New Identity, Renewed Relationships
Colossians • Sermon • Submitted
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I want to invite you to open your Bible’s to Colossians 3:18. We are continuing our series on the book of Colossians, where we are considering how the new identity we receive in Christ is better, firmer, and more comforting than any other identity we can find or make for ourselves. This morning we will consider how our new identity leads to renewed relationships.
So let’s give our attention now to the reading of God’s Word from Colossians 3, beginning in verse 18
Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them. Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged. 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. Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality.
Masters, treat your bondservants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven.
Well, after reading that passage, I’m sure many of you would agree that I’ve got some explaining to do. You’re right. On the surface, this appears to be a very cold, even regressive text for us to study. But in our time together this morning I really hope you will see the beauty of what is being said here and what this text means for our life in Christ with others. We’re going to break this down into three headings this morning: 1) New identity leads to 2)Renewed relationships in the household, and 3) in our callings. In each of these points we’re going to have to dig up a little bit of history in order to better understand this passage, but I hope you’ll agree that study leads to a deeper meaning of this passage. Let’s get started.
New Identity
New Identity
Like I said, if you were just doing a quick read of Colossians, you might be inclined to think this is a pretty cold, even culturally backwards text. So let me try and give you a little bit of context so we can see the beauty of what Paul is doing here.
Paul is actually using a very common form of rhetoric and exhortation in his day, which was known as the household codes. Every great philosopher - Aristotle, Seneca - had their take on the household codes, which were a set of exhortations on relationships that make up a household. These exhortations always came down to the same set of three relationships: husband and wife, father and children, master and slave. We see Paul using all three of these here, and he does so elsewhere in places like Ephesians 5 and 1 Timothy 5, and other.
The moral grounding for these household codes always came back to what was right according to nature. And so, for example, Aristotle said Slaves must obey their masters, because they are “living property” according to nature, who have been born into a law of nature to always live in subject to others.
But did you notice what Paul gave as his grounding for this household code? 7 times in these 9 verses there is a repetition of “in the Lord” language. Submit as it is fitting in the Lord, obey for this pleases the Lord, work fearing the Lord, unto the Lord, receiving from the Lord, serving the Lord, and knowing that you also have a Master in heaven.
In effect, Paul takes this well known household code and he Christianizes it. But not in the way that Christians today will make poor quality knock offs of pop music. You know what I’m talking about? Did you know there’s a “Christian” version of the cha cha slide? Look it up on youtube. It is terribly hilarious. That’s not what’s happening here.
What he’s saying, in other words, is “You say there is a household code according to nature. I’ll do you one better and give you a household code accord to Christ, the Lord of heaven and earth.” The grounding for this household code is not “according to nature” which probably often translated to “because I told you so”, but it is according to this new identity we have in Christ, this new relationship that we have with God in Christ.
Let me show you just quickly how transformative this is for us. Three things, quickly. First, “according to nature”, who do you think was head of everything in the household? That’s right, the man, the husband, the master. He was head of everything. According to nature, whatever he said, goes.
But when put our faith in Christ, who is the head of the household now? He is. Paul declared earlier in chapter 3 that If we have put our faith in Christ, then our old selves have died, and our life is now hidden with Christ in God. We have a new master now; not ourselves, but Christ. So any attempt to use this passage or any other to exercise authoritative, domineering leadership in the home, or in the workplace, or wherever, might be in accord with nature - our sinful nature - but it is not in accord with Christ. For this Christ, our Lord, came not to be served but to serve, and give his life as a ransom for many.
Second, consider the implications of this text on our sense of dignity. In verse 11, Paul taught us that here, in Christ, that which used to divide us is gone, for Christ is all, in all. There is no Greek or Jew, slave or free, and as he adds in Galatians 3, there is no male and female, but Christ is all, in all.
What this passage is teaching us is that those distinctions which we might use to put others down and exalt ourselves with, those divisions where there used to be power struggles between groups, those distinctions are gone. Christ is all, in all.
So while the household codes of Paul’s day were very one directional, with a man having complete authority over his household, what we see in Christ’s household are relationships of reciprocal love and service. These commands for husbands to love their wives, to not discourage their children, for masters to treat their slaves like equals, you wouldn’t find any of that in the household codes that were “according to nature.” But all of that changes in Christ.
