“And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, 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 1:21-22
Do you remember what your life was like before you were saved?
Some of us may have a dramatic story of God saving us, while others may have a more mundane story.
Whatever the specifics look like, Paul tells us here that it was due to us being “alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds.” Whether we were saved at a young age or after many years of heinous sin, we were all in the same spiritual state before Christ—we were far from God, hated him and others, and everything we did was entirely self-serving.
But now we have been made right with God! Where before we were apart from God, now we are holy, or set apart for him. Before, we deserved eternal punishment for every one of our thoughts and actions, but now in Christ we receive no condemnation for any of them.
If asked how this came about, most people would say it was through Christ’s death on the cross—and that’s true! Christ’s death in our place pays the penalty for sin that we deserved, and his perfect life earned him a righteousness that he then freely gave us.
But if we go straight to the cross, we skip over a necessary and miraculous prerequisite.
Paul only gives this a brief four words, “in His fleshly body”, so I can’t blame anyone for jumping right over it, but let’s think about what these four words mean for a second.
For Christ to have a fleshly body means that the eternal Son of God entered time and space. The one by whom all things were created, took on the nature of his creation. He willingly set aside the glory he deserved in order to be born as a baby in a manger, not a prince in a palace, and without any fanfare.
And he did that for us—sinners who deserved nothing but condemnation—so that we might receive mercy.
So as we think back on what we once deserved for our sin and what we now have in Christ, let’s remember and celebrate all that was required of him in accomplishing our redemption.
