Family Matters

Introduction

As we continue our journey through the letter to the Colossians, the apostle Paul spends some time addressing what an orderly Christ honoring home ought to look like.

The indications are sandwiched between the command that all of their activities, and Paul is about to give some examples, must be done with the right motivations.

The right motivation is not the benefactor of your actions but the fulfilling of God’s will for your life.

Colossians 3:17–4:1 (LSB)

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

18 Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.

19 Husbands, love your wives and do not be embittered against them.

20 Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is pleasing to the Lord.

21 Fathers, do not exasperate your children, so that they will not lose heart.

22 Slaves, in all things obey those who are your masters according to the flesh, not with eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but with integrity of heart, fearing the Lord.

23 Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men,

24 knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. Serve the Lord Christ.

25 For he who does wrong will receive the consequences of the wrong which he has done, and that without partiality.

1 Masters, show to your slaves what is right and fair, knowing that you too have a Master in heaven.

The family dynamics here are not complicated when you are living a spiritually filled life, especially when everyone in the family is living a spiritually filled life.

The Christian home is the masterpiece of Christian living. It is a special field for the practice of holy principles. The church itself is the second field of practice but the home is the first. If you will not master Christian living at home, you cannot hope to master it in the church and much less in the world.

There are a few inherited facts imbedded in the in the commandments given to wives and husbands. They are self evident but because of this present evil age we need to underscore it.

Who you are making a home with must be your spouse.

John 4:17–18 (LSB)

17 The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You have correctly said, ‘I have no husband’;

18 for you had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly.”

Fornication is not marriage, it is fornication. Your live-in girlfriend or boyfriend is your fornicating partner. (Introduce them as such).

We do not like the word fornication, we love the acting on it, but we do not like the word because it reminds us that it is sinful.

When your 20 year old kid that no longer lives under your roof asks you your opinion on his live-in girl friend “use the word…”

You may be scared that your relationship with your kid will be marred as they accuse of judging them. But that schism between you and non-believing family members is bound to happen.

Matthew 10:34–36 (LSB)

34 “Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.

35 “For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;

36 and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household.

Continue

2. There must be a male and a female

Genesis 5:2 (LSB)

2 He created them male and female, and He blessed them and named them Man in the day when they were created.

The roles they play in Colossians is tied to their gender. The male has his role and the female has her role in order for the contraption called marriage to actually word as it was God ordered.

In a union between two men, who fulfills the role of the wife? There is no wife. Neither of them is endowed with the capacity, gifting, talents, temperament that naturally comes from a woman.

It is like trying to make a flashlight work with a battery that has two positive terminals.

3. Each have their own roles

The same battery example applies, when you invert the terminals your devise will not work.

The wife must subject herself to her husband as it is fit in the Lord. This passage echoes the apostle’s letter to the Ephesians in chapter 5 in which he teaches this to be a correlation between Christ and the Church ( a great mystery).

This case concerning the wife’s role is plain as seen in Tim 2:11, 1 Cor 11:3, 1 Pet 3:1, etc.

This submission must be loving and voluntary, the husband has no dominion over his wife’s submission or lack thereof. This is her service to God and not to men even if a man benefits from such service.

The submission is based on the order that exists in the godhead so, there is no level of inferiority or superiority between the husband and the wife the same way their is nothing lacking in the individual members of the Godhead.

1 Corinthians 11:3 (LSB)

3 But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ.

We have demonstrated biblically over and over again the divinity the Godhood of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus in John 8:58 emphatically declared “before Abraham was, I AM” identifying himself as Yahweh, God Almighty, a statement that incited his hearers to stone him albeit unsuccessfully.

And the entire point of the book of Colossians is the supremacy of Jesus Christ, so a wife voluntarily and lovingly submitting herself to her husband is one of the most Christlike things any human can possibly do.

However, this submission as the command to submit is limited to things that do not directly contradict what God has said in the Scriptures. Remember Ananias and Sapphira…

But husbands…

Colossians 3:19 (LSB)

19 Husbands, love your wives and do not be embittered against them.

Husbands are to love your wives, this is not philos or phileo which denotes deep friendship and affection for family and friends, it is agape, the sacrificial and unconditional love of God, the highest form of love.

If you learn Christ, you will learn this love. It is equated to Christ’ love for the church for which He sacrifice Himself for. Yet, not to the extent in which you will deny Christ who must remain supreme in everyone of our lives.

At any rate, Husbands are to resist the effects of the curse of sin and overcome the urge of subjugating, ruling, dominating, mastering over their wives by loving them like Christ loved the church.

You are to provide leadership without subjugation. Give them something they can willingly follow. And if they do not, it is between them and their creator.

But you are to love her as if she was past of your own body according to Ephesians 5:26.

Dr. Robert Seizer, in his book Mortal Lessons: Notes in the Art of Surgery, tells of performing surgery to remove a tumor in which it was necessary to sever a facial nerve, leaving a young woman’s mouth permanently twisted in palsy. In Dr. Seizer’s own words:

Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed, and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamp light, isolated from me, private. Who are they, I ask myself, he and this wry-mouth I have made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously, greedily? The young woman speaks. “Will my mouth always be like this?” she asks. “Yes,” I say, “it will. It is because the nerve was cut.” She nods, and is silent. But the young man smiles. “I like it,” he says. “It is kind of cute.” All at once I know who he is. I understand, and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with a god. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth, and I, so close, can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers, to show her that their kiss still works.

