Colossians 1:21-23: If Thinking Leads to Doing, Where Are We Headed?

As we continue our study of Paul’s letter to the Colossians, we are struck with the contrasts he so vividly paints. In today’s passage, Paul connects the dots between the glorious accomplishments of the Lord Jesus Christ and us (all) who were alienated and hostile to God’s intents and purposes.

²¹And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind,
doing evil deeds, ²²he has now reconciled in his fleshly body
through death, so as to present you holy and blameless
and irreproachable before him—
²³provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith,
without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard,
which has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven.
I, Paul, became a servant of this gospel.

Wrong thinking leads to wrong doing, and if one’s life is to be transformed, the process begins with a new way of thinking. (Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart, and N.T. Wright agree on this.) If our thinking is hostile toward God, our actions will not be friendly toward him either.

This is why debating ideas is an important sharpening exercise for believers. We may be tired of “church arguments,” but the fact is evident that spiritually corrupt ideas have crept into the church and changed actions. Undisciplined, unbiblical thinking creates a new thing— not God’s new thing of Revelation 21:5, but a human thing (that really isn’t new at all)—that brings round old sins into a 21st century context. This is what has happened in my tribe, the PC(USA) and perhaps in yours, too. Paul cares about where our thinking leads us, and we would do well to acknowledge the link between the mind and the hands.

Speaking as a fellow sojourner, what is hard to swallow is being surrounded by bad, unorthodox thinking, and having no real place to go. Staying in the midst of teaching that is contrary to Scripture is strongly discouraged by the Psalmist:

¹              Happy are those
                        who do not follow the advice of the wicked,
            or take the path that sinners tread,
                        or sit in the seat of scoffers;
²           but their delight is in the law of the LORD,
                        and on his law they meditate day and night.

And yet, one can stay in the fray and debate at every turn if one’s faith is strong and one senses a call to the prophetic ministry within his or her church family. Those prophets are more often being dismissed, one way or another, in today’s church. The accusation (or quietly whispered indictment) is of failure to promote the peace and unity (forget the purity) of the church. Our current situation makes it easier to picture “the voice of one crying in the wilderness” and the strange antics Jeremiah, for instance, employed to get an urgent message across.

All people at one time or another were once alienated from God, but God took the initiative to reestablish a relationship with us. Again, Paul’s theme of Christ’s work on the Cross is reprised, the notion that our lives are hidden in Christ’s so that we can approach the Father “holy and blameless.” It is important to note here that it was in Jesus’ body and by means of his physical death that we were rescued and brought back into fellowship. It is in Jesus’ body that human frailty and divine mercy meet.

Verse 23 introduces an interesting caution to the mix: “provided that you continue . . . steadfast . . .” This faithfulness to God is contrasted with shifting away from the gospel’s hope. We cannot help but think that the Colossians themselves were observed drifting away from the message of the gospel that Paul (and his protégé Epaphras) preached and taught. The caution to continue steadfastly again links behavior with the mind’s thinking. If indeed the Colossians’ ideas about the gospel are changing, it is going to show up in how they act. If their acts are contrary to the gospel of hope, then Paul hints that they jeopardize their holiness. We will hear more about this is the passages to come. For now, as Paul concludes the introductory section of the letter, he drops a hint as to his main concern and the occasion of his writing.

It is very important for believers who have become disenchanted with the church, alienated from fellowship, to not go off and do their own thing out of fellowship. Loss of accountability puts one in a perilous position spiritually. I hear your protests that the church you once knew no longer disciplines sinners toward repentance and transformation. I agree that many of our mainline denominations are enforcing a politically correct party line on the new unholy trinity of tolerance, relativism, and self-actualization. The culturally assimilated now holding power in our churches will “hold us accountable” all right, to their way of thinking, as evidenced two weeks ago in the defrocking of a good friend, the Rev. Joe Rightmyer in Dallas.

But if we are not to become dismissed prophets wandering alone in the wilderness, how are we to find and participate in the Body of Christ? Who will hold us accountable to God’s way of thinking, as God has revealed it in his Word? It is a troubling question for Presbyterians, with whom I am most familiar; but anybody who has participated in the church over a period of time in any tribe is bound to feel the same sort of angst about being on their own. As we continue in our study, let us look for those pointers toward a solution to our dilemma.