And you, that were once alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now has he reconciled
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Ambrosiaster
AD 400
As he recalls God’s gift to the Gentiles, Paul shows by how much more they are debtors with respect to God’s grace. For they were enemies of his counsel, by which he had decided to visit the human race through his servant Moses. They did not receive his teaching and power but worshiped their own idols, even the evil works. They adored the works which they themselves had fabricated. .
What means this fierceness, to repeat what has been said more than once; what a passion, so murderous? to declare implacable hostility towards one who has done nothing to deserve it at your hands; to wish, if it were allowed you, to tear Him limb from limb, who not only did no man any harm, but with uniform kindness
And for this cause the apostle, in the Epistle to the Colossians, says, "And though ye were formerly alienated, and enemies to His knowledge by evil works, yet now ye have been reconciled in the body of His flesh, through His death, to present yourselves holy and chaste, and without fault in His sight."
Again he lays down also the manner of the reconciliation, that it was in the Body, not by being merely beaten, nor scourged, nor sold, but even by dying a death the most shameful. Again he makes mention of the Cross, and again lays down another benefit. For He did not only deliver, but, as he says above, Who made us meet Colossians 1:12, to the same he alludes here also. Through His death, he says, to present you holy and without blemish and unreprovable before Him. For truly, He has not only delivered from sins, but has also placed among the approved. For, not that He might deliver us from evils only, did He suffer so great things, but that also we might obtain the first rewards; as if one should not only free a condemned criminal from his punishment, but also advance him to honor. And he has ranked you with those who have not sinned, yea rather not with those who have done no sin only, but even with those who have wrought the greatest righteousness; and, what is truly a great thing, ...
But nevertheless, he says, you that do not act against your wills, nor from compulsion, but with your wills and wishes sprang away from him, you he has reconciled, though you were unworthy of it. And seeing that he had made mention of the “things in the heavens,” he shows that all the enmity had its origin from our side, not from the inhabitants of heaven. For they indeed were long ago desirous, and God also, but you were not willing. And throughout he is showing that the angels had no power during the course of human history, to the extent that human beings chose to continue as enemies. The angels could neither persuade them, nor, even if they had persuaded, could they deliver humankind from the devil.
They could not possibly have been to any other than their own God. Accordingly, ourselves "who were sometime alienated and enemies in our mind by wicked works".
The apostle indeed teaches, in his Epistle to the Colossians, that we were once dead, alienated, and enemies to the Lord in our minds, whilst we were living in wicked works;
