Relationships That Honor God

Colossians 3:18-4:1

Christianity is founded on great theological concepts. When you think about Christianity, you think about things like grace, the love of God, redemption, the sacrificial death of Christ, and his resurrection from the dead. These, and the many more great and high doctrines of Christianity are enough to occupy our thinking for many lifetimes. Can you ever really understand grace? Will you ever be able to know the depth of the love of God? Do you understand the miracle of the new birth?

We could study our entire lifetime and still never be able to do much more than scratch the surface of these great and central truths of Christianity. Even so, these things need to be studied diligently. The more we come to understand about these truths, the more satisfying will be our relationship to Jesus Christ.

There is another side to Christianity, however. While we need to do everything in our power to understand more about Christianity, we must also do everything in our power to live out Christianity in practical ways. You see, Christianity is not merely a philosophy; it is a way of life. We must live Christianity.

Colossians is one of the books Paul wrote. In most of his writings he follows a pattern in which he deals with the great theological truths he is teaching in the first part of the book and with the practical application of those truths in the second part of the book. Colossians is no exception.

Our text today comes from the practical section of the book. The great apostle is showing us three areas where "the rubber meets the road." These three areas are where we have contact with opportunities to show the difference Christianity has made in our lives. They are areas almost all of us have to deal with: our marriage, our home, and our work. You may be dealing with all three.

As we look at these areas, you need to ask yourself some important questions. Does your relationship with Christ make a difference in these relationships? What difference does it make? Paul gives us some practical instruction that will enable us to have relationships that honor God.

Have you noticed that marriage has been disparaged in our society? It has been and continues to be. Many are saying that marriage is no longer a viable institution for our contemporary cultural patterns of living.

When you look at the statistics that show that half of all marriages end in divorce, you may be tempted to think that they are right. Something certainly has gone wrong in marriage. Yet, people still get married!

People get married because marriage fulfills a need in our lives. We have a need for companionship. God noticed this need in the Garden of Eden. He said that was not good that man should be alone and so he created a woman for the man. We need to remember that God instituted marriage. God performed the first wedding ceremony. God gave the first bride away.

Marriage is God's idea. God gave us our spouse for a reason. And God has given us instructions for marriage. The problem usually is that we are not willing to take God's advice. Instead of doing things God's way, we do things our way, and usually mess them up.

The first instruction here is given to wives. They are told to submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. There are many today, even in the church, who do not like this passage. Can you imagine reading this verse to a group of radical feminists? You would probably be shouted down. But whether they like it or not, there it is, in the inspired Word of God.

The question we really need to ask is one of definition. What does this mean? Many people have misread this passage of Scripture, interpreting it to mean that men have a right to run roughshod over their wives and to treat them as less than equals.

Paul's counsel on the relations between husband and wife is interpreted by some to mean that the wife must knuckle under and do homage to her husband, who ascends some marital throne. This kind of relationship was lampooned on the legendary Archie Bunker television series. In one episode, Edith thought that she would experiment with fancier cuisine and fixed her husband a soufflé instead of his regular bacon and eggs. Needless to say, Archie turned up his nose at something he couldn't pronounce and demanded his bacon and eggs. Daughter Gloria watched with disbelief as her mother dumped the soufflé in the garbage and scurried back and forth trying to appease her husband's wrath. Gloria snarled indignantly: "Submitting to him... that's what she is doing. Submitting to her ruler... her lord and master." Archie responds, "Ain't that a nice way of putting it?" [David A. Garland, The NIV Application Commentary: Colossians and Plilemon (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998) p. 262]

It should be obvious that Archie's idea of submission is not what is being advocated here. The Bible never teaches that a husband has the right to boss his wife around and otherwise treat her like she is some sort of servant.

We need to notice two important things about this passage. The first should be obvious. It is addressed to the wives. It is not addressed to the husbands. This is no small matter. What usually happens is that the husband reads the instruction addressed to his wife and reminds her when she is not living up to it (in his view). Is it illegal to read someone else's mail? Well, it should be illegal in this case. Husbands, this is not written to you.

The second thing we should notice is that submission here is a voluntary thing. In other words, it must come from the one doing the submitting. Submission cannot be forced. If it is, it is not submission –– it is slavery.

What God is saying is that wives need to make a choice to allow their husbands to be the spiritual leader that God desires him to be. When wives submit to the godly leadership of their husbands, they become the support and encouragement that he needs to be the man, husband, and father God created him to be.

Husbands are addressed next. To you husbands, God instructs you to love your wives and do not be harsh with them. This is the part that is addressed to you. Again, this is not addressed to the wives. It is not their mail. It is for your eyes. This is your responsibility regarding your marriage.

It is interesting that what God is saying to husbands probably came as a surprise to many in that culture. Because we live in a different cultural situation today, it is hard for us to understand how different was the status of women when this letter was written. William Barclay gives us some insight on this matter:

Under Jewish law a woman was a thing, the possession of her husband, just as much as his house or his flocks or his material goods. She had no legal rights whatever. For instance, under Jewish law, a husband could divorce his wife or any cause, while a wife had no rights whatever in the initiation of divorce; and the only grounds on which a divorce might be awarded her were if her husband developed leprosy, became an apostate or ravished a virgin. In Greek society a respectable woman lived a life of entire seclusion. She never appeared on the streets alone, not even to go marketing. She lived in the women's apartments and did not join her menfolk even for meals. From her there was demanded complete servitude and chastity; but her husband could go out as much as he chose and could enter into as many relationships outside marriage as he liked without incurring any stigma. Under both Jewish and Greek laws and custom all the privileges belong to the husband and all the duties to the wife. [William Barclay, The Letters to the Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians, rev. ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975), p. 161]

This was the plight of women in that society. And if, as Barclay states, "all the privileges belong to the husband and all the duties to the wife" then husbands were not used to hearing about their duties in the marriage relationship. That is why this instruction would come as a surprise to some husbands.

Yet, the command is crystal clear. The husbands are to love their wives. They are to treat them with gentleness, not harshness. These commands were given for a very good reason. Marriage was and is a picture of the relationship of Christ and the church. We see this in a similar passage in Ephesians 5:22-33 (NIV).

22 Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. ²³ For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. ²⁴ Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. ²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her ²⁶ to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, ²⁷ and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. ²⁸ In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. ²⁹ After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— ³⁰ for we are members of his body. ³¹ "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." ³² This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. ³³ However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

The way that we relate to one another in marriage is the way that the church relates to Christ and Christ to the church. This is why wives are told to submit to their husbands and husbands are told to love their wives. And as for husbands, the responsibility goes far deeper, as we see in Ephesians. There husbands are told to love their wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. This is a deep love, a true love, a complete love, and a sacrificial love. When a husband loves his wife like this, he will have a wife who desires to submit to him.

Remember, read your own mail. And then do it. The question is this: who will start first? Here's the answer. You start!

He began his life with all the classic handicaps and disadvantages. His mother was a powerfully built, dominating woman who found it difficult to love anyone. She had been married three times, and her second husband divorced her because she beat him up regularly. The father of the child I'm describing [the writer is Dr. James Dobson] was her third husband; he died of a heart attack a few months before the child's birth. As a consequence the mother had to work long hours from his earliest childhood.

She gave him no affection, no love, no discipline, and no training during those early years. She even forbade him to call her at work. Other children had little to do with him, so he was alone most of the time. He was absolutely rejected from his earliest childhood. When he was thirteen years old a school psychologist commented that he probably didn't even know the meaning of the word love. During adolescence, the girls would have nothing to do with him and he fought with the boys.

Despite a high IQ, he failed academically, and finally dropped out during his third year of high school. He thought he might find acceptance in the Marine Corps; they reportedly built men, and he wanted to be one. But his problems went with him. The other Marines laughed at him and ridiculed him. He fought back, resisted authority, and was court-martialed and thrown out of the Marines with an undesirable discharge. So there he was–– a young man in his early twenties, absolutely friendless. He was small and scrawny in stature. He had an adolescent squeak in his voice. He was balding. He had no talent, no skill, no sense of worthiness.

Once again he thought he could run from his problems, so he went to live in a foreign country. But he was rejected there also. While there he married a girl who had been an illegitimate child and brought her back to America with him. Soon she began to develop the same contempt for him that everyone else displayed. She bore him two children, but he never enjoyed the status and respect a father should have. His marriage continued to crumble. His wife demanded more and more things that he could not provide. Instead of being his ally against the bitter world, as he hoped, she became his most vicious opponent. She could outfight him, and she learned to bully him. On one occasion she locked him in the bathroom as punishment. Finally she forced him to leave.

