“This includes you who were once far away from God. You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. 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. But you must continue to believe this truth and stand firmly in it. Don’t drift away from the assurance you received when you heard the Good News. The Good News has been preached all over the world, and I, Paul, have been appointed as God’s servant to proclaim it.”
Colossians 1:21-23 NLT
The Gnostics believed that our thoughts were innately good and that our separation from the Source of all things was a power move, perpetrated against us by the lesser god of creation. They believed that the concept of sin was and matter itself, were used to trick men into staying docile so that the creator god could have authority over something. As such, the people in Collossae didn’t understand biblical salvation. They understood personal enlightenment rather than atonement. This seems freeing, but actually removed any possibility for true enlightenment. In truth, men begin so far away from God, morally, that they cannot ever return to him on their own. Any effort to find enlightenment without him being ends in deep depression as the chasm between us and him is realized. When you try to shed the physical aspect from the distance. It gives men no room to be creaturely at all. Praise God for Jesus, who in flesh, reconciled our carnal nature to God’s moral nature and brings true gnosis to any willing to accept his free gift. Only in him can their be a safe space for our flesh and our spirits.
JOSH McGARY. COM 