"Roses are reddish,

Violets are bluish,

If it weren't for Christmas

We'd all be Jewish"

That's a cute little poem. However, unless you happen to be a Jewish Christian, it's not especially accurate. A more appropriate poem for many of us would be one of my own manufacture:

"Roses are solid

Water is fluid

If it weren't for Easter

We'd all be druid."

You see, Christianity did not come to most of our ancestors in the midst of the practice of high, ethical monotheism like Judaism. It found them instead sunk in superstition and idol worship. Coming from Viking/English/British stock, I know that my own forebears worshiped mistletoe, oak trees and practiced human sacrifice.

In Colossians 1:15-20, Paul has answered the question, "who is Jesus, really?" We looked at those five crucial verses over a number of Sundays. They are posted on our web site.

Now in Colossians 1:21, Paul brings what God has done in Jesus home to where the Colossians and we live. Today we look at the follow﷓up question to, "who is Jesus, really?" The follow﷓up is "who are we really ﷓﷓ if we are apart from Jesus?"

This is the question Paul answers in Colossians 1:21. He tells us that we were "alienated from God, hostile in mind toward God and engaged in evil deeds."

That's where we start. We need to know this. If you were one of those who sorta coughed when we sang the first stanza of "Amazing Grace" ﷓﷓﷓ if you sang "amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a (cough) like me" because you don’t like the word wretch -- then you need to hear what God says to you today. You need to get real about yourself so you can be real with the God who loves you.

In the words of philosopher/mathematician Blaise Pascal, "God is none other than the Savior of our wretchedness. So we can only know God well by knowing our iniquities. Those who have known God without knowing their wretchedness have not glorified Him but have glorified themselves."

Why was the cross necessary? Paul answers by using his first Colossian readers as exhibit A of human need. He points them to their own history ﷓﷓ their own story. But what he says isn't just for the Colossians. What is true about the Colossians is also true about us.

Before we were reconciled to God through the blood of the cross we were, first of all, aliens. The word Paul uses, Apallotriomenous literally means "transferred to another owner." We were created by God but controlled by another. The perfect tense Paul uses says that this alienation was not temporary state. It was our whole life.

We were alienated from God whether or not we felt the alienation. Our alienation was an objective fact. We were lost in a foreign country without wallet or passport. And, as Paul writes in Ephesians 2:11﷓12, the consequence of separation is that we "were excluded from the commonwealth of Israel."

Now the nations of the world in Paul's time could hardly be expected to be upset that they were not a part of the nation of Israel. The nation had been a shambles for years ﷓ going from foreign master to foreign master with only brief, strife﷓ridden interludes of independence. To most first﷓century Gentiles, what Paul writes in Ephesians would be the same as telling a resident of Beverly Hills, "You know, you'll never get a chance to live in a trailer in Arkansas." That “loss” could be absorbed and the pain dealt with by another trip down Rodeo Drive.

But Paul is not writing in Ephesians 2 about political citizenship but spiritual citizenship. This is brought out by his declaration in Ephesians 2:12 that we Gentiles were "strangers to the covenants of promise." Even though we Gentiles had been included in the promises God made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, we were not aware of our inclusion. This left us, Paul writes in Ephesians, "without hope." We were like the dead atheist at his own funeral described by one mourner as being" all dressed up with no place to go."

The final phrase in Paul's analysis of our alienation in Ephesians is that we were "without God in the world." Now the Ephesians and Colossians had gods. They had endless gods, a pantheon of gods. The Greeks had their list of gods, the Romans had theirs, the Persians had another and the barbarians to the north, Norsemen and others, had yet another list. But all of these Gods of all of these cultures were as irritable and undependable as people. They had gods by the basketful, but they did not have God ﷓ the god they could not define as they chose but the God who defined Himself once and for all in Jesus Christ.

Colossians 1:21 says that the result of our alienation is that we became hostile in mind. Rather than coming to God as God and accepting His gracious Lordship, we attempted to enthrone ourselves.

Or, to put it another way, rather than being like dogs, we acted like cats. If a person pets a dog, the dog thinks: AHe must be God.@ If a person pets a cat, the cat thinks: AI must be God.@ That’s the cat attitude and sometimes we share it.

The unrenewed, self-enthroned, cat mind hates God's claims. It is hostile to God because God is a threat.

In the words of R.C. Sproul: "It is not enough to say that natural man views God as an enemy. We must be more precise. God is our mortal enemy. He represents the highest possible threat to our sinful desires. His repugnance to us is absolute, knowing no lesser degrees."

Paul then reminds the Colossians and us that these distorted intellectual capacities showed up in our actions. Our broken relationship with God resulted in belligerent emotions. Evil emotions are self﷓centered, destructive feelings expressed in anger, hatred, jealousy, and hostility.

The result of those kinds of emotions, Paul concludes in verse 21, is "evil deeds." The emotion is felt and the deed is performed. This does not mean that we were ever as bad as we could be. We tend to practice depravity management in order to function in society. But the tendency is for negative behavior -- especially if the heat is on.

Charles Colson, you may remember, went to prison for his role in the Watergate Scandal. Colson was once known as ANixon=s Hatchet Man.@ He once declared his willingness to walk over his own grandmother to get Richard Nixon re-elected.

Later, as Colson faced the bar of justice, he met Jesus Christ and was transformed. This enabled him to look honestly at his own alienation, hostility of mind and evil deeds -- and how well he had been able to mask that reality even from himself.

In 1991, Colson gave an address on ethics to the Harvard Business School. He spoke of having had two problems ﷓ knowing what is right and doing it. Here is part of his testimony. It=s a little long but well worth hearing.

"I grew up in America during the great Depression and thought that the great goal of life was success, material gain, power and influence. That=s why I went into politics. I believed I could gain power and influence how people lived.

"When I went to the White House, I gave up a law practice that was making almost $200,000 a year (and that was back in 1969, which wasn't bad in those days). It s kind of ordinary now for graduates of Harvard Business School, but then it was a lot of money. . . . I took a job in the White House at $40,000 a year...

"There was one thing about which I was absolutely certain that no one could corrupt me. Positive! And if anybody ever gave me a present at Christmas time, it went right to the driver of my limousine. They used to send in bottles of whiskey, boxes of candy, and all sorts of things. Right to the driver of my automobile. I wouldn't accept a thing.

Patty and I were taken out on someone=s boat one day. I discovered it was a chartered boat, and ended up paying for half of it because I didn't want to give the appearance of impropriety. Imagine me worried about things like that.

I ended up going to prison....

I never once in my life thought I was breaking the law. I would have been terrified to do it because I would jeopardize the law degree I had worked four years at night to earn. I had worked my way onto the Law Review, Moot Court all the things that lawyers do and I graduated in the top of my class. I wouldn't put that in jeopardy for anything in the world!

Colson says: AI was so sure. But, you see, there are two problems. Every human being has an infinite capacity for self-rationalization and self-delusion. You get caught up in a situation where you are absolutely convinced that the fate of the Republic rests on the reelection of, in my case, Richard Nixon. There's an enormous amount of peer pressure, and you don't take time to stop and think, Wait a minute. Is this right by some absolute standard or does this seem right in the circumstances? Is it okay?

Second, Colson writes, Aand even more important and this goes to the heart of the ethical dilemma in America today -- even if I had known I was doing wrong, would I have had the will to do what is right? It isn't hindsight. I have to tell you the answer is no.

I discovered that there was no restraint on the evil in me. In my self-righteousness I was never more dangerous.

The Bible is very realistic about the human condition. Evil is not an illusion. It can and does rear its head in each of us.

This means that we should not trust humanity unleashed. Given half a chance, people will pervert anything. This should not surprise us. It is only an echo of a root sickness in us. It is not simply that fundamentally nice people occasionally lapse in their judgment. The Bible goes so far as to say we are absolutely incapable of good apart from the mercy of God. The only reason that the world now has any sanity to it at all is that God doesn't let it spin totally out of control.

