Colossians One: A Word on Reconciliation

So this is one of those chapters in Scripture that make me go “Oh man, that’s good. That’s good. That’s wait- what?? I don’t get that. Oh, that’s good…” I mean, in case I wasn’t coming through clearly enough, there is some good stuff in Colossians one, like the part where Paul tells the church in Colossae that Jesus  created everything “in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether  thrones or  dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created  through him and for him.”

Jesus owns it all by virtue of created it, and though we seperated ourselves from Him, Paul also tells us that the Cross reconciled us back to Him.

Now, your typical Universalist would latch onto verse twenty, where we see that Jesus went to the Cross to “reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven,  making peace  by the blood of his cross.” I mean, all means all, right? Eh, maybe not so much.

Look carefully at what Paul says next: “And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind,  doing evil deeds, 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, 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 creationunder heaven…”

I could spent hours and thousands of words diving into the implications of this passage, but I simply want to point out one thing: the reconciliation that occured on the Cross, this peace that is created between God and sinners is only true for you if you “continue in the faith.” Now this doesn’t mean that you can go from seperated from God, then reconciled to God by His Son on the Cross, then kinda drifting from the faith, and now all of a sudden you’re no longer reconciled. It doesn’t happen like that. Rather, the reality is that the evidece that you have been reconciled is that you will, for your entire life, continue in the faith in Christ that you once professed. This was why John said in 1 John 2:19 that those leaving the faith only do so to demonstrate that they were never saved in the first place.

Big picture is this: reconciliation only occured between God and all who trust Jesus as their Savior, having seen their own sinfulness and lostness before a holy and righteous Judge, and the evidence that this once occured is that it’s an on-going reality.

Does this describe you?