Greater Than Your Sin
"And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him,"
For three days we have looked up — at the glory, the reign, and the sustaining power of Christ. Today Paul turns the telescope around and points it at us, and he does not flinch: "you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds." That is God's honest diagnosis of every one of us apart from Him. Not distant acquaintances of God who drifted a little. Alienated. Hostile. Enemies.
And then comes one of the most beautiful words in the Bible: "he has now reconciled." The One who breathed the world into existence one day breathed His last on a Roman cross — so that people who were His enemies could be brought home as His children. The One who holds every molecule together let His own body be broken apart, to put us back together with God.
Why does this matter for you today? Because a lot of us secretly believe we have to clean ourselves up before we can come to God. We think the reconciliation is real for other people — the nicer ones, the ones with fewer regrets. But look at the order in Paul's sentence. He does not say God waited until you were holy and blameless and then reconciled you. He says God reconciled you *in order to* present you holy and blameless. The cleanup is the result, not the requirement. You come first — broken, empty-handed, honest.
