“Bringing the Bible home” - Colossians 3:18—4:1
By James Galbraith
First Baptist Church, Port Alberni
November 25, 2007
Text
Col 3:18 Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.
Col 3:19 Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.
Col 3:20 Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.
Col 3:21 Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged.
Col 3:22 Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to win their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord.
Col 3:23 Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men,
Col 3:24 since you know that you will receive an inheritance l from the Lord as a reward. m It is the Lord Christ you are serving.
Col 3:25 Anyone who does wrong will be repaid for his wrong, and there is no favoritism.
Col 4:1 Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a Master in heaven.
Introduction
If a person becomes a Christian in a family that does not follow the Lord, it can be a very tumultuous adjustment for all…
- my story – 16 year old in non-church going home
many mistakes – arguing about prayer at table, “not working on Sunday”
many victories – leading brother/sister to the Lord, demonstrating faith to parents
And that’s just a bit of the adjustment one family made to one son becoming a Christian!
Imagine the tumult that would follow when a significant group of people, men, women and children,
leave behind their idols or their Jewish rituals and practices
and begin a life of following Christ in a culture that
allows men to control women with little accountability,
treats children as the property of their fathers
and enslaves those who cannot defend themselves against the most powerful nations!
Day to day life would never be the same!
The rituals that both pagans and Jews followed suddenly became obsolete, both idol worship and sacrifices become irrelevant in the light of the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus.
The social order that had grown out of the current political and religious situation was turned on it’s head.
- women were coming to faith in Christ before their husbands
- both slaves and their masters were converting to Christianity at the same time
- children who were growing up under one set of rules suddenly had two different sets (or more) pulling at them
And add to the confusion one principle which no one had even dared thing about in those days – that all people are of equal value and worth in the eyes of God –
Col. 3:11 - “Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.”
Gal. 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
You end up with a growing group of people that dearly needs guidance into how to make the freedom Christ brings work out in their day to day lives.
So Paul spoke words of guidance to the new Christians,
so that they could restore a sense of peace in their households.
He spoke to the three essential relationships in any household of the day:
1. Wife/Husband
2. Child/Parent
3. Slave/Master
Some guidelines to consider as we read these together:
1. These words were spoken to the culture of the day, which included the slavery of conquered people groups as a universally accepted practice.
Christians would eventually be instrumental in changing that,
but at this point in history Paul is telling Christians how to live honourably with this before trying to change it.
2. We’re not going to try and change what these words actually say – that’s altering the text!
Re-translating the Bible to make it say what you want it to say is a trick – a charade.
We must strive to learn what the Bible actually says to us , and then work to apply it to the culture we live in now.
3. These words are spoken to households, and not the larger culture.
They do not say women submit to men or children obey adults or lower classes submit to upper classes.
They are spoken to families to bring order to households that are grappling with the changes that come from beginning a new life in Christ.
1. Wife/Husband
18 Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.
19 Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.
This is the most important relationship in any household, for it is how the husband and wife interact that will set the tone for everyone else.
Wives are called to submit to the leadership of their husbands,
with the understanding that in doing so they will be following the example of Jesus himself.
Jesus, though in every way equal to his father, submitted himself to the authority of his father:
John 6:38 For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me.
This submission is done with the expectation that husbands will in turn treat their wives as equal in everyway, loving them with the same love that Jesus loves us.
They are not to abuse authority, but to be careful to make sure any decisions they make reflect the love of Christ,
This type of partnership seems archaic today, but we have to understand it in the light of where they were in the day it was spoken.
Jewish men, if they were unhappy with their wives, could simply write a document declaring that they were not satisfied with their wives, and the woman would be abandoned to fend for themselves.
Paul was taking a bad situation for both husbands and wives, and bringing order to it,
order modelled after the same relationship that God the Father and God the Son enjoy.
In our culture today,
with it’s myriad number of family relationships,
it may seem quaint or offensive or even oppressive,
but in that time and in that place, it was both liberating to wives and husbands.
It gave wives the assurance that while their husbands may have authority in their marriage, they also had the accountability of being husbands that loved them with a love that sought to serve them.
Does this still apply today? Well, it does, but it’s not the final word.
When we look at the relationship between a husband and wife, we need to understand that Paul spoke these quick words to one group of people, and that when we explore the full word of God that there is more than just this one verse dictating how a husband and wife are to relate.
In another letter, to the church in Ephesus, Paul again speaks on husbands and wives, and this time he expands the idea of submission to include both husband and wife.
He starts off a lengthy discussion of husbands and wives in chapter five with these words:
Eph 5:21 Submit to one another r out of reverence for Christ.
