Colossians 3:18-4:1: Whatever You Do Applied

18 Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. 19 Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them. 20 Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. 21 Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged. 22 Bondservants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. 23 Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, 24 knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. 25 For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality.

4 Masters, treat your bondservants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven.

Context

As we get into our text for this morning it is important to understand the contextual background. Like each piece of this letter, it is open to misunderstanding when divorced from the broader flow.

In order to really wrestle with what Paul tells us in these verses we need to see that these instructions are inextricable from the broader theme of who Christ is, which is most clearly presented in Colossians 1:15-20:

15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

This is Paul’s worshipful climax, which leads into chapter 2’s theme

as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, 7 rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.

And as Drew explained last week this discipleship instruction to “walk in him” reaches into every area of life. Thus Paul writes in 3:17,

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.

In our passage this morning what we see is this command made concrete and practical as our human relationships are “set in the context of relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ, and any human authority is relativized by his ultimate authority” (Wilson, ESV Expository Commentary: Ephesians-Philemon).

Put differently, what Paul is telling us is a logical entailment from the Lordship of Christ.

If he is Lord, then he is Lord of all.

If he is Lord of all, then he is Lord over our interpersonal relationships.

If he is Lord of our interpersonal relationships, then he gets to establish the rules of engagement within them.

The long and short of it, then, is this. Are we going to be a people judged and governed through and through by the Bible—which 2 Timothy 3:15-17 declares to be a collection “sacred writings” that

are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

If this is going to govern us, if the breathed out by God writings of the Bible will set the standard for the life of godliness, then we must face both the message of the text and its goodness. God has not issued capricious or arbitrary commands. If he is good, then what his word teaches is good too.

I say that both so we can understand the importance of what is written here, and also, so we can understand that it is here for God’s glory and our joy. We should neither be disobedient, nor be begrudging in our obedience.

Wives and Husbands

Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.

We find ourselves in a tenuous position immediately. Now, there is some disarmament that can happen here, but the message of this text and the clear witness of scripture generally is deeply offensive to our culture and potentially to you.

After all, this is not some stand alone, one time suggestion from Paul. Colossians 3:18,

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

Ephesians 5:22,

English Standard Version Chapter 5

22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.

Nearly word for word repetition, but here Paul expands to give a bit more explanation of his rationale:

English Standard Version Chapter 5

23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

Notice the important connection here.

To reject that wives are to submit to their husbands is to simultaneously reject that the church is to submit to Christ.

As well we see this in 1 Corinthians 11:3:

English Standard Version Chapter 11

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

Here Paul ups the stakes and connects a wife’s submission to her husband as her head to Christ’s submission to God as his head.

Contrary, then, to some theologians’ opinions that disregard such texts as culturally grounded—the instruction that wives are to submit to husbands is present in Paul’s letters to cities with diverse and divergent cultures and is tied to the logic of unchangeable theological relations NOT to cultural circumstances. As such we need to do the important work of understanding the text and how—as I said before—was inspired for God’s glory, and our joy.

Let me try and knock off some of the rough edges our culturally trained, post-modern ears put on the text.

Smoothing Edges: What It Does NOT Teach

Don’t Submit to Men Generally

First, notice that the words, in each text I read the concept of submission is couched terms of marriage. This text does not teach that women are to submit to men generally. There is no patriarchalism here.

Rather it says wives are to submit to their own husbands. Married women are to submit to the men they are married too.

To clarify, one commentator writes,

The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon Household Rules (3:18–4:1)

Women who were single, widowed, or divorced and of independent means could evidently function as heads of their own households, as in the case of Lydia (Acts 16:14–15), Phoebe, the first named “deacon” in Christian history and patron of the church at Cenchreae (Rom. 16:1–2), Chloe (1 Cor. 1:11), and presumably Nympha in Colossae itself (see on 4:15). The concern here is primarily for the household unit (Aletti, Épître aux Colossiens 251), with the implication that for Christians, too, its good ordering was fundamental to well-ordered human and social relationships.

Complementarianism Does Not Demean Women

Furthermore, teaching that a wife is to submit to her husband does not mean she is less in dignity or personhood. The theological position I am articulating here is called complementarianism, and it teaches that men and women are ontologically (being or essence) equal and teleologically (created purpose, intended design) complementary. This is drawn from Genesis 1-3:

26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

27 So God created man in his own image,

in the image of God he created him;

male and female he created them.

28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Notice the equality here. Man and woman created equally in the image of God.

