Colossians 1:22 Question

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“Yet now he has reconciled you to Himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before Him without a single fault.”

I am confused on the bolded section. Jesus Himself says only God is holy yet this passage seems to imply because of Jesus’ death, we are all holy, blameless, and have no faults. Sounds like we are perfect and sinless.

This is clearly not the case though so I am confused.
 
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When we read the story of Genesis 27, when Isaac is old and he wishes to bless his older son, the younger one Jacob, with help of his mother, fools Isaac into giving him the blessing.

This story tells us how God our Father, will ‘see’ us clothed with Christ, and give us the blessing. Of course God in not fooled! Christ has paid our ransom but he shows us how he will bless us through Christ, being clothed with the Lamb of God.
 
When we are baptized, we are holy, blameless and have no faults. The vast majority of us dirty up that state pretty quickly and must be forgiven of our venial sins and for the grave sins, go to Confession.

If we die in a state of Grace, we will again stand in the presence of God without sin or any attachment for sin (again, not a few of us will be cleansed of this attachment to sin in the purgatorial process).
 
Dolphin said:
“Yet now he has reconciled you to Himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before Him without a single fault .”
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That’s actually Col 1:22. But then read verse 23:
"…if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel."

The encouragement, the hyperbole, are always balanced out by an “if” in Scripture, containing warnings and admonitions, instruction, etc. We can achieve this degree of holiness which is God’s goal for us. In fact, we will achieve it since no sinners enter heaven as Scripture also teaches. He certainty didn’t create us to be sinners after all. But it all hinges on our remaining in Him and He in us:
"Apart from me you can do nothing" John 15:5

That relationship-or communion-is sort of the central mantra of the New Covenant, understood in Jeremiah’s New Covenant prophecy:
“I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
No longer will they teach their neighbor,
or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,
For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.” Jer 31:33-34

Consider these verses as well:
"To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life." Rom 2:7

"Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord." Heb 12:14

And while Baptism, as an act of faith, is said to cleanse and justify us completely, freely, and gratuitously, we’ll be judged on what we do from there, and how we continue to cooperate with God and His grace, or fail to. Believers are cautioned in the New Testament that it’s very possible for them to return to sin-and away from God. IOW, God’s not impressed by some imagined “pretend” righteousness, but only by the authentic righteousness that He can give us, and that we will then run with.
 
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Dolphin said:
“Yet now he has reconciled you to Himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before Him without a single fault.”

I am confused on the bolded section. Jesus Himself says only God is holy yet this passage seems to imply because of Jesus’ death, we are all holy, blameless, and have no faults. Sounds like we are perfect and sinless.

This is clearly not the case though so I am confused.
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When Jesus said only God is good it was to the rich young man that did not believe that Jesus was God, so then why should he say that Jesus was good?

Mark 10
17 And when he was gone forth into the way, a certain man, running up and kneeling before him, asked him: Good Master, what shall I do that I may receive life everlasting? 18 And Jesus said to him: Why callest thou me good? None is good but one, that is God.
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Dolphin said:
I am confused on the bolded section. Jesus Himself says only God is holy yet this passage seems to imply because of Jesus’ death, we are all holy, blameless, and have no faults. Sounds like we are perfect and sinless.

This is clearly not the case though so I am confused.
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This is the imputed righteousness that we obtain by faith. See 2 Corinthians 5:21
 
Is this “state of grace” achievable if you have zero sins or if you only have venial sins? Because saints were in “state of grace” but I presume they still had minor sins also. I’m not sure if that made any sense lol
 
fhansen said:
The encouragement, the hyperbole, are always balanced out by an “if” in Scripture, containing warnings and admonitions, instruction, etc.
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This is what I figured, it just read weird and sounded not like an if/then but more like an add on after the fact
 
So wouldn’t this apply that if only God is good (and thus Jesus) then we are only ‘good’ (in the full sense of the term) once we have entered heaven as purified beings?
 
When we die in friendship with God, it means we have asked forgiveness, taken our grave sins to Confession. Most of us will still retain some attachments to those sins, stains left by the sins, so at death we, like some of the saints, will get that final cleansing in purgatory.
 
Scripture tells us that it is possible to be perfect in this life, however, very few will achieve this perfection.
 
Firstly I use the NABRE translation, different from the thread, and I am not sure of the one used by the OP.

he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through his death, to present you holy, without blemish, and irreproachable before him, (NABRE, Col 1:22).