When I take this into account,
I see a clear direction for a husband and wife to be accountable to each other, submitting to each other and working out a common bond and direction together.
2. Children/parents
20 Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.
21 Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged
The relationship of children to their parents has universally been seen as one of obedience, with children heeding their parent’s instruction.
This relationship has been central to biblical teaching from the beginning,
it is important enough to be one of the ten commandments,
and it is simply imperative to the development of any child.
Children need to be told “stop, go, do, don’t”, and they need to know why.
A two year old running toward traffic is not be reasoned with in the moment
nor is a five year old playing with a lighter
or a ten year old punching their sister
or a sixteen year old selling drugs.
They need to know that mom or dad will say NO! and mean it.
On the positive side of this,
a two year old needs to hear “use the potty”,
a five year old need to hear “let’s read”
a ten year old needs to be told “time to practice guitar”
and a sixteen year old needs to hear that “gas is go, brake is stop, signal now, etc…”
Obedience is not simply the control of a child,
it is a tool to the development of a child into an adult.
Everyone needs to understand that they are rules to follow in this world and they need to learn that in the love and protection of their homes.
What is new in this passage is a recognition of the personhood of the child, a concept that was not so universally acknowledged.
We are told to not “embitter our children”,
meaning that we need to raise them in such a way that
they are treated as people to be loved,
and not as property to be handled.
When a child is treated as a commodity to be exploited or property to be managed, he or she will rightfully grow to resent the parents who treat them in such a way!
But if parents love their children and treat them as people to be nurtured, they have no foundation to be “embittered”.
Children can become embittered for many reasons,
and parents cannot always control this,
but they do have control over how they treat their children,
they have a right to expect obedience, but they must be ready to love.
3. Slaves/masters
We do not have this relationship in our household today,
but we can still look at what Paul was saying and learn form it
Slavery, in that day, was rampant, since the Romans controlled the known world.
They gave rights to those who obeyed, and they enslaved those who wouldn’t.
The numbers are not fixed, but is safe to say that anywhere from 10 percent to 50 percent of a given city would be considered slaves, depending on the status of the city in the empire.
The treatment of a slave depended solely on the discretion of a master some places had some laws or expectations,
but slaves lived everywhere at the mercy of their master’s whims.
Paul’s words here bring both slaves and masters into a relationship beyond their own.
He commands both to acknowledge that fact that God watches over them, and that means that they both need to see each other as God sees them.
Slaves are to serve well, seeing their work as work that ultimately honours God.
To have rebelled at this point in time and history would have meant certain death.
Any uprising of slaves was quashed with brutal quickness,
because of the danger it posed to the culture at large.
So for their own protection Paul calls them to serve well.
However, masters are expected to treat their slaves as people, not property, knowing that they too have a Master to follow.
From our perspective in history, we want Paul to shout, “No more slavery!”
I’m not going to try and explain why he didn’t – that could take a very long time.
Paul’s steps here do give slaves something their culture withheld from them
– it recognizes them as people as opposed to property.
And I will say that when slavery is finally abolished in our history,
it is Christians at the forefront of the battle.
So what does all this mean to us today?
We cannot argue away these teachings as irrelevant simply because our culture has changed. Cultures come and go, God and his word stand eternal.
With all the different family arrangements,
we still have husbands and wives and parents and children.
Thankfully, we do not have slaves and masters,
but we do have people who serve people in authority,
and those who lead their workers.
I believe that God calls husbands and wives to submit to each other,
husbands loving their wives as God loves his own son,
and wives submitting to their husbands as Jesus,
equal to his father in every way, submitted to his leadership.
The ultimate person in charge is neither the husband nor the wife,
but the Lord, and the couple is called to seek his will together in mutual submission to each other.
This relationship places both under the love and leadership of God himself,
who never dictated orders to his Son, or lorded authority over him,
and it gives to both the role model of Christ to follow,
who never abused authority, but used it to serve, and not to be served.
I believe God still calls children to heed their parents, and that he still expects parents to work for the best interests of their children.
And I believe in a God that started the process of freeing slaves
by getting his children to acknowledge them as people rather than property.
knowing that this would plant a seed that would grow into the abolishment of this dehumanizing reality.
Paul spoke these words to restore order to a chaotic situation.
We still live in a chaotic situation, albeit a different set of chaos,
but I believe that what we see here could help bring peace to the chaos around us.
We can live lives that demonstrate that everyone,
no matter what relationship that they have to us,
is worthy and valuable in the eyes of the Lord.
