Application of the Foregoing to the Colossians. Of this reconciliation the Colossians too are beneficiaries. At one time estranged from God, their works had been evil and their spiritual attitude hostile; as things now are, Christ reconciled them, by a reconciliation wrought out in a body of flesh and blood and at the cost of death, with a view to their presentation before God flawless, blameless, holy. Everything depends, however, on their continuance in true Christian loyalty, like a building firmly based and stable; they must not be continually allowing themselves to be detached from the hope involved in the gospel as they heard it; it is the same gospel which is proclaimed in the presence of every creature under heaven, the same which is ministered by Paul himself.
Colossians 1:22. holy. unreproveable: cf. Ephesians 5:27; semi-technical language such as would be applied to an unblemished sacrificial victim (cf. Romans 1:21).