Once you were alienated from God and were hostile in your minds, engaging in evil deeds.
Parallel translations
- WEB You, being in past times alienated and enemies in your mind in your evil deeds,
- KJV And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled
- NKJV And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled
- NASB And although you were previously alienated and hostile in attitude, engaged in evil deeds,
- NLT This includes you who were once far away from God. You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
The Colossians were once alienated from God and hostile in mind because of their evil deeds. This describes everyone's natural condition apart from Christ.
Overview
Paul reminds them of their former state: 'alienated and enemies in your mind' shown 'in your evil deeds.' Sin is not only outward acts but inward hostility toward God. Remembering this past makes the reconciliation of the next verse all the more astonishing.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 11
- Eph 2:12remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.
- Eph 2:1–3And you were dead in your trespasses and sins,
- Titus 3:3–7For at one time we too were foolish, disobedient, misled, and enslaved to all sorts of desires and pleasures—living in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another.
- Rom 5:9–10Therefore, since we have now been justified by His blood, how much more shall we be saved from wrath through Him!
- Eph 4:18They are darkened in their understanding and alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardness of their hearts.
- Eph 2:19Therefore you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of God’s household,
- Rom 8:7–8because the mind of the flesh is hostile to God: It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.
- 1 Cor 6:9–11Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who submit to or perform homosexual acts,
- Titus 1:15–16To the pure, all things are pure; but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure. Indeed, both their minds and their consciences are defiled.
- Rom 1:30slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant, and boastful. They invent new forms of evil; they disobey their parents.
- Jas 4:4You adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever chooses to be a friend of the world renders himself an enemy of God.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Christ at the center
The image of the invisible God, firstborn over creation, in whom all things hold together and all the fullness of God dwells bodily — supreme over every power.
How Colossians 1:21 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Greek word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.