As Paul continues to paint a picture of the new life in Christ, he wants us to know that true Christianity always affects the way we live. Unlike the false teachers in Colosse who promoted ideas that spirituality was found in knowledge, spiritual experiences, and legalistic rules, Paul says that true spirituality is found by submitting to the supremacy of Christ, and how he transforms our character and revolutionizes our relationships.
In the previous section, he told us to get rid of the vices of the old nature and put on the character of Christ: compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, thankfulness, peace, etc. In this section, he shows us how our relationship with Christ should affect our relationships with people, especially our families. He knew that our family relationships are the best testing ground for authentic spirituality. The new life begins in the home. The Christian life is expressed in the day-to-day, routine experiences of life. Therefore, he shows how a relationship with Christ should affect the marital relationship, the parental relationship, and the workplace relationship.
1.) The Marital Relationship (18-19)
Paul begins his exhortation of the Christian life with the most foundational of all relationships: the marital relationship. He gives specific instructions to guide the attitudes and actions of both husbands and wives. These commands set forth God’s expectation for a proper Christian marriage relationship.
Wives, submit to your husbands (18)
Wives are commanded to submit to their husbands. The verb “submit” has been widely misunderstood today. It does not convey some innate inferiority but is used for a modest, cooperative demeanor that puts others first. It was something expected of all Christians regardless of their gender or rank. The command therefore promotes conduct that was believed to help elicit kindness from the husband.
Paul qualifies this submission with the phrase, “as is fitting to the Lord.” Just as any Christian woman would submit to the Lord, the Christian wife is to submit to her husband. This does not diminish the equality or destroy the dignity of the wife. The Trinity is the model for this submission. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all co-equal and exhibit mutual submission. Submission is God’s desire and design for wives in the Christian marriage relationship.
Husbands, love your wives (19)
Before you wives get upset with this command or conclude that Paul is some kind of male-chauvinist, look at the parallel command he gives to husbands in verse 19. They are told to love their wives. This command reveals that Paul is not writing to prop up the authority and rights of husbands, which everyone took for granted in the patriarchal Greco-Roman society. (Husbands were the only fully legal persons in the family and had power over all property and almost absolute authority over every member of the family.) Instead, he reminds husbands of their Christian obligation to love their wives—that is, to treat them with kindness and compassion and put their needs before their own.
This command would have been somewhat surprising to the Colossians because most in the ancient world did not expect marriage to be grounded in love. The purpose of marriage at this time was to produce legitimate heirs. Soranus contended, “Since women are married for the sake of bearing children and heirs, and not for pleasure and enjoyment, it is totally absurd to inquire about the quality or rank of the family line or about the abundance of their wealth, but not to inquire about their ability to conceive children.”
In Christian marriage, the husband knows himself to be dearly loved by God and is commanded to love his wife in the same way. This command is accompanied by a prohibition against being harsh toward their wives, which was often the case in the Roman world. There is never an excuse for domestic violence, verbal abuse, or critical spirits in a Christian marriage.
How many of you remember the television show “All in the Family?” Archie Bunker epitomized a husbandly critical spirit. In one episode, Edith decided that she would experiment with fancier cuisine and fixed her husband a soufflé instead of his regular bacon and eggs. Needless to say, Archie turned up his nose at something he couldn’t pronounce and demanded his bacon and eggs. Daughter Gloria watched with disbelief as her mother dumped the soufflé in the garbage and tried to appease her husband’s wrath. Gloria snarled indignantly, “Submitting to him…that’s what she’s doing—submitting to her ruler…her lord and master!” Archie responds, “Ain’t that a nice way of putting it?” (Garland 262)
Most fairy tales end with the prince marrying the princess, and the store ends with the words, “And they lived happily ever after.” But this is not the Christian view of marriage. The wedding day with the bells and the bubbles is not the end of the story; it is only the beginning. It is the beginning of a lifelong adventure and it is filled with many joys and jubilations, but is also filled with many perils and problems. It is a journey through uncharted seas, which explains why there are so many shipwrecks. (Garland 262)
The problem is that so many people get caught up thinking, “My needs must be met first.” We have become too devoted to the ideas of self-assertion and self-fulfillment and personal “happiness”. I have actually heard people justify divorce by saying, “Well, God wouldn’t want me to be unhappy.” The love that Paul is talking about here has nothing to do with self-fulfillment; it has everything to do with self-sacrifice. Therefore, wives, submit to your husbands! Husbands, love your wives! (Garland 263)
2.) The Parental Relationship (20-21)
Children, obey your parents (20)
After Paul sets forth proper Christian conduct in the marital relationship, he turns to the second most important family relationship: the parental relationship. He begins with a command for children to obey their parents. Obedience is the simple process of listening, understanding, and responding accordingly. The force of this command is seen in the use of the active imperative which denotes absolute obedience and the qualifying phrase “in all things”.
