Our holiness is in Christ alone…
Paul goes further with his explanation of how God has reconciled sinners to Himself – “And although you were formerly alienated and enemies in mind and evil deeds, but now He reconciled you in the body of His flesh through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach…” (Colossians 1: 21-22)
We all were separated, estranged, and cut off from God before Jesus came and died for us. Paul teaches in Ephesians – “remember that you were at that time without Christ, alienated from the citizenship of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” (Ephesians 2: 12-13)
Regarding our being enemies in mind and evil deeds, the apostle John wrote – “And this is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light lest his evil deeds be exposed.” (John 3: 19-20)
How does God feel toward those who ‘work iniquity’? It tells us in Psalm 5: 4-6 – “For You are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil does not sojourn with You. The boastful shall not stand before Your eyes; You hate all workers of iniquity. You destroy those who speak falsehood; Yahweh abhors the man of bloodshed and deceit”
However, Jesus’ substitutionary death on the cross has paid for the entire penalty of sin for all who believe in Him. We are reminded of this in Romans – “Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.” (Romans 5: 9-10)
Being presented before God as holy means that from our new positional relationship with God, we are separated from sin and set apart to God by a righteousness that is imputed to us, which is defined as ‘justification.’ We learn from what Paul wrote to the believers in Philippi – “But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I might gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own which is from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God upon faith.” (Philippians 3: 7-9)
If you are in any religion that teaches that you need to merit your own righteousness in order to please God, including Mormonism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Adventist, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Judaism, Catholicism, etc., please consider what Jesus has done for you. He has paid for your sins in full. Jesus is God who came in flesh in order to give His life for us and pay for our sins. We learn from 2 Corinthians – “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” (2 Corinthians 5: 21)
As a believer in Jesus Christ consider the following riches we have in Him – “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him in love, by predestining us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He graciously bestowed on us in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our transgressions, according to the riches of His grace which He caused to abound in us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Him for an administration of the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth in Him.” (Ephesians 1: 3-10)
