Colossians 3:18-4:1, “House Rules in a Gospel Context”

Every household has its rules. Take your shoes off at the door… everyone helps clean up… if you made the mess, you clean it up… dad cooks on Saturdays… don’t ever let dad cook. I once knew someone that wouldn’t let me do the dishes because their stepdad told them I used too much dish soap. Some household rules make sense, others don’t. But we have the rules because we live so much of our lives in our home. We live with other people who make our lives both fulfilling and challenging. How can we live at peace with those closest to us?

But more to the point, how does the gospel apply to our daily lives? The gospel as Paul explains it in this letter is that Jesus Christ has inaugurated the new creation. He has been crucified to overcome the power of the fleshly human nature dominated by sin. He has been raised to new life to heal our brokenness. He is restoring God’s image in everyone who will unite themselves by faith to Him. If Christ is in you, you are holy and beloved, and free to love others as Jesus loves you.

Today, Paul gets practical. He will use a convention from Greek philosophy called “the table of household duties” to describe a household in which all members are applying the rule he gave us last week,

Colossians 3:17 ESV

And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Paul will address every member of a first-century household, called an oikos (“ecos”). Oikos is the word from which we get the words economy, referring to the collective wealth and resources of a group, but also the word ecosystem, an interconnected community of interacting organisms, in this case, people. A first century ecos consisted of the wife, husband, children, and slaves living with and serving them. Every household has an economy, and is an ecosystem. If your household is different than a first century one, think about what your ecosystem is. The people with whom you live your life and spend most of your time, maybe including your employer or employees.

Paul’s message is, we apply the gospel of Jesus to our ecos and we live at peace with one another when we submit to the authority God has put over us and when those in authority submit to our highest authority, the Lord Jesus Christ. He refers to Jesus as Lord seven times in this passage. Wherever you fall in the economic system with the rights and duties of that place, serve Jesus as Lord, and apply His Lordship to all your relationships.

The context for this whole passage comes from verse 17. But our first step in understanding this passage is to address the elephant in the room. We each approach this passage with baggage that comes form our context. Paul has his first century context, we need to understand that. But also our own context and your unique context.

Understand Context

Our context colors our view of the Bible. 21st Century Americans who have seen many injustices committed by powerful people who have exploited, oppressed, and abused those with less power than they. We don’t like or trust authority, the word, the reality, anything. Critical theory has resulted in words like submission, patriarchy, and power creating a strong emotional reaction from us. But also, this very passage, along with others, has been wrongly used to keep women trapped in abusive marriages and slaves submissive to their masters (two applications we categorically reject, by the way).

We also need to recognize the context in which Paul is writing. He is in a first century Jewish/Roman-Greek context. Both of the cultures he navigates have codes for living in the home that were patriarchal and condoned slavery. The Greek view was essentially that free (non-slave, non-subjugated) men were superior to all others. Therefore, free men should be obeyed by everyone. Women were inferior to men, children to women, and slaves were inferior to all. The only one more inferior was the family dog.

Aristotle said, “For the slave has no deliberative faculty at all; the woman has, but it is without authority, and the child has, but it is immature. So it must necessarily be supposed to be with the moral virtues also; all should partake of them, but only in such manner and degree as is required by each for the fulfillment of his duty…[for example,] the courage of a man is shown in commanding, of a woman in obeying.”

The Jewish context is a little more varied. There are some rabbis that taught equality among all people, but that children must obey their parents. There were others who believed in the inferiority of certain groups of people. Philo said women were “selfish and hypocritical”. He promoted servitude of women to their husbands.

Josephus taught the inferiority of women.

Within Judaism, authority was important, and in the first century, the religious elite and knowledgable held all the authority, and delegated the commandments through a patriarchal system, or ecos.

Paul does not reject or overthrow the prevailing ecosystem. Rather, he plants a subversive seed within it. The gospel does not work from the outside in. It works form the inside out. When Christians live transformed lives, we can apply the gospel to any system in which we live and make Christ the Lord of our ecos.

The subversion of the gospel happens in two ways. First, Paul says all authority resides in Jesus Christ. In a culture that said Caesar is lord of all and the man is the lord of the house, to live lives submitted to Jesus as Lord changes the whole system.

Second, within our submission to the Lord Jesus, everyone has rights and duties, “house rules”. In a culture in which the rights were given to the man of the house, and the duties were given to everyone else, this was completely unique. Paul tells wives to submit to their husbands, which was not new, but then tells husbands to love their wives, which was new. If you don’t believer me, here’s a Bible scholar that said it.

Douglas Moo points out, “Requiring wives to submit to husbands, as we have noted, matches widespread Greek and Jewish teaching about marriage. Requiring husbands to love their wives does not.”

Paul doesn’t promote the end of slavery, but he tells both slave and master who the true Master is, just so everyone is aware. What Paul is really trying to do is to say, “within your present ecos, here’s how you do everything in word or deed in your new context, in the name of the Lord Jesus.”

