‘And you, being in time past alienated, and enemies in your mind in your evil works, yet now has He reconciled, in the body of his flesh through death to present you holy and without blemish and unreproveable before him.'
The Colossians, like all men, had been alienated from God, estranged from Him, at enmity with Him. They had not known Him. And this enmity, which was in their minds, controlling their whole being, had been revealed by their evil behaviour. Constant evil behaviour reveals the set of mind. The fleshly mind is enmity against God because it is not subject to the Law of God, and indeed, by its very nature, cannot be so subject (Romans 8:7). And its result is death (Romans 8:6).
And what is meant by evil behaviour is constantly outlined (see Galatians 5:19-21; Romans 1:29-31; Romans 3:10-18; 1 Corinthians 6:9-10; 2 Corinthians 12:20). Those who behave in this way, in one aspect or another, both by sins of the mind or by sins of the flesh, reveal their enmity against God.
But for those who have responded to Christ all this has been done away. Through His death the enmity is removed, their evil mind is dealt with by the entrance of the Spirit of God (Romans 8:1-11), and because Jesus Christ is a propitiation by His blood through faith (Romans 3:25) they are reconciled to God. God makes peace with them and they find peace with God.
Through the immediate application by Jesus Christ of what He has done for them, they can already at this present time be presented before Him, judicially without stain, holy, unblemished and unreproveable, because they are reckoned as righteous in Christ, enabling the reconciliation. And, through the continuing working of His power, they also have the certain hope that they will also be presented before Him in actual reality without stain, holy, without fault or blemish and unreproveable in the final day. Their acceptance is in the first place totally because of what Christ has done for them, but this will then be effective in the continual transformation of their lives, resulting in the final perfect transformation.
‘In the body of His flesh through death.' The words are deliberately intended to convey the fact that this has only been achieved by the literal sacrifice of the human body of Jesus Christ given in death. This was the crucial, unavoidable factor in the act of reconciliation. The Messiah had to die as the Messiah. ‘The body of His flesh' is a Hebraism for ‘His fleshly human body'.