Yet do not miss the importance of naming. In Jewish-Hebrew cultural naming is of deep significance. While there is equality, there is an a disjunction in that man and woman are both named he the Hebrew word “ADAM” or “man.” Mankind becomes the moniker for both sexes as an homage to God’s design for male headship.

This is fleshed out a bit more in Genesis 2

15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

God creates man and gives him the explicit purpose of working and keeping (or protecting) the Garden. We might summarize this combination as man being given the task of stewardship of the garden for its flourishing.

18 Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”

But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. 21 So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.

Here we find the rationale for the creation of women (generally), but wives in particular. The man was created for relationship and needed help in his task.

Again, note how woman is taken from the side, not the head—symbolic of ruling—nor the leg or foot—symbolic of subservience. This is another image of the equality within teleological diversity.

Finally Genesis 3 shows us how the curses placed upon man and woman are directly targeted at their created purpose.

16 To the woman he said,

“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;

in pain you shall bring forth children.

Your desire shall be contrary to your husband,

but he shall rule over you.”

17 And to Adam he said,

“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife

and have eaten of the tree

of which I commanded you,

‘You shall not eat of it,’

cursed is the ground because of you;

in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;

18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;

and you shall eat the plants of the field.

19 By the sweat of your face

you shall eat bread,

till you return to the ground,

for out of it you were taken;

for you are dust,

and to dust you shall return.”

Wives created to help their husbands fulfill his intended design are told that their part in that (childbearing) will now be a struggle and their temptation will be to usurp the husband’s role.

Men are told work or labour will now be toil. Work and labour are words that describe effort and production, toil is a word used to imply inefficiency, frustration, futility, and resistance in work or labour.

If you still harbor hesitation about this teaching, think about the Christ/God comparison from 1 Corinthians. Does such a relationship demean Christ? I think not.

Listen to Paul’s words in Philippians 2:

4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.

Here we see, Jesus, fully and completely God has equal dignity and worth as God the Father and God the Spirit. They exist together as one Trinitarian God. Yet, Jesus understanding his role as the Son willingly humbled himself to his Father’s will.

As well, did you hear the result of such submission—God exalts Christ’s name.

Author and wife of retired-pastor, Timothy Keller, Kathy Keller writes in The Meaning of Marriage:

If it was not an insult on the dignity and divinity (but rather lead to the greater glory) of the second person of the Godhead to submit himself, and assume the role of a servant then how could it possibly injure me to be asked to play out the “Jesus role” in my marriage?

So this text is not saying wives are less than their husbands.

Not a Cover for Abuse nor Subservience

Finally, this text is not advocating a harsh subjugation or mindless obedience to an abusive or ungodly husband. Rather, Paul, it seems, wanted to advocate the creation order that God intentionally endowed the family with, but wanted to do so gently when it came to the wife.

The technical grammatical explanation is that Paul avoided both the imperative structure (meaning the word “submit” is not a command) and employed the middle voice in this brief sentence (meaning it was something that must be done for one’s self.

Which is to say that Paul wanted to communicate that the wife should “make a deliberate decision, to choose to act in a certain way” toward her husband. This is effected as well in that wives are addressed first. If the wife is the submissive agent why give her primacy of place in the household ordering? To indicate the importance and dignity that such a decision is. The wife is the linchpin in the operations of a godly family. Her submission is critical to godly function of the family, and she must willingly choose it or it will mean nothing.

The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Volume 11: Ephesians through Philemon a. The Wife’s Duty to the Husband (3:18)

The wife’s submission is never to be forced on her by a demanding husband; it is the deference that a loving wife, conscious that her home (just as any other institution) must have a head, gladly shows to a worthy and devoted husband.

Verses such as this one are misused in the most egregious possible way when they are made cover and rationale for abuse. As we will see in a moment, true submission is “fitting in the Lord” because it is an honor paid to someone striving to give the agape love of the Lord.

So What Does It Mean to Submit?

The singular duty assigned to the wife in this passage appears to be an attitude and disposition that recognizes appropriate authority, that willingly takes second place and defers to another.

In other words, the wife lays down and foregoes demanding her will, yielding to the husband’s choice in matters of dispute. How a family will be supported, where a family will live, how children will be schooled, and other such decisions fall first to the husband.

Consider Jesus’ own submission to his head:

English Standard Version Chapter 26

39 And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” 40 And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping.

English Standard Version Chapter 26

42 Again, for the second time, he went away and prayed, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.”

Jesus gives God heartfelt honest, but humble feedback on his desires in relation to what God has called him too.