I see in the Ignatius Study Bible:

Col 1:22: holy and blameless: Once pagans and enemies of God, the baptized Colossians have been separated from sin and consecrated to the Lord. See note on Eph 1:4; (holy and blameless: The standard of spiritual perfection that God desires for his children (5:27; Col 1:22). Paul employs cultic terminology from the OT, where holy means “set apart” for the Lord and blameless means “unblemished” or “fit for sacrifice”.)

The simple explanation seems to be that with baptism the pagan Colossians have had their sins forgiven and are now holy and without blemish.

The three words used in the Greek may be translated as ‘holy’, ‘without blemish’ and ‘blameless’.
 
Dolphin said:
So wouldn’t this apply that if only God is good (and thus Jesus) then we are only ‘good’ (in the full sense of the term) once we have entered heaven as purified beings?
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Proper perfection (not absolute perfection) is our destiny achieved by free choice and preferential love.

Catechism of the Catholic Church
302 Creation has its own goodness and proper perfection, but it did not spring forth complete from the hands of the Creator. The universe was created “in a state of journeying” ( in statu viae ) toward an ultimate perfection yet to be attained, to which God has destined it. …

311 Angels and men, as intelligent and free creatures, have to journey toward their ultimate destinies by their free choice and preferential love. They can therefore go astray. Indeed, they have sinned. …
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Dolphin said:
So wouldn’t this apply that if only God is good (and thus Jesus) then we are only ‘good’ (in the full sense of the term) once we have entered heaven as purified beings?
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At the end of the day all of this has to do with the human will, being increasingly educated, informed, molded by grace into understanding and embracing the value of love, the “value” of God, so to speak, so that we’ll end up adoring and placing Him first above all else, above the other goods in this universe. Then things are in right order for man and he can achieve his purpose and the happiness he was created for. Until our hearts are pure we cannot even “see” God; we don’t even truly want to see Him, distracted as we are by other lesser, created things and our own agendas. But none of those things can satisfy man; only God can do so.

Purgatory has the merciful purpose of finally extricating the last vestiges of our fruitless distractions, so that no sin whatsoever comes between ourselves and God. Heaven is the capstone where this is all finally consummated, where the fulfillment of all possible human desire is met. God is heaven as Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI once put it. Our wills then are so captivated by the sheer ineffable Goodness that we behold that we couldn’t possible want for anything else.

But meanwhile God wants our involvement, our participation in choosing to align ourselves with true justice or righteousness, with love IOW. That’s our “job” here on earth with the help of grace as we continue to accept and cooperate with it. Adam only put us on the path, so to speak, and presumably and hopefully he and Eve have completed the course satisfactorily by now. 😃

1731 Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one’s own responsibility. By free will one shapes one’s own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.

1732 As long as freedom has not bound itself definitively to its ultimate good which is God, there is the possibility of choosing between good and evil , and thus of growing in perfection or of failing and sinning. This freedom characterizes properly human acts. It is the basis of praise or blame, merit or reproach.
 
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Fyi, I checked this verse with the bible commentaries I have:

A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture (Bernard Orchard):

Verse 22a. For his sacrifice of reconciliation Christ, the Mediator, chose a body that could feel the sting of pain and death.

Verse 22b. What is the effect for the Colossians? From being sinful they have become ‘holy, unspotted, blameless’, a three-fold description of the state of Grace based on a metaphor drawn from the qualities required for an OT sacrificial victim (cf. Eph 1:21; 1 Thess 2:10).

The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible New Testament (Scott Hahn):

1:22. holy and blameless: Once pagans and enemies of God, the baptized Colossians have been separated from sin and consecrated to the Lord. See note on Eph 1:4.

Sacra Pagina:

God is the protector of the community and guarantees its honor (it is blameless and irreproachable), but the community must guard its reputation carefully, remaining ever steadfast—a solid house of faith.

Navarre Bible Commentary:

1.22. “In his body of flesh”: the physical body of Christ, through which he offered himself to the Father on the cross and brought about the reconciliation of men with God and with each other. Christ’s sacred humanity is, therefore, an instrument of salvation: through his passion and death our Lord conquered sin and obtained the graces we need to be cleansed of our faults and to be presented “holy and blameless and irreproachable before him.”