It is possible to love your spouse as your own body. Practically, this means that the husband must do all he can to understand her world.

But our passage says to love and do not be embittered against them. This is a present middle imperative with a negative particle which actually means to stop an action that is in progress. “you yourself husband, stop being bitter.”

Also meaning stop being harsh, or resentful, no hurtful jabs.

1 Peter 3:7 (LSB)

7 You husbands in the same way, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with a weaker vessel, since she is a woman; and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that your prayers will not be hindered.

Wives have their role and husband have their role, a lot goes wrong when the order is inverted or ignored. Look at what happened at the beginning. God made Man responsible, assigned the woman to help him and told them both to have dominion, rule over the animal creatures, but what happened? The serpent leads the woman, the woman leads the man, and the man blames God.

Instructions continue by commanding that the children which is not necessarily bound by age here but it does connote offspring still living within parental domain obey their parents in everything.

Disobedience to parents is designated in the OT as rebellion against God.

Leviticus 20:9 (LSB)

9 ‘If there is anyone who curses his father or his mother, he shall surely be put to death; he has cursed his father or his mother. His bloodguiltiness is upon him.

Obedience to parents pleases the Lord.

It reflects God’s designed order for the Christian home.

then it calls for fathers not to exasperate, irritate.. erethizo… which means to provoke… it is the use of parental authority as a means of continual exactions and complaints which teaches a child to look upon his or her father as an enemy rather than an ally.

It will cause them to loose heart, to have their confidence and high spirit of youth broken. Consider,

Ephesians 6:4 (LSB)

4 Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

So the discipline and instruction must be tempered.

so much is said with so little wording regarding a parent’s responsibility to their child.

One Bible commentator puts it like this,

“Lest, by your continually finding fault with them, they should lose all courage, and despair of ever pleasing you. There is much sound sense and practical wisdom in this observation of the apostle. Children should not be flattered, but they should be encouraged. They should not be so praised as to make them vain and proud, but they should be commended when they do well. The desire of praise should not be the principle from which they should be taught to act, but they should feel that the approbation of parents is a desirable thing, and when they act so as to deserve that approbation, no injury is done them by their understanding it. He who always finds fault with a child; who is never satisfied with what he does; who scolds and frets and complains, let him do as he will, breaks his spirit, and soon destroys in the delicate texture of his soul all desire of doing well. The child in despair soon gives over every effort to please. He becomes sullen, morose, stupid, and indifferent to all the motives that can be presented to him, and becomes to a great extent indifferent as to what he does—since all that he does meets with the same reception from the parent”

Colossians 3:22–4:1 (LSB)

22 Slaves, in all things obey those who are your masters according to the flesh, not with eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but with integrity of heart, fearing the Lord.

23 Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men,

24 knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. Serve the Lord Christ.

25 For he who does wrong will receive the consequences of the wrong which he has done, and that without partiality.

1 Masters, show to your slaves what is right and fair, knowing that you too have a Master in heaven.

We need to note here that the vast majority of servants of all kinds at this time and period in the Greek and Roman world were slaves. Slaves were much more numerous than the free population and so they were undoubtedly numerous in the early church.

Whether you like it or not, this is Bible. While slavery was certainly undesirable, Paul’s goals did not include restructuring social institutions.

1 Corinthians 7:17 (LSB)

17 Only, as the Lord has assigned to each one, as God has called each, in this manner let him walk. And so I direct in all the churches.

1 Corinthians 7:21–24 (LSB)

21 Were you called while a slave? Do not worry about it. But if you are able also to become free, rather do that.

22 For he who was called in the Lord while a slave, is the Lord’s freedman. Likewise he who was called while free, is Christ’s slave.

23 You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of men.

24 Brothers, each one is to remain with God in that condition in which he was called.

With that said, please note that OT and NT slavery was very different from 18th 19th century slavery here in America. These two have very little resemblance to each other and I do not have the time to cover this here.

But the principle here is applied today to Christian employees. If you can be independently wealthy, thats freedom. For the rest of us the principle is to

obey your masters in the flesh.. your supervisors, mangers, CEO’s, VP’s who ever you work for and not just when they are watching because God is always watching. You do not work for them you work for God.

and the wrong you do while in service, you will have to suffer consequences for it, without partiality. Meaning you do not get a pass because you are a Christian.

The points that Paul has made here about motives, attitudes, and conduct of Christian slaves was remarkable in a master-slave society.

We do not live in such society and yet some us do such a poor job at our 9-5 jobs that you are better off not telling anyone you are a Christian because you put the body of Christ to open shame.

The final payday is coming from the Lord himself and he will reword according to your deeds.

But then he reminds supervisors, managers, CEO’s, those who have people working for them that they also work for someone higher. Pay people what is right, provide the rightful working conditions. You answer to a master as well.

Conclusion

This is the will of God for the Christian family

Children, see mom’s willing submission to Dad, who loves her with a kind of love that is out of this world.

They see both their parents firmly and lovingly discipline them according to the dictates of the Scriptures as they themselves learn the order structure of the family of absolute obedience to mom and dad.

They also witness how parents work hard and honestly for their wages without complaint because their work honors God who is above all. This is the will of God for you and for me.

When you pray, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, this is what that looks like.