What we see then is that dignity is not a zero sum transaction. It’s not like, more dignity for me means less dignity for you. More power for me means less power for you. More justice for me means less justice for you. Although that’s often how the world operates isn’t it?
But the teaching here is that all are equal in worth and dignity. We are worth so much to God that he didn’t spare his own Son but gave him up for us all. Far from fighting for dignity or power, we come to see that we all have an immense worth and dignity before God that we never could’ve fathomed. So when we come into a relationship with God through Christ, those old ways of fighting for advantage, fighting for power, fighting for dignity, those will begin to fade. And instead we start to treat others with equal dignity and worth, just as God created us.
Now, third, let me just drill this deeper into the heart and we’ll move on. As we consider this grand work of redemption in Christ, all that he’s accomplished for us, we are moved to awe and wonder. But you know, whenever I come to one of these household passages in the New Testament, I can’t help but be taken back to the scene of Jesus hanging on the cross in John 19. There, on his cross, where our sin was defeated, where the great cosmic powers of death were destroyed, where he paid for the sins of the whole world…who was most immediately on Jesus’ heart?
His mother.
So while bearing the agony of the sins of the whole world, including your sins, and my sins, he looks to his mother and says to John, “Behold your mother.” With some of his last breaths, we see the deep, deep love Jesus had for his own household, his mother. His heart went out to her, and in his final moments, he served her.
When you consider that love, when you meditate on that kind of love, what words come to mind for you? For me, it’s sweetness. Not sweet like candy in a candy store. I mean, sweetness like the first warm spring rain, where the smells and the comfort wash over you and through you.
Do you know this sweet love of Christ? Is this a love that you want to know? Look to Christ in faith this morning, and ask him for a deeper knowledge and experience of this love. If you have any questions about what it means to follow Christ and to receive this sweet love, I would love to talk to you more after the service, or if you’re watching online, feel free to reach out by email this week and we can set up a time to talk. It would be my greatest joy to tell you more about this sweet love of Christ, and what it can mean for you.
So, we’ve seen how Paul grounds his household code in this new identity we’ve received in Christ, and we’ve seen how transformative this new identity can be for our relationships. Let’s explore a little further how this new identity can lead to renewed relationships, beginning in our households.
Renewed relationships in our households
Renewed relationships in our households
The first two relationships Paul applies this household code to is that of husband and wife, and parents and children. The Scriptures teach us that love is not abstract, we don’t love the idea of people, or the idea of serving people. We love and serve the people who God has given right in front of us, beginning in our homes.
I know this very first verse, with the command for wives to submit to their husbands, can be very jarring to us. Let me set some historical context for us again.
First, I want you to keep in mind Christianity has, throughout the centuries, been very good for women. This is why, even today, global Christianity is predominantly made up of women. But in the early church this was especially so.
In a world where widows were often forgotten, the church came along and took them in, caring for their needs. In a society where infant girls were often discarded in the sewers if they were unwanted, Christians rescued them from death and adopted them into their families. In a culture where it was said that women belong to their fathers or husbands, the Scriptures say that husbands also belong to their wives, and ought to cherish them, sacrifice for them, and love them as Christ loved the church.
So, Christianity was and has been very good for women. We need to keep that in mind when we come to a verse like this. And, we need to recognize how tragic it is when we see examples of women not being highly valued in our churches today.
Second, in Christ’s household ethic, we see that representation matters. This is something I’ve been learning from many of my minority friends, particularly my Korean American friends. Over the last several years, we’ve seen many more intentional films being made with representation of women and minorities. We’ve also seen a number of foreign films receive recognition on a national stage here. When the 2019 South Korean movie Parasite won at the Golden Globes, director Bong Joon-ho accepted the award and famously said, “Once you overcome the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.”
What so many of my friends expressed to me about that moment is that it felt like their stories were finally being told, like they were finally being seen on screen in this country which they call home. You see, it matters to us that we are represented, that our lives, that our personhood, is seen by others.
