COLOSSIANS: STABILITY BY CHRIST'S ALL-SUFFICIENCY AND SUPREMACY

Part XIV: Stability In Heeding God's Callings In The Home

(Colossians 3:18-21)

I. Introduction

A. Today's unsettling, insecure world has led many believers to become unsettled and insecure, so in contrast to today's world, we believers need to focus on the stability and security we have in our Lord.

B. Colossians presents Christ's all-sufficiency and supremacy in ways that settle and provide security, and one way it does is by teaching the believer's stability by heeding God's calling in the home in Colossians 3:18-21.

C. Many professing Christians we know have either come from dysfunctional families or have experienced significant dysfunctional family life themselves, indicating a great need for the instruction of this passage.

D. We thus view Colossians 3:18-21 for our insight and application (as follows):

II. Stability In Heeding God's Callings In The Home, Colossians 3:18-21.

A. Wives must heed God's calling for their role for stability to occur in the home, Colossians 3:18:

1. Due to the rise of feminism in today's secular culture, women are often encouraged by the world to exert themselves in a dominance that at least matches that of the man.

2. However, Colossians 3:18 directs wives to submit to their husbands because it is fitting in the Lord, a command that is based on the creative order and is strongly supported by other Scriptures as follows:

a. 1 Timothy 2:12-13 directs women not to teach or exercise authority over the man due to the order of creation, for God first made the man and then the woman from him and brought her to him that he might in sovereignty over her name her, Gen. 2:23; Ryrie Study Bible, KJV, 1978, ftns. to Genesis 1:10 and 2:20.

b. 1 Corinthians 11:3 indicates that administratively, God the Father is over God the Son, God the Son is over the man and the man is over the woman.

c. Some evangelicals claim that in Christ, man's headship over the woman is done away due to Galatians 3:28 that claims we are neither male nor female in Christ Jesus, but that verse speaks of spiritual position, not the creative order that requires women to be subject to men as long as they are women, 1 Tim. 2:12-13.

d. There is a limit to this submission: a woman submits to her husband in the Lord, for her ultimate Head is God, so if her husband calls her to sin, she must obey God rather than her husband! (Acts 5:29)

B. Husbands must heed God's calling for their role for stability to occur in the home, Colossians 3:19:

1. Husbands are to love their wives, the word agapao for "love" being an objective kind of love that God exhibits for the world in sending His Son to save it in John 3:16; U. B. S. Grk. N. T., 1966, p. 701, 330. In other words, husbands are to move beyond just an emotional level of "love" expressed in phileo to love objectively and self-sacrificially even if the emotional spark might not always exist! (cf. Arndt & Gingrich, A Grk.-Eng. Lex. of the N. T., 1967, p. 866-867)

2. In thus loving their wives, husbands must not "make bitter" (pikrainesthe) their wives, that is, they must not make them wilt under "authoritarian dominance" so that they turn bitter, but see that they "blossom with tender loving care" as they are nurtured by their husbands, Bible Know. Com., N. T., p. 683.

C. Children must heed God's calling for their role for stability to occur in the home, Colossians 3:20:

1. Children must obey their parents in all things their parents direct, for this is well pleasing in the Lord.

2. As in the case of wives toward their superior husbands, the child's obedience to his parents, being as unto the Lord, requires him to obey the Lord above his parents if there is a difference. (Acts 5:29)

D. Parents must heed God's calling for their role for stability to occur in the home, Colossians 3:21: being the heads of the homes and head parent in the home, fathers are not to "provoke, irritate" (erethizete) their children by continually agitating them or making unreasonable demands on them, Ibid., Bible Know. Com., N. T. Parents must thus both praise and give loving discipline to rear their children, Ibid.

E. [In each relationship in the family structure, Paul addressed the subordinate before addressing the overseer, indicating that the foundational building block for stability in the home is for the one in the subordinate role to focus on his or her proper submission to the God-ordained authority, Colossians 3:18-21! Only as subordinates show a willingness to submit to authority can proper authority even be administered!]

Lesson: For stability in the home, each party involved in a relationship to his or her respective overseer or to his or her respective subordinate must fulfill his or her divine assignment in that role as is fitting in the Lord.

Application: May we each fulfill God's calling for us in the home toward seeing home life enjoy God's blessing.