Fr William Most commentary on Colossians:

When they were pagans, the Colossians were not part of Christ, were enemies in that they sinned. But Christ has brought about reconciliation to the Father by His death, so He wills to present them as holy ones, blameless, and without reproach before Him. But then Paul adds a qualification "if indeed’’ they remain with the faith, and do not go into the errors of the opponents.

The Haycock Bible commentary had no commentary on this verse.
 
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“None is good but God alone.”

We are good (and holy) by participation. God alone is Good essentially. So, by participating in Christ, we participate in His goodness and holiness.
 
From a Protestant perspective: This is (one) of the pieces of scripture that we would say supports the idea of imputed righteousness (vs. imparted). When we believe - or as scripture says - “as a result” of Christ’s death and our belief - righteousness is imputed to us on His behalf IN SPITE OF our sinfulness. The classic illustration is of a judge declaring a criminal innocent in spite of his confession of guilt.

As a result of our belief (thanks to God) and the Holy Spirit now active in our lives, we should see results, i.e. we should see our lives being continually (and very gradually in my case) sanctified. If we don’t see results (fruit), then we question whether or not we actually believe (and thus whether or not the judge has actually declared us not guilty). This is how we harmonize what we see in our lives and what we know to be true as set forth in scripture.

I believe that Catholic theology supports the idea of IMPARTED righteousness. We actually become holy when we participate in the sacraments for example. (I realize this is over simplified and perhaps incorrect, so my apologies in advance if this is the case - please correct my errors here friends (@fhansen)).
 
Yes, this is one distinction between Protestant theology, speaking generally, and Catholic theology on justification. In Catholicism God intends to make us truly new creations. The “righteousness of God” that Jesus possessed is also the righteousness that man is intended to have, and would have naturally as a result of the union with God that Jesus possessed and that constitutes the right or just order of things for man as well. Faith is the doorway to this righteousness because faith is the doorway to intimate relationship with God. At its core Adam’s disobedience was essentially an act of unbelief:
"…not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith." Phil 3

From the New Covenant prophecy of Jer 31:
"I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people."

Man was not intended to be a sinner or remain one with the new birth (and this makes sense out of a lot of biblical passages). So while forgiveness of unrighteousness is accomplished by Jesus, true righteousness is then also imparted or infused, not merely imputed. In Protestantism we become sort of “snow-covered dung-heaps”, but this then causes some confusion among Protestant theologians as to what happens from there, whether we can remain sinners and still be saved, or to what degree we can sin, whether or not one can forfeit and lose their justified state and therefore their salvation IOW. (And how is this concept different, really, from the state of the Pharisees who Jesus condemned for being “white-washed tombs”, clean on the outside while filthy on the inside?) Christianity is not an excuse to remain as we already are. 😃 God doesn’t condone human sin.

So God didn’t create us to be unrighteous, and to then continuously congratulate ourselves for admitting to staying that way. He wants more from-and for-us than that. Man was and will always be obligated to righteousness and obedience. The New Covenant, when the time was ripe for it, finally provides the authentic means. The righteousness that only God can work in us is called love, epitomized by the Greatest Commandments and this is why the Church can teach, regarding our “particular judgement”,
"At the evening of life we shall be judged on our love."

Faith is intended to lead to that-but faith is not the equivalent of that righteousness or the full description or definition of it-and faith can be rejected at any point along the way. We must remain in Him and He in us (John 15).

Anyway this distinction is very important-and highlights an error in Protestant theology that has spread much confusion as I’ve experienced it.
 
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fhansen said:
In Protestantism we become sort of “snow-covered dung-heaps”, but this then causes some confusion among Protestant theologians as to what happens from there, whether we can remain sinners and still be saved, or to what degree we can sin, whether or not one can forfeit and lose their justified state and therefore their salvation IOW.
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Perhaps, but all Protestant theologians agree (at least all that I know of - especially Reformed) that we’re not to stay as snow covered manure piles. To keep with your analogy - we should see the manure slowly changed to snow via the workings of the Holy Spirit in our lives. And - even as the manure changes - we become more and more aware of just how much of a shoveling job the Holy Spirit has.

I think the theology behind imputed righteousness tries to make sense of what we actually see empirically in our lives as Christians. To whit - the more we follow Christ, the more aware of our sin we become. I think this is true of every true Christian I’ve ever met - Catholic or Protestant.

In any case - whether imputed or imparted - we agree that without Christ, we are doomed. Thanks be to God for his great mercy and love of which we both Catholic and Protestant - are beneficiaries.
 
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