The Family every Father desires

a. Wives submit (respect) to your husbands and Husbands love your wives. (Colossians 3:18-19)

b. Children obey your parents and Fathers love your children. (Colossians 3:20-21)

Colossians 3:18-21

1. INTRODUCTION

2. BODY

a. Wives submit (respect) to your husbands and Husbands love your wives. (Colossians 3:18-19)

i. Paul transitions from how the church should behave to one another (3:14-17) to now, more personally how Christians should behave in the home. Paul has been talking about what the new creational lifestyle should look like by first explaining that we should put away anger and abusive speech, then telling the church to be compassionate, bearing with one another, forgiving one another, and lastly, by putting on love, in the words of Paul, in Philippians 2:4-7, to put others before we put ourselves. By Paul’s definition of 1 Corinthians and Philippians, we can see that loving someone is simply treating them the way Jesus treated us. This is why we say that the Christian’s objective goal in life is holiness. Holiness can simply be understood as being like Christ. It is to pursue the life that Christ lived and the closest we can be like Christ, or most similar to Christ is to love someone.

ii. One of the things as a husband, I truly appreciate from my wife is that my wife submits to me. She doesn’t submit to me like a dog, like I tell her what to do and I tell her how she should live and she drops everything she was doing and listens to everything I tell her. No rather she considers what I have to say. She takes into consideration what I think and thinks about it. If it makes sense to her she agrees and follows the lead. If she disagrees, she tells me how/what she thinks and we can have a conversation about it. But there is no idea that her submitting to me is doing everything I want her to do.

iii. There is no idea of superior where husbands think they are better than their wives and their wives are their slaves and should do everything we want them to do. And if they do that, they are godly and if they don’t they are not godly. That is not the defining principle of a Christian wife. But rather, Paul is telling women here in verse 18 by submitting themselves under their husbands. The Bible here is telling wives to voluntarily put oneself under the authority of another person.

iv. The question here becomes, why should I? In some instances, the wives are more qualified, or better speakers or better leaders. Why do I as a leader have to submit myself to someone who is lesser than me? Well to answer that question, Paul gives us verse 19. Husbands must love their wives as Christ loved the church. If men are truly the leaders, men must first make the first step. Men must take the lead and teach the women why they should submit to them.

v. Afterall, isn’t that the reason why the Bible tells us to follow Him? If Jesus just told us to follow Him but didn’t show us anything to go by, what standard do we have? We wouldn’t have a standard. But because Christ first came to the world as a human, then grew up like all of us and sacrificed His life for us, we come to know the concept of what true love is. Jesus showed us how to love Him. We are to love Him with all our hearts souls and mind and do things we don’t want to do. Things like, submitting ourselves to Him and trusting in Him.

vi. This is what Paul is telling wives that they must do, but Paul is also telling husbands that they have to set the example. If women are truly supposed to follow men, men have to stand up and take the lead and show women why they should follow. Men can’t expect women to follow them if they are unwilling to show them their love for them and to express their love for them.

vii. I shared with those who came to early morning prayer on Saturday about the part of the Bible I’ve been reading all week and thinking about. This verse has been on my mind because of Allen. Allen has been encouraging me lately with his updates and his prayers and that caused me to think about the Bible and God impressed this verse on my heart.

viii. Psalm 34, specifically verse 8. God tells us to taste and see that the Lord is good. But the first set of instructions there is taste. What must we do? We must first go to God and taste. We must receive the food that He is providing or given us. After we receive the food that He has provided, we are to taste it.

ix. One of the illustrations that I have said in the past make sense with this example. When I struggled with some issues in my life, I had nobody to tell. It was so hard to keep it inside so I told my mom. I was shocked to see my mom’s response. I thought she’d kill me and be extremely upset at me. But instead, she turned to me and said when you eat, you don’t eat just good food. Sometimes you eat rotten food, sweet food, bitter food, salty food. That’s life. You have to learn how to eat all the banchan you get in life. But similar to this verse, we have to learn how to taste the food God has given us. Sometimes, it’s not all good. Sometimes it’s bitter, salty, sweet but at the end of the day, we have to taste and see that God is good. Through all of these things, we have to know God wants the best for us.

x. As men, we have to be willing to take on the hardships for our families. We have to be men who earn the respect of our wives where they are willing to submit to us. That’s what it means to be a leader of the home. We need to be Christ’s men, that our wives would be willing to submit themselves to us. They must know that when they submit to us, they are submitting to Christ.

b. Children obey your parents and Fathers love your children. (Colossians 3:20-21)

i. Paul is continuing to speak about how the house is supposed to live considering being new creations in Christ. After speaking how the husband and wife are to act towards each other, Paul works his way to now addressing children. Paul starts off verse 20 by telling children, all children, to be obedient to their parents.

ii. So what we see with children is that when your parents tell you to do something, you must listen to them. This is why Paul follows by telling when children should listen to their parents. Paul writes obey your parents in all things. This idea of obeying your parents in everything is a difficult concept in the west because we believe that children have rights, and they have their own freedom. We agree this to be true, but we are talking about a scenario where the parents truly love their children and are not abusing them or are hurting them. Again, the context of this is found in Ephesians 5:21 where all actions must be done in the fear of the Christ. If that is the context, children must obey their parents in the fear of Christ. Knowing that Christ is Lord over them, they must obey their parents as if they are obeying Christ. This is what it means when Paul writes, “for this is well-pleasing to the Lord.”