There is a Peanuts cartoon where Lucy is reading: "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again." Concludes Lucy, "That's the way it goes."

But Paul, after his analysis of us Gentiles in Colossians 1:21 does not conclude, "That's the way it goes." He concludes instead, "But now in Christ Jesus, you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ."

Paul expands on this great truth over in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10. There he draws the same wonderful contrast between what we were and what we are in Christ. He writes: "Do you not know that know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the Kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators (those who engage in premarital sex) nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor various kinds of homosexuals, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God."

So what if you're on Paul's list? What's the good news?

The good news is that you can be forgiven for your past. In fact, you can be set free.

In 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 10 Paul lists all sorts of people who will not inherit the Kingdom of God. But then Paul writes in the very next verse (verse eleven) "and such were some of you." In other words, "some of the Corinthians believers were fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, homosexuals and all the rest."

"That's who you were." Paul says. "But that is not who you are." For, Paul says, "you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God."

In the same way, Once you were that, Paul writes in Colossians 1:21-22. ANow (by the grace of God) you are this."

Those who accept the love of the cross are given a new status. Paul had used three words in Colossians to describe all people=s condition prior to the cross: We are alienated, enemies in mind, and doing evil deeds. Now he uses three words to express our condition after accepting the cross. Because of the cross we are now holy, without blemish, and free from accusation. All the blame for our sins has been taken by Christ and suffered for by Him on the cross.

Because of the cross, God accepts us as cleansed, forgiven, and completely reconciled. Whenever we stand before Him in confession, He responds with Calvary's love. He deals with us as if the sin had not been committed. We are "unaccusable" in His sight. We are not only cleansed, but exonerated of any charge.

The words "in his sight" in Colossians 1:22 are loaded with power. They are a translation of katenopion (kata "down"; en "in"; op "to look". Paul says that the Lord looks down into our inner souls. And when he does this through Christ, He sees us as liberated, forgiven people. This knowledge also gives us the gift of a new picture of ourselves. Then we can look down into our own inner being and see what we can become as completely released people.

What is the impact of what Paul is writing for us here today? Paul tells us the impact in the expanded treatment of this theme over in Ephesians 2.

First, we are no longer strangers. That's Ephesians 2:19.

Rogers and Hammerstein in "South Pacific" wrote of some enchanted evening seeing a stranger across a crowded room and experiencing a sudden bond which causes you to know that you and that stranger have a great future together. Well that is our romance, our musicals. But it is God's fact. We are no longer strangers to each other or to believers anywhere in the world. We are, instead, brothers and sisters in the same family. There are members of the family we haven t met yet but there are no strangers in the church. Here is a place for you to be.

Second, Ephesians 2;19 tells us that we are fellow citizens with the saints. There was a story in Readers Digest about a woman who had a phone number similar to St. Elizabeth's Hospital. She got a call one day. The caller asked, "Is this St Elizabeth's?" The woman paused and said, "Well, yes, but most of my friends call me Betty." Actually, if she was a Christian she was rightfully St. Elizabeth. The saints are those who know Christ.

Third, we are not disconnected but rooted. As Paul declares in Ephesians 2:20, we are now, "built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone. We are built upon the ministry of all of those whom God has commissioned to teach on His behalf. That is why scripture is so important to us. It is the foundation laid by the apostles and the prophets which we can build our lives upon.

Fourth , we are not purposeless but purposeful. We are actually being made a part of God 's temple the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. As Peter phrases it in his first letter, "we are living stones being built into a spiritual house."

How do you feel right now? Up, down, joyous, sad, angry, cold, warm, hostile, or peaceful? However you feel, own up to the feeling. Then refocus on the cross. Into the depths of your emotions will flow the healing love, forgiveness, security and hope that will transform how you feel about yourself, your past, life, others and your responsibilities.

Don't forget the cross!