Husbands

Having given those instruction Paul pivots to husbands.

19 Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them.

Seems simple enough at first glance. But we can unpack these and see the weightiness they each carry.

Love Your Wives

Let’s start with “love your wives,” which by the way is an imperative. So tonally we should feel a shift in how Paul is talking to wives as opposed to their husbands. This is a command. Which tells us something about the concept of love. You can be commanded to love.

Paul is going to challenge several false beliefs about the nature of love our culture has.

First, the source of love is addressed. To our culture the command to love is non-sensical because we see love as sourced in emotion and passion. But from a biblical perspective love flows not from feelings alone, but from the will. We choose to love. As such we can be commanded to love.

Another aspect of confusion for our culture is the nature of love. What do we mean when we talk about love? Returning to Ephesians 5, we get a bit more explanation for the nature of love.

English Standard Version Chapter 5

25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 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. 28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.

Since these verses deserve a sermon series unto themselves let’s consider just one question prompted by this passage

A husband is to love as Christ loved the church. Rhetorical question: How did Christ love the church? I think the answer has to be that Christ loved the church enough to live for her and die for her.

So assuming as many scholars believed, that Jesus lived to be thirty three (or so) and that the Bible teaches he lived a sinless life—for God’s glory and also for the salvation of the church. That means...

12,045 days of sinlessness

289,080 hours of life lived without ever giving into temptation.

17,344,800 minutes of righteous living and obedience to God’s commands.

1,040,688,000 seconds of loving God with all his heart, all his soul, all his mind, and all his strength.

More than that—which sounds exhausting when considering some fraction of that life of obedience was endured at the first hand tempting of the literal demonic enemy, the Devil—that is just the living for.

Christ also loved the Church enough to die for her. Consider the events of the evening before Christ’s death all the way through.

In the Garden of Gethsemane he experienced so much stress and anxiety about the coming cross and the burden of the world’s sins—past, present, and future—that the capillaries in his forehead broke and he literally sweat blood.

He was arrested, beaten, scourged, and forced to carry the dirty, bloody wooden cross bar on his raw back to the place of his own execution.

Then three nails through highly sensitive and nerve-ending rich flesh.

The jerk of the cross as it fell into place.

Hours on the cross, hanging, and struggling for air. Only receiving relief when leveraging your body weight on the railroad tie sized nails which were drive—with no special precision or concern between his ulna and radius bones.

Let us not read such words lightly—Christ gave himself for the church. His body. So too are husbands are to love their wives thusly.

Submission revisited

Revisiting the concept of submission do you see what Paul is establishing here?

This is a regime in which submission can be joyfully given. Is there a wife in here who would not hesitate to entrust themselves entirely to their husbands if they knew that their husband loved them with such self-giving love.

Do Not Be Harsh

Moving on,

do not be harsh with them

This instruction appears to be something Paul saw as a particular cultural issue in Colossae. Apparently husbands in Colossae had tendencies to be harsh. But consider the relevance and modern nature of this instruction.

One need not be a Bible scholar to understand the pattern no marriage begins with plans of bitterness, distance, or divorce. Yet...

Bitterness creeps in remarkably easy.

In little time it justifies itself, declaring “I have a right to be bitter because… fill in the blank”

Then a wife disappoints. Maybe she limits his career ambitions or is not as sexually available as he had hoped. Maybe he has unrealistic ideals for his wife, if so there is a good chance such ideals are tied to feelings of inadequacy.

This all sets the stage for tiredness and ill-temper to find lightning quick expression in harsh words.

We can flip this command on its head by looking to 1 Peter 3:7:

husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.

A Word to Singles

Let me say a brief word to singles at this point. If you are not ready to put in the requisite effort to submit in such a way, nor to love in such a way, then you are emphatically not prepared for marriage. The message of Colossians 3:18-19 for the single is, if you desire to be married, seek to embody these characteristics before marriage and you will prepare yourself to live them out in marriage.

Expected Push Back

Before moving on, it should be said that my assumption at this point is some of you are uncomfortable. You, wives, may not have submitted as you ought. And us, husbands, even the best of us, have certainly not loved with such Christlike love.

Maybe some of you are thinking something along the lines of, “well sure, but if you knew my wife” or “if you knew my husband.” I would simply and humbly submit that this passage lacks any apparent rationale that our spouses’ failure release us from this command.

Paul does not say “wives submit to Christlike husbands.” Nor does he write, “husbands, love your submissive wives.” No he tell us each our duty without reference to the disposition and attitude of our significant other.

