“You, being in past times alienated and enemies in your mind in your evil works,”

We have great need of this reconciliation with God, because of our moral and spiritual state before Him. We are His enemies and alienated from Him because of the state of our mind and the evil works that come from that state. We are the enemies of God because our minds are not conformed to His ways of thinking and we have a warped and faulty mindset that leads us and keeps us away for knowing God and walking with Him.

Paul is reminding the believers in Colosse of the dire state of their previous life without the Lord and the evil mindset that they once had. This has all been changed now because of Christ and what He has done for them. They are reconciled now through the shed blood of Christ and He alone is able to rescue them from sin and keep them in right fellowship with the Father.

The mindset is changed when we come to God. We take on the humble state of being contrite before the Lord and are changed by God and brought to repentance and faith because of Him. We are no longer puffed up in the pride of our own thinking, but take on ourselves the mind of Christ, who has shown us the way to God. We see His mind, His words and deeds as He lived here on earth and we read the record of them in the New Testament. We understand how we must relate to God and we walk in obedience to that way.

The redeemed person is no longer an enemy of God, but a dearly beloved daughter or son and brought into a right relationship with the Father and in the family of God. The evil works have now gone and we are walking in fellowship with the one who made us and loves us with unending love.

It is good, at times, to remember who we once were and what we have now been given in Christ. He has rescued us from the empty way of life we once had and given us dignity and purpose in His dearly beloved Son, so that now we also are dearly beloved children and saints of God. What a salvation we possess and what a Saviour that He should include us in His kingdom!

We now have renewed minds and our speaking and deeds are free to be conformed to His image and we are able to please him because of our faith in Him.