iii. One of the best examples of listening to our fathers is growing up to be a father. I have learned to appreciate my father after I became a father and after I became a preacher. Through preaching in Korean, I’ve learned how hard a life my parents have lived for me. Living in a country where they don’t speak the common language and being ridiculed by our children because we can’t communicate, then having to physically work long hours to make a living for our families. That’s a hard life to live and we as children don’t understand or look down on our parents when we see our friend’s parents who are doctors or nurses and we become jealous because they live a easier life than us. It’s tempting to look at other parents and think why did I get my parents?

iv. But let me tell you, one of the best lessons I’ve learned and humbling lessons I’ve learned is as I’m preaching in Korean, I’m learning how difficult it must have been for them. I can’t imagine having to preach in Korean all the time or moving to Korea to try to get a job there and speaking Korean all the time and trying to make a living for my family. It’s hard and sometimes demeaning, it hurts our pride because we know if we were speaking our original language, we would be able to communicate properly. Through preaching I’ve come to really appreciate my father and men who have come to this country and tried to live here. It’s an amazing thing to see and an extra thing to be thankful for.

v. But we haven’t gone over the hardest aspect of this verse. It says that children should be obedient to their parents in all things. What does this mean? Does this mean that we have to listen to our parents in everything?

vi. One of the temptations is to look at our parents and to compare them to other parents and think, “I wish I had those parents.” And because we start comparing, we start to quickly lose respect for our parents and start to think it’s okay for us to be mean to them or to look down on them. But what Paul is telling us here is not, submit to your parents if they are worth submitting to. No, God is telling us to submit to them even though they aren’t worth submitting to. Even if they are the worst parents in the world, you should submit to them. Why? Because that’s what it means to honor what God has said. Does that mean this is easy? No. But as we get older in life, we quickly learn that life isn’t easy. It’s part of the growing journey. Growing up to be an adult is to learn that life sometimes doesn’t go the way I want but how do I deal with those things? Well, God has made this part easy for us. God told us exactly what we should do. We should submit to our parents because that is what it means to be godly.

vii. Well just as a wife is supposed to respect her husband and submit to him, children are to do the same. How? Similar to wives, just as husbands are called to lead them and be the example, causing women to respect and submit to them, fathers are called to cause their children to respect them and listen to them.

viii. There is a striking similarity between verse 19 and 21. Husbands or fathers are called to love their wives so that they are not harsh towards them. Husbands are to act in a way where the wives are not bitter towards them. The husbands are to love their wives so that their wives submit to them. Similarly, fathers are to love their children so that their children do not lose heart.

ix. The word here for exasperate means to stir up or provoke. Paul is telling parents don’t raise your children to be provoked to anger. Don’t do things to your kids that cause them to have uncontrollable anger. Again, this command here is not telling parents to let their children do whatever they want. No, Paul is telling parents don’t cause your children’s anger to grow out of control. Don’t do things to them that would cause them to be exceedingly angry or frustrated.

x. Before we go to that, we want to deal with Fathers, do not exasperate your children. Let’s deal with what this means and what it does not mean. Let’s start with what it does not mean. What Paul is writing here is telling Fathers to raise their children in a way that is beneficial for the child. What do I mean by this? Well, as parents we think that what we want for the kids is the best for the children because they don’t know what they want.

xi. Going back to my question that I raised earlier, don’t raise your children to think “man, I wish I had those parents instead of mine.” This doesn’t mean we will give them everything that they want, but we should make sure we are doing what’s best for them, when sometimes we might disagree with their decisions. Again, this doesn’t mean that we should give them everything, but one of the big areas parents desire for their children is academics. Asian parents are known for pushing their children because they know academics provide them a great future. This isn’t wrong. But academics can’t save them. It can’t promise them a great life. It’s helpful to do that, but again, only God can do this. The best thing we can do for them is to pray for them. The best thing we can do as parents is to trust them and to love them by giving them our trust.

xii. As I’ve been a parent, one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is, I must do everything in my power to make sure that I have communication with my children. I want to know everything that they are feeling, and I want them to know that I care about them. I want to make sure that they can trust me with everything even when they fail. I want my children to know that I support them in everything they want to do, even if it’s not something I want for them to do.

xiii. As I’ve thought through this, I’ve come to realize that this is what Paul is telling fathers to do. There are things that we all want for our children. Why? Because we want the best for them. We want them to be happy and I believe all of this is good and right. The part we get it wrong is that we think they can only be happy the way I want them to be happy. If this takes up our thinking, then we will end up causing our children to lose motivation and lose heart. Paul is telling Fathers to always love their children so that their children learn to be obedient to them. The only way we can do that is by allowing our children the opportunity to fail and to grow. Even if we want the best for them, just like ourselves, they will chose to do what they want. We have to give our children the freedom to make their own choices within our purview. This means that our children must feel like we are always listening to them and supporting them so that they will obey us. If we choke them out, then they will not obey us.

xiv. I believe this is the heart of Paul’s argument. I pray that if we are fathers, we would be faithful to the calling of being a great father and for our wives and children, that we would respect our husband and love our fathers and submit to them.

3. CONCLUSION