“To Paul, the Gospel is transformative: even in areas where we exhibit practical conformity to contemporary social norms, the Christian motivation and mindset is to become one of perpetual and intentional worship. Shi-Min Lu builds on this idea. ‘On the surface the Christians seemed to adapt to the existing patriarchal hierarchy, but… the subtle alteration of the codes in light of the new identity in Christ asserted the transformational power of the gospel in daily life.’”

When we live lives of worship of Jesus as Lord, and give thanks to God the Father, people have much less power over us, and we grow in the power of love.

Think about how transformative and subversive the gospel is. Think about Caesar, the imperial head of the household, demanding everyone’s submission. The symbol of his sovereign power was the cross. In the gospel new creation context, Jesus used the cross to disarm the rulers and authorities. He redeemed us.

Colossians 2:13–15 (ESV)

And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.

This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.

Paul says in Romans 13 that you should still submit to the authority of Caesar and your governors, and pay your taxes.

Romans 13:6–7 ESV

For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.

When we give to all the honor they are due, Paul says we are free.

Romans 13:8 ESV

Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.

Now, love redefines power and authority.

Submit to Authority, Redefined

“People try to persuade us that the objections against Christianity spring from doubt,” observed Søren Kierkegaard. “That is a complete misunderstanding. The objections against Christianity spring from insubordination, the dislike of obedience, rebellion against all authority. As a result people have hitherto been beating the air in their struggle against objections, because they have fought intellectually with doubt instead of fighting morally with rebellion.”

As one young woman said when I asked for her view of this passage, “I don’t like being told what to do.” No one does. And especially by someone who is no more, and maybe much less, intelligent or capable than you are, like your husband, your parent, or your boss. But maybe if we think about submitting to others as obeying what they tell us to do, we’re responding to the practice of authority that exists in the world, outside the gospel context. So, how does authority work among followers of Jesus?

Matthew 20:25–28 (ESV)

But Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you.

But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

In the kingdom of God, authority is practiced through service rather than domination. The full measure of serving others is sacrifice, giving your life for them. Above all is love, which is the bond of perfectness.

The gospel informs every aspect of our relationships. Jesus was obedient to the authority of His Father. He trusted in the love of His Father, that He would not abandon Him to the grave. So, He surrendered, submitted, subordinated Himself to the Father’s authority, to die on the cross for the sins of the world. And because of His obedience, the Father raised Him from the dead and exalted Him to ascend His throne.

How does this gospel inform our view of this passage?

Paul tells us in Ephesians 5 that marriage is a picture of the gospel to our world. He starts with,

Ephesians 5:21 ESV

submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Then says that when a wife submits to her husband “as to the Lord”, and the husband loves his wife

Ephesians 5:25–27 ESV

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

Paul says marriage in a gospel context is teaching the world about redemption.

So, I can say that what we have found in our family is that when I surrender my life to Jesus as the husband and father of the house by serving my family from morning to night, not demanding anything of them, but encouraging them and inviting them to follow Jesus as I follow Jesus, and when my wife and children willingly surrender to that leadership, we have found peace. When one of those pieces is missing, our peace diminishes.

Some of you are in marriages in which this exact picture is not possible. Not every spouse follows Jesus. Some spouses abuse their power and abuse their partner. Let’s make clear, this passage is not a commandment to submit to their abuse. Quite the opposite. Your Master is Jesus. He did not redeem you and restore the image of God in you to submit that image to the abuse of someone who does not fear God. Equally, children should be protected from abusive parents. (But kids, your parents asking you to do chores or be home at a certain time is not abuse. You may feel provoked, but these things are your parents teaching you to please the Lord.)

Not every married couple is able to have children. Not every individual is married. There is not one way to apply this. Paul is giving a blueprint or design, but your ecos could look different. But the principle applies. When I understand the gospel that Jesus Christ has redeemed me and freed me, that He is my Lord, I am able to submit to those in authority over me with thanksgiving that they bear a heavier responsibility before God.

We haven’t addressed slavery yet. That could be a much longer sermon another time. But suffice to say for today, it is incredible that Paul entrusted this letter, in which he tells slaves to submit to their masters, to a slave named Onesimus that he has asked to willingly return to his master in Colossae. We will tell his story in a few weeks. But Paul is entrusting Onesimus and all of us to the gospel. Trust the gospel. As you apply the gospel, using your freedom in Christ to love, forgive, submit, even though you don’t have to, your life will be a demonstration of that gospel to the world.

Philippians 2:5–8 ESV

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Communion

Questions for Discussion

What was your family like growing up? What kind of roles did people have, and what were the expectations on each person?

When you think about household rules that can be oppressive, and household rules that help people grow, what are examples of each?

What do we learn about Jesus in this passage?

What do we learn about ourselves?

What makes submitting to authority hard?

What kind of authority does Paul describe in this passage, and how should it be practiced?

How would you describe your current “ecos”, your “houshold”? How would you apply this passage to your situation?

How do we see the gospel in this passage?

Who is someone with whom you could share what you’ve learned this week?