He tried to make it on his own, but he was terribly lonely. After days of solitude, he went home and literally begged her to take him back. He surrendered all pride. Despite his meager salary, he brought her $78.00 as a gift, asking her to take it and spend it any way she wished. But she belittled his feeble attempt to supply the family's needs. She ridiculed his failure. At one point he fell on his knees and wept bitterly as the darkness of his private nightmare enveloped him.

Finally, in silence he pleaded no more. No one wanted him. No one had ever wanted him.

The next day he was a strangely different man. He arose, went to the garage, and took down a rifle he had hidden there. He carried it with him to his newly acquired job at a book storage building. And from a window on the third-floor that building, shortly after noon, November 22, 1963, he sent two shells crashing into the head of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Lee Harvey Oswald, the rejected, unlovable failure, killed a man who, more than any other man on earth, embodied all the success, beauty, wealth, and family affection which he lacked. In firing that rifle, he utilized the one skill he had learned in his entire, miserable lifetime. [James Dobson, Hide or Seek (Old Tappan, NJ: Revell, 1974), pp. 9, 11; as cited in R. Kent Hughes, Colossians and Philemon (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1989), pp. 121-122]

Relationships with our children are more important than we think. In the home we lay a foundation for all of life. We need to lay a good foundation that will serve our children well throughout their whole lives.

There are two primary needs in the home–– love and discipline. Both go together. One without the other will not do. Children are told to obey their parents. The connotation of the word in the original Greek is to "listen under." In other words, children need to learn to listen, really listen, to their parents in order to know how to obey them. It is through that obedience they will gain wisdom, guidance, and knowledge. It is through that obedience that they will learn responsibility and be protected from the pitfalls their parents can help them avoid.

On the parent's end, although addressed to fathers, we are admonished not to embitter our children lest they become discouraged. In other words, we need to avoid being unreasonable, fault finding, and inconsistent in our dealing with our children. These are the kinds of things that frustrate them. Rather, we must show love to them and encourage them in every way. Our discipline must function in the context of our love.

Perhaps the best way in which we can apply this passage is to our lives at work. Paul addressed the issue of slaves and masters because it was a reality that he could neither change nor ignore. In fact, most working people were slaves or servants of some sort, and the remainder were masters.

It is estimated by some that there were 60 million slaves in the Roman Empire. Some historians have concluded that approximately half of the entire population was slaves or servants. You could become a slave or a servant in a number of ways. Conquered people became slaves. Other people who may have acquired a debt became servants in order to work off the debt. Almost all work was carried out by slaves or servants. Some of the jobs in our society that are carried out by our most educated and respected people, in that society were carried out by slaves. They were the doctors and teachers in that day.

As we apply this passage to our work, we see that we all fall in the two categories Paul addresses–– employee and employer, or worker and supervisor. So, what are his instructions to us?

As one who works for another, we are to do our work not only when their eye is on you and to win their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord. In other words, we're not to be people pleasers. And we're not to slack off in our work when no one is around. We are to work hard all the time.

We're also told that whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men. Even in our jobs, we are serving the Lord. We are not merely serving our earthly supervisor–– it is the Lord Christ you are serving.

When we work with this attitude, we will not only be good workers, we will be a testimony to our employers of the honesty, integrity, character, and value of a Christian employee. We read in Titus 2:9-10 (NIV): "Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them, and not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted, so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive."

If we are an employer or supervisor, we are to deal with our employees in a manner that is right and fair. The reason for this is that we also have a Master in heaven. One day we will stand before him and give an account of how we treated those under our supervision.

The key to winning at work is to remember the Lord. Remember you are working for the Lord in all that you do. Whether you are an employee or an employer, whether you are a worker or a supervisor, or both, you are doing what you do knowing that the eye of your Lord in heaven is upon you.

In our relationships in our marriage, in our home, and in our work, we are to honor God. This is practical stuff, but it is the stuff of life. This is where serving the Lord becomes real and it is the place of our greatest influence for Christ. 

Copyright © 2002 J. David Hoke. This data file is the sole property of the copyright holder and may be copied only in its entirety for circulation freely without charge. All copies of this data file must contain the above copyright notice.

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