Colossians 3:18-4:1--Rules for Christian Households

Colossians 3:18-4:1
English Standard Version

Rules for Christian Households
​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.
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4 Masters, treat your bondservants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven.

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This should sound very familiar to what we studied in the book of Ephesians.  There is a created order to things and it is good for us a Christians to respect the established order that God has created, even in situations where the authority that has been put over us is not good and godly because all authority is derived from God's authority and it is up to God to establish and put down authorities--it is our job to submit to those authorities as long as they don't command us to commit sin.  (See Romans 13:1-7).

Specifically, Paul is addressing the structure and order of the family and work units here.  Wives are to submit to their husbands because God will hold the husband responsible in the way that He held Adam, not Eve, responsible in the Garden of Eden.  We are told throughout the Scripture that it is because of Adam's sin that all of humanity fell and it is Adam that God talks to first, then Eve, and then the serpent.  This is the order of things--not that women are in any way less valuable, but that God holds the men to a higher standard and it is their duty to teach God's nature and Law and the gospel to their wives and children.  Wives are to submit to their husbands to respect this established order and to show the proper relationship between Christ (the Bridegroom) and His Church (His Bride).  We are supposed to be submissive to our Lord and Savior.

Husbands have the difficult task of loving their wives as Christ loves the Church--with such a great and sacrificial love that He died for the Church.  Paul also commands husbands to not be harsh (I believe this refers to what we'd call "abusive" behaviors) because Christ does not treat us that way and our marriages are supposed to be representations to the world of our relationship with Christ in an eternal covenant  Marriages is one of the closest things that we can use to explain the covenant of redemption to the world because it is the man who chooses the woman (God chooses us), the relationship is meant to be reproductive (we are supposed to go and make disciples of all nations so that they too may become children of God), the bond is unconditional as you are not supposed to let anything separate what God has brought together and in the same way nothing can separate us from the love of God, but unlike marriage here on earth, not even death can stop the vows.  Marriages to each other here end with the death of the wife or the husband, but since we will live eternally with Jesus, the covenant of redemption (the gospel) is forever.

Children are to be obedient to their parents in the same way that we as children of God are to be obedient to God the Father.  Notice here that children are only to be obedient to their own parents.  There is no command here for children to be obedient to those whom God has not given authority and charge over--that duty, responsibility and privileges' belongs only to that child's parents.  Some people need to hear this--the child needs to obey the voice of their parents in the same way that the sheep need to listen to and obey the voice of its Shepherd and it should not be odd to us that they do not listen to other voices.

Fathers are commanded to not provoke their children to wrath (I think again this has to do with abuse, but I think this also has to do with showing favoritism and being absent from their lives, and breaking promises to them).  We see so many examples of bad fathers in the Bible, that we should have learned how to do it right by now, but we still make the same mistakes.  It is important as fathers that Christians admit when they have done wrong to their children and apologize and ask for forgiveness.  This teaches the children that you realize that this thing that you did was not a good reflection of God and what it means for Him to be Father to you.  So many people today have a wrong idea of who God is because they had no father in their household, the father in their household was absent or selfish, or the father they had was abusive or in some other way showed that he didn't love or didn't want them as his child.  Children are not dumb and pick up on all these cues that their fathers give them (sons and daughters base their identity and their view of their value and learn things like ethics and morality mostly from their early years with their fathers).  One of the reasons our society is so messed up today is because of homes without fathers and homes without good fathers.  Much has been said on this topic by people like Dr. James Dobson and the two ministries he's been most closely associated with over the years (Focus on the Family and Family Talk).  Parents are not going to get it perfect, but children are responsible to obey their parents as if they are obeying the Lord because God has put the child's parents in authority over them and will hold the parents responsible (and anyone else responsible) for causing any child to sin.  Jesus says it would be better for the person who does this to have a millstone tied around his neck and cast into the sea.  I think that's the only "exception" to this rule--as we get older and understand sin, we should be willing to say that we will not sin and will face the consequences of that decision from our parents if they command us to sin.  It is hotly debated if there is ever an "expiration date" to this commandment, but I think the answer is no--other than we know that marriage is described as "for this reason will a man leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife and the two shall become one flesh."  This could be interpreted as meaning that the man is then no longer under the authority of his parents and they are not responsible at that point to tell him how to husband his wife or father his children.  Everything he needed to know about those things should have been taught and "caught" by observation up to that point.

Paul then addresses what the passage calls "bondservants" though we've discussed already that this is really the word "slave" and that English versions of the Bible avoid translating this word as "slave" whenever possible.  We don't have the same kind of system today as slavery is illegal in most (but not all) of the world and much of the slavery that's left in the world is not anything like the slavery that Paul was talking about here.  However, let's not ignore what is said here because perhaps there are other relationships in our lives where these principles could be applied.  This is definitely a relationship outside of the regular family structure (though maybe still within a household here) where someone has ownership of you, authority over you and is responsible for your well-being and what happens to you (they are legally culpable before man and morally culpable before God).  Again, it's hard to think of something quite like that in today's society, but we see in this that God has instituted every system of authority and that Christians are to submit to the authorities placed over them because they are really submitting to God in doing this.  Even if their master is oppressive or abusive, they are to trust God with dealing with the heart of their master and they are to live in a way where the gospel is lived out so that their master understands that there is something different about them.  They are to do their work as if doing it unto the Lord and not as people-pleasers--especially not like the people of the world that only perform well when the eye of their master is upon them.  Do you know anyone like this at work who only performs well when they know they are being evaluated or are under review?  If you have a good work ethic all day every day, you need not live in fear of being put under review directly or indirectly as your character will speak for itself and those that try to speak against you will have their words fall on deaf ears as people will know believe the lies of those that are jealous or even worse seek to make trouble for you because they know you are a Christian.

In all these things we should remember that God sees all and will give to everyone what he deserves.  To the one who is a faithful slave, and obedient child, a good father and and/or a good husband, God will give that person eternal rewards.  But for the one who is lawless we see the words that Jesus says God will speak to them in Matthew 7, "Depart from me you who practice lawlessness.  I never knew you."  We cannot be saved by Jesus and be obstinate against the authority that is the Law of God.  That is not to say that the Law saves us, but those who love God will love His commandments and will keep them (Jesus said this many times in the Gospels and we see it over and over again in Psalm 119 and other places).  That's not legalism, that's saying that changed hearts lead to changed actions and if we are becoming more and more like Christ than our actions will conform more and more to the Law of God which is the expression of the nature and character of God because God's nature and character are in perfect alignment with His Law.  Jesus could not violate the Law of the Lord because it was against His very nature to do so, and it should be against our nature to do so as well--and we should never abuse our positions of authority to order others to violate God's Law.  If we do, then we will answer to God for that some day.

Last, but not least, we carry some of this over into the next chapter to say that earthly masters should treat their earthly slaves in the way they want their Master (Christ) to treat them because they are also slaves of God.  We all have equal status when it comes to God--all of us are the lowest of the slaves, but it is God who chooses to give us status and responsibility that we don't deserves so that we are made adopted sons that are co-heirs and that we are charged to be ambassadors of the kingdom of God.  There is only one crown prince and that is Jesus, but oh how great it is to be a son of the King of Heaven and know that our Father is able to do exceedingly, abundantly above all we could ask or imagine.  Our duty in the here and now is to submit to every authority that He puts over us and to correctly exercise authority which He gives us over others and His creation so as to glorify Him our actions and point others to the gospel by our words and our actions.