DON'T LET SIN ALIENATE YOU FROM GOD!!

COLOSSIANS 1:21-23

21Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.

22But 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 23if 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.

1: 21-22   No one can be good enough to save himself or herself. If we want to live eternally with Christ, we must depend totally on God’s grace. We all must come to him, whether we have been murderers or honest and hardworking citizens. We have all sinned repeatedly, and any sin is enough to require us to come to Jesus Christ for salvation and eternal life. Apart from Christ, we have no way for our sin to be forgiven and removed.

1: 21   Before we believed, we were alienated from God, strangers to his way of thinking and “enemies in [our] minds.” Sin twisted our way of thinking about God. Sinful thinking leads to alienation from God, which further darkens and destroys our thoughts about him. When we were out of harmony with God, our natural condition was to be hostile to his standards. (For more on how unbelievers have perverted the truth about God, see Romans 1: 21-32.)

1: 22-23   The way to be free from sin is to trust Jesus Christ to take it away. We must remain “established and firm” in the truth of the gospel and never let go of our confidence in Jesus to forgive our sins, to make us right with God, and to empower us to live the way he desires. When a judge in a court of law declares a defendant not guilty, that person is acquitted of all the charges and accusations. The law treats the person as though he or she was never accused. When God forgives your sins, he wipes your record clean. He looks at you as though you have never sinned. No matter what you have done or what you have been like, God offers forgiveness to you.

1: 22   In order to answer the accusation that Jesus was only a spirit and not a true human being, Paul explains that Jesus’ physical body actually died. Jesus suffered death fully as a human, so we can be assured that he died in our place. Jesus faced death as God, so we can have complete confidence that his sacrifice was complete and that he truly removed our sin.Tyndale. NIV Life Application Study Bible.

ON THE WAY HOME WALK WITH JESUS and know that only with JESUS CHRIST do we have a way to be forgiven and have a life in HEAVEN with JESUS CHRIST!!

onthewayhomeministries.org by RICHARD DEAN BROOKS