The summary of the entire book of Colossians is Paul writing about being forgiven through Christ. It isn’t about legalism and religion, but’s about understanding that we are alive in Him.  The old is gone and the new has come.   

My father lived a life of crime including shoot-outs with police, kidnapping and armed robbery, underground drug businesses through the prison system and more, but you get the picture.  During those times in his life, he did feel dead. Nothing inside of him felt like being alive as positive. He’d been told many times that he would rot in hell, and he believed it.  My dad, at his whit’s end, was going to take his life just as three of his uncles had done.   

Then one night, he heard Billy Graham on TV and miraculously, none of the men requested to watch something else.  For the first time in his life, he heard someone tell him that he could be forgiven no matter what the sin.  “No matter what the sin?”  It was difficult to believe, but he decided to pray a prayer that evening.  He asked for forgiveness, for Jesus to come into his heart, and that God would be revealed to him somehow.   

He went to bed feeling no different, but when he woke up, he felt a peace from head to toe.  He describes it as being better than any high he had from any drug.  And that feeling has never left him. He married my mom who was a volunteer in the prison-chapel, and they had three kids.  Today, he runs an addiction recovery program and preaches every Sunday.  He knows full well what it means to be dead inside, and alive with Christ.