In other words, husbands love your wives and do not be harsh with them regardless of whether they submit to you. Win and woe them with the love of Christ.

Wives, submit to your husbands even when they fail to love you as Christ loved the church. As Peter writes,

wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, 2 when they see your respectful and pure conduct

Similarly, we should keep that in mind as we turn to children and fathers. What we are about to read in the child-father dynamic is not dependent on anything reciprocation or mutual agreement. All these commands are hung on only and completely on the Lordship of Christ.

All caveats about abusive relationships given.

Outside of such abuse, a wife’s failure to submit, a husband’s failure to love, a child’s failure to obey, and a father’s failure to not provoke are signs of rebellion against Christ—our crucified and resurrected king.

Children and Fathers

Children

Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.

Being a nerd about words, I found it immensly interesting during my study of this passage to discover that the word for obey used here, literally translates “to listen under” as in under the authority of. That is because obedience is fundamentally listening which leads to a desired action. Children are to listen and obey.

In addition, take note of the expansiveness of the command. If Paul just said “children obey your parents” we all know (because we were all at one point children under authority) children would look for loop holes to disobey. We would find exceptions to the rule or realms of life obedience does not extend too. Paul gives no quarter to such ideas. Obey your parents in everything.

Notice that obedience to parents “pleases the Lord.” When you run into something that you do not want to obey in, ask yourself “do I want to please the Lord.”

But you don’t know my dad and mom!

Maybe true. But is Christ Lord? Do you want to please him?

But my parents aren’t Christians!

Then don’t obey them if they contradict God, otherwise obey them out of obedience to Christ.

There is no quarter for disobedience outside of physical abuse or contradiction of the explicit commands of God—which means commands, callings, and convictions found in the scriptures—not merely our varied and subjective applications of them.

Fathers

Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.

This command breaks my heart.

Maybe because it provokes the clearest mental image.

Maybe because I can recall the burden of discouragement from times I have felt it.

Discouragement has a feel, like struggling in quicksand.

Discouragement has a posture doesn’t it. Curved back, head down.

Discouragement has a place too. It resides in corners, out of the way. The discouraged person, just wants to be left alone, not bothered, not further pressed down.

Dads, think about your kids—your sons and daughters. What do you want for them? What are your hopes and desires for them? What kind of men and women do you want them to be?

My guess is discouragement is not in that picture.

The world is harsh enough to discourage, so you best be a refuge, an encouragement, your arms and your words should be sources of comfort from which your children find refreshment to return to the battle that is existence in this fallen world.

So, simply put, do not provoke.

You should know that this means you will have to prepare yourself—if you have not already—for the sinful hearts of your own children. They will rebel. You must not respond in kind. You need to resist the ways of the world which meet rebellion with tyranny. You must meet rebellion with the sacrificial love of Christ.

But my kids drive me crazy.

Yes, but Christ is Lord.

But my kids won’t obey.

Understood, how does God the Father respond to your disobedience?

English Standard Version Chapter 34

6 The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 7 keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty,

I too need much work here. I am grateful that I have so long still with my children because I have much work to do here.

Servants and Masters

In concluding Paul moves to servants and masters. We may be tempted to skip over this portion as not relevant to us, but it would be wrong to ignore it all together. After all, Paul spends double the amount of words on this relationship as he does on the previous duos.

As well there are important points to make here.

First, contrary to some critics of the Bible the use of servant or slave language here is not either (a) a reference to the sort of chattel slavery early America had (b) nor does it defend the institution of servitude.

In fact, in a letter that is often paired with Colossians, Paul addresses a member of the Colossian church named Philemon. When he does so he speaks to him of Onesimus—Philemon’s bondservant who may have illegally by ancient standards escaped Philemon’s service—and Paul instructs Philemon

might have him back forever, 16 no longer as a bondservant but more than a bondservant, as a beloved brother—especially to me, but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.

17 So if you consider me your partner, receive him as you would receive me. 18 If he has wronged you at all, or owes you anything, charge that to my account. 19 I, Paul, write this with my own hand: I will repay it—to say nothing of your owing me even your own self. 20 Yes, brother, I want some benefit from you in the Lord. Refresh my heart in Christ.

21 Confident of your obedience, I write to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say.

Paul is unequivocally anti-slavery, consider 1 Corinthians 7:21

English Standard Version Chapter 7

21 Were you a bondservant when called? Do not be concerned about it. (But if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity.) 22 For he who was called in the Lord as a bondservant is a freedman of the Lord.

and 1 Timothy 1:9-10