a right view of reality, for not only a sound mental state … what our generation refers to as ‘my mental health’ … but also a comfortable, sin-washed, joyful, thankful and saved to the uttermost, going to Glory soul?

These few verses here in Colossians 1 are a classic illustration of those two things … the Old Testament matters but is not the last word, the fundamental truths of the faith are absolutely crucial for our joy and our comfort … and just as we need to stand in the faith we have received we need to stand in these two realities that we’ve had illustrated for us.