This command is accompanied by the motivational injunction “for this pleases the Lord”. This phrase was rooted in Jewish law and was most clearly expressed in the fourth commandment, “Honor your father and mother.” This command assumes that parents will not demand anything unseemly for their children. The command also takes for granted that the parents have the best interest of the children at heart.
We live in a culture today where it seems like obedient children are the exception rather than the norm. Tantrums in the terrible two’s turn into complete disrespect and disregard in the teen years. This disrespect for parents soon transitions to disrespect for teachers, laws, and any other type of authority figure. Many go on to cause larger problems in society in general.
Young people, if you want to obey the Lord, obey your parents. Show the authenticity of your faith, by listening and responding to them. When they ask you to clean your room, don’t procrastinate and don’t make excuses. When they ask you to be home before curfew, don’t blow them off. When they give you advice, don’t give them attitude or backtalk. Obey your parents; it pleases the Lord!
Fathers, do not embitter your children (21)
On the flip side of this command, Paul implores fathers to not embitter their children. One may wonder why the command is exclusive to fathers and not mothers or the inclusive “parents”. Again, in the Roman world, fathers had absolute control over the lives of their children. If this power was abused, there wasn’t anything anyone could do about it. There were no family protective services or family court to intervene. So, Paul focuses on the fathers.
The command to not “embitter” his children literally means to not “irritate” them. In the context it refers to fathers who overcorrect, over-criticize, harass, or physically or verbally abuse their children. The reason for this is so they don’t become “discouraged”, which refers to a broken spirit. To be discouraged as a child means to think things like “I’ll never get it right”, “All he does is criticize”, or “He’ll never love me.” The famous hymnwriter John Newton is reported to have said, “I know that my father loved me—but he did not seem to wish me to see it.”
The Bible certainly advocates parental discipline for rebellious attitudes and wayward behavior, but it clearly warns against being too harsh with children. Constant criticism and reprimand can be as destructive as none at all and can destroy the child’s sense of self-worth. Fathers, live out your faith by avoiding embittering your children.
3.) The Workplace Relationship (3:22-4:1)
After Paul deals with the marital and parental relationships, he turns to the relationship between slaves and masters. These commands may be jarring on a couple of levels. For one, it may seem surprising that the Bible doesn’t outright condemn slavery. In the first century, however, it was an entrenched reality that the early Christians could neither change nor ignore. Paul certainly doesn’t sanctify slavery, but during this historical period a society without slavery was simply inconceivable. The fact that Paul even addresses slaves shows that he believes all humans are created in the image of God and are morally responsible individuals. He has already made the point that Christ breaks down social barriers – “in Christ there is no slave or free”. (3:11)
Second, it may seem surprising that Paul mentions slaves and masters in the context of family, but this was part of the fabric of Graeco-Roman society. Households not only included children, but he also included domestic slaves.
Since slavery is outlawed in our society today, the closest equivalent would be the modern employee-employer relationship. Therefore, I will treat this section as workplace relationships. Slaves were to obey their earthly masters. Paul reminds those under authority that they have a master in heaven who observes their internal attitudes and external performance. Christian employees are to work hard and render sincere service. The employee is not to work only when the boss is looking and then slack off when their back is turned. Christians are to work for their boss as they would for the Lord Jesus Christ. They are to do whatever they do with all their hearts. Good service to a boss will be rewarded by the Lord.
For one summer while I was in seminary I took a landscaping job. The first day I showed up to work, my crew had to load a few hundred 75lb. bags of fertilizer onto a trailer bed. Once I knew what we had to do, I got right to work. Since it was a hot summer day, I took off my tee-shirt (back then I still had abs), and began tossing the bags. After I threw fifteen or twenty bags, I noticed that I was the only one working. The other guys were sitting in the garage, watching me. When I inquired as to why they weren’t doing anything, they laughed and said, “Oh, we’ll get to work when we see the boss coming.”
Likewise, masters (or employees) are to live out their faith by treating their slaves (employees) fairly and with justice. Paul grounds this command in a relationship with the Lord as well. He reminds them that they have a master too and should therefore practice the golden rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
The application of this section is very clear. As Christian employees, we live out our faith in the workplace by working hard and being honest. We don’t try to take advantage of our boss or cheat our way to the top. Some of you have wonderful bosses and obeying is a joy. Others have terrible bosses and this is very difficult. Regardless, we prove the authenticity of our faith by how well we work and how we treat our boss.
If you happen to be an employer, you prove the authenticity of your faith by how well you treat your employees. Be fair, be just, be honest, be gracious, and be generous—isn’t this the way you would want to be treated?
This is how our relationship with Jesus Christ affects our relationship with others! Wives, be submissive to your husbands! Husbands, love your wives! Children, obey your parents! Parents, don’t embitter your children! Employees, work hard for your boss! Employers, treat your employees well!