In the other household ethics of Paul’s day, the only person who would’ve been directly addressed would’ve been the male leaders. But Paul flips all of that on its head. He not only sees women and addresses them directly, but he calls on men to a higher ethic of love and service. Here’s how one commentator says it:
Colossians and Philemon Literary Context
Because of this affirmation of the lordship of Christ, Paul can further address women (3:18), children (3:20), and slaves (3:22–25), who are members of the household often considered by Hellenistic philosophers not to be worthy of moral exhortation.4 Also in light of Christ’s lordship, Paul can focus on the duties of the male head of the household (3:19, 21; 4:1), an element often missing in Hellenistic household discussions.
So, Paul’s ethic here is a radical new way of being in relationship with one another. It is a call not to domineer and obey, but to love and serve.
So what does this mean for husbands and wives? The call for wives is not to simply flat out obey their husbands in everything. Obeying husbands in sin or abuse is not “fitting in the Lord”. But there is a special kind of love that wives have for husbands that is sweet and tender for their husbands, and their husbands alone.
And, there is a special kind of love husbands have for their wives, that is sweet and tender, for their wives and wives alone. Paul says this love is “not harsh” or literally “not bitter.”
You see, in every marriage in Christ’s household ethic, there is a dance of submission and service to one another. To say it another way, every marriage should be characterized by the kind of sweet love of Christ that he has shown to us and given us in our new life with him.
Keep in mind that what is set before us here is the ideal. But in the real world, we spouses sin against each other regularly. But when we anchor ourselves in Christ, his love and his forgiveness, we have the power to love, forgive, and serve one another. And that is a sweet and special love.
Paul also addressed the relationship between parents and children. You know, I shy away from sharing too many family illustrations from the pulpit, especially with my kids since they’re too young to get their permission. But I think when Felix is older he won’t mind knowing this was shared, because it puts me at fault before you all.
Not too long ago, I was at home with both of the boys while Neva was at work. I was in the middle of trying to feed Kaius a bottle and Felix really wanted me to try and find a certain song for him to play on Spotify. So he asked. and asked. And asked. And as he kept asking, Dad began to lose his patience. And so I just got to the end of myself, and I lost it on Felix. I turned to him and I yelled “Felix! ENOUGH!” And instantly his face just dropped, the lip came out, quivered, tears came to his eyes.
He was crushed. I crushed him. And in that moment I knew I had sinned against my son. I was harsh and discouraging. This is not how my heavenly Father has loved me. So I had to ask my son for forgiveness. And I had to ask God for forgiveness, and for his help to continue to change me and soften my heart so I can love my son more like how my God has loved me.
You see, Christ wants the relationships in our households to be marked by the same kind of love he has shown us. And this is only possible when our identity is in him, when we meditate on his love for us, knowing that he alone has the power to soften and change our hearts to love as he loves.
Renewed Relationships in our Callings
Renewed Relationships in our Callings
I’m using the word “calling” here intentionally. I mean it in a much broader sense than merely saying our work or our vocation, but I mean it really in the sense of whatever life circumstance or position we might find ourselves in.
Now, in many of your Bible’s, the word for “slave” in verse 22 is translated “bondservant.” And the reason why some translators will do that is because they’ll argue that slavery was very different in the ancient context, that slavery is too loaded of a term in our US context, so they use bondservant instead. I’m afraid that in our impulse to pass over an uncomfortable topic, we are actually missing the gospel depth and weight of what this text has to teach us.
So let’s talk a little bit about slavery in the ancient context and how it may or may not have been different with what we think of as slavery here in the US. Let’s see if this might illuminate for us more of what Paul is ministering to here.
Slavery in Paul’s context was different in that it wasn’t race based. That much is true. However, it was still an institution where people owned other people as property. And many thought that slaves were destined for such a role because of their nature; in other words, while not race based, slaves were still viewed as inferior to those who were free.
You may have heard that slavery in Paul’s context was more like indentured servitude. Certainly some slaves sold themselves into that position to pay their debts. But the majority of slaves were put in that position as a result of warfare, piracy, slave trade, kidnapping, infant exposure, natural reproduction of the existing slave population and the punishment of criminals to the mines or gladiatorial combat.
It was possible for slaves to be freed - and this was common enough that you could have groups like the “synagogue of the Freedmen” as we see in Acts 6, but we have no reason to think this was the norm, and it was most often done if it socially benefited the the slave owners. In fact, some historians argue that at several points in Greco-Roman history, the slave population outnumbered the free population.
Slavery in Paul’s context was often no kinder than it was in the US context. One first century BC Roman history said this, that the slaves in the mines were “all in chains, all kept at work continuously day and night … there is no indulgence, no respite … [they are] kept at their labor by the lash, until overcome by hardships, they die in torments. Their misery is so great that … death is welcomed as a thing more desirable than life.”
This is the institution and culture of slavery Paul was speaking into. It was often brutal, dehumanizing, and even deadly. Different from what we know as slavery in our more immediate history? Yes…and no. So how does Paul address slavery in his letters?
He condemns the practice of enslavement and kidnapping in 1 Timothy 1 - a practice that was considered a capital offense in the Old Testament. So let me be clear, on that one verse alone, the US chattel slave trade and much of the slave trade in Paul’s day stands condemned by Scripture.
He also advises slaves in 1 Corinthians 7 that if they are able to take advantage of freedom.
In his letter to Philemon, a man who owned a slave known as Onesimus, Paul asks him to receive and treat Onesimus as a brother, and *wink wink nudge nudge* do even more than I’m asking you here. In fact, if we even look at our text here, we can see Paul’s instruction to masters, to treat slaves as equals with justice and fairness.
Such instructions would kick out the legs from under the sinful institution of slavery. This is why the very first generation of Christian believers began to address the institution of slavery. Some Christians even willingly sold themselves into slavery in order to purchase the freedom of their brothers and sisters. Other Christians began to work through what it would look like for them to free slaves in their context.
The very idea of abolition through the centuries is a Christian one, based on the biblical teachings concerning slavery, the ethics of Christ’s life and gospel, and other ethical teaching such as the image of God in every human being. It is only because of the sinfulness of our hearts that abolition did not begin much earlier, and was not the dominant view of Christians.
So, protest and condemn slavery, yes; take advantage of your freedom, yes; change the hearts of slave owners, yes…but what about the mean time - which can be an awfully mean time - when slaves were still trapped in their circumstance, in this calling? What about us - when we are trapped, when we are being sinned against by people in authority over us, when we are stuck in a really difficult calling in life? What then?
What I want you to see here in verses 22-25 is that the gospel still has a good word for you. Even in that hard place, where you feel stuck, where you think there may be no hope: the Lord sees you, the Lord knows you, he has not forgotten you in any of your work or hardship.
What do you tell someone when they’re stuck in what seems like a hopelessly inescapable situation? Do you tell them to do their best, to keep going? “You can do it!” Or do you say to them, “The Lord has not forgotten you. He sees you. Set your heart on him, for he cares for you.” If it is the former, what happens when you fail? How patronizing is that? But if it is the latter, you have sweet comfort to take with you no matter how dark things may seem.
How can we live as those who can stand up for justice while living with hope in the face of injustice? Who can fight against suffering while living with hope in suffering? Only if we know the Lord Christ, who defeated sin and death, who is now seated on high and will one day return to set everything right. And - in the mean time - this same Lord has set his care, his heart, his attention on us.
That is where our hope comes from, that is where a sweetness comes from to transform our relationships no matter how difficult our callings or circumstance may be.
Are you cast low at present? Set your eyes on the Lord, the only approval you need is his, and you have it. His heart is set on you, and he has not forgotten you.
Conversely, looking at verse 1 of chapter 4, Do you have advantages that others do not have? Listen, when we begin to see everyone as Christ sees them - with equal dignity and worth; when our new identity takes the attention off of ourselves and becomes more about Christ; when we meditate on the sweetness of his love for us, we will see that any advantages given to us are not for ourselves, but they are for others. They are to give and seek justice and fairness on behalf of others, for there is no partiality, and the Lord in heaven sees and knows our work as well.
For we all have the same Master in heaven, in whom we share a new identity, grounded in his gracious, sweet love for us.
And there it is. Let Christ’s gospel and his new identity change the way you view yourself, and the way you view others, in the home, at work, and whatever your calling might be at present. The gospel changes everything, starting with those whom God has placed in our lives right in front of us. Think on these things. Let’s pray.