Colossians 3, 11/21 (Doug Hunt).

Thank you. Good to see everybody. Let me know if I'm too loud or too soft.

My name is Doug Hunt. My wife, Mary Ann, couldn't be here today. We didn't realize she had agreed to host a baby shower for twenty-five ladies at our house this afternoon. I had offered to help with an explanation and description of what the Lord has for us today from Colossians 3.

A little bit about me: I'm a follower of Jesus. I have been since I was in college, which is many years ago. I became a Christian in 1979. I'm husband to Mary Ann. We've been married almost thirty-five years. I have three adult children and I'm a grandfather of three rambunctious grandsons. I'm not a pastor, but I actually work full-time at Dane County Department of Human Services in the area of disability and employment. I've done that for many years, but I'm very blessed to be with you all today. I'm thankful and humble to share.

Let me first read the scriptures for today. We've only got four verses, but they're packed with lots of really important things. Let me read Colossians 3, verses 18 through 21. I'm reading from the New International Version, with the heading, "Instructions for Christian Households."

Wives, submit yourselves 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 embitter your children, or they will become discouraged.

Colossians 3:18-21

I just want to take a moment to pray. Lord, thank you for your word and the richness of it. We thank you for the opportunity to dwell in your word for a few moments today, and we pray that your Spirit would highlight those things that you have in particular for us to receive from you. Healing and words of encouragement, Lord, I pray would flow through me as your Spirit leads. We thank you for our time together. In Jesus' name, amen.

Context from Colossians

Let me give you a quick review of where we're at in Colossians. We've been working through the book for several weeks. I want to remind us that Paul's purpose in writing to the church at Colossae was to address some false teachings that had crept into the body. They were subtle and seductive. Abbie and Nermalis have done a great job highlighting that one of the areas Paul was most concerned about was false teachings that led people to believe Jesus wasn't enough. There were more things that needed to be added to Jesus in order to be truly a faithful follower. Jesus plus special knowledge or Jesus plus religious practices or other tempting add-ons.

These add-ons had moved believers away from the central place of Jesus. Paul really starts off in these chapters talking about the supremacy of Jesus. His theme is Jesus above all.

A second area I see in the first few chapters of Colossians is that Jesus wants to transform all. He talks about what we need to put on and what we need to take off to help us in our walk with Jesus, to become more Christ-like. We need to put on compassion and right thinking that Christ has for us, and we need to put off things that distract us from Jesus.

Last week, Abbie invited us to think about that transforming process and asked us to consider what practices of forgiveness, sacrificial love, or living in peace and surrender to God Jesus might be asking of us, and how to be transformed by his love.

His instructions really reach their peak in verse 17 when he challenges believers: "And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God the Father through him."

We've kind of reached this pinnacle of chapter 3, verse 17. But immediately in verse 18, we get to the verses we have for today. Paul says, hold on. We need to take the virtues that I talked about in the previous two chapters and apply them to the most intimate of day-to-day relationships, the relationships of the household. That's where we find ourselves today.

Paul doesn't want to leave us in the place of grand theories and platitudes. The relationships of the household are where the action really happens. He wants us to bring his heart into those relationships. He wants to turn theory into practice. He wants us to act upon all of these things in the context of our household. And why would he be so interested in that? Because his goal is to help us experience what God would have us have in a household, which is flourishing. Flourishing centered on Christ. He wants to drill down now to the nitty-gritty of our most intimate relationships: wives and husbands, children and fathers and mothers. These are the areas where really, for most of us, we most need and desire flourishing.

Choosing Christ's culture over the world's

I might think about this: when you hear these verses, wives submit to your husbands, husbands love your wives. I mean, for some of us, for many of us, those may not be all that thrilling to hear. Who here has ever cringed if you've gone to a wedding and heard that verse, and you're like, yeah, where is this going?

I want to say right from the start that Paul is not saying that husbands and fathers have all the power and are entitled to use it for self-serving purposes. We're going to talk about what he does mean, but he definitely does not mean that.

I also want to acknowledge that not all of us have grown up in the flourishing that God intended for our household. You may be hearing these verses having grown up in a household where these verses were used as a means to assert power and control in an unhealthy way. Or you may have grown up in a household where there was an absence of Scripture entirely and you saw the breakdown of marriage. You saw your parents' marriages fall apart, or you saw or experienced abuse, verbally or physically. The wounding that arises from dysfunction is real. And I just want to acknowledge that too. Though, Christ wants to address it. He wants to bring healing to us. He wants to redeem the losses we've experienced in our families by bringing us to a point of understanding of how to flourish.

Second, some of you may be thinking, well, I'm kind of off the hook with these verses. I'm not a husband. I'm not a wife. I'm an adult child now. So maybe I don't really have to think too much about my parent relationship. But I want to encourage us to think about the fact that these verses are meant also to inform our current circumstance. Whatever that is, there are ways you can apply these truths to those you live with, your friends, your co-workers, your roommates. Even if you don't have a typical household as Paul's describing here.

Paul's writing to believers in Colossae who were mostly Gentiles and had been highly influenced by their culture. He wants to address the temptation that might be occurring in the church to be distracted and follow the culture instead of Christ.

What was the culture of this time in Colossae? Well, in the ancient Near East, the household would have been quite different than what we might think of. A place where you go home at the end of the day and see your wife and kids. But in the ancient Near East, there would have been multiple households, multiple generations living in proximity with one another, sharing their lives together and protecting one another from external threats. In that culture, men were the most influential. This was a patriarchal culture. Usually the oldest fathers of the family were the leaders, and they had absolute power and authority over the affairs of their spouses, their children, and their servants or slaves.

It's within this context that Paul is speaking to the Colossian church. His goal is: don't follow culture, follow Christ. Paul is describing that Jesus wants to usher in a new way to do family in the world of the ancient Near East. He wants to bring Jesus's heart into the household relationship. He similarly today wants to usher in a new way of doing family for us as followers of Christ.

He wants us to align with Christ's way. Paul also knew that for the Church of Colossae to have an authentic witness to the people around them, they were going to have to demonstrate this transformed way of life. If they were conforming to the culture of the world, how would there be a witness of what Christ brings to the household? There's got to be a change that's evident.

Paul is demonstrating that as we allow Christ into our lives, the witness of his transforming love breaks out. I think back to my days in college and how I became a believer. I was invited to a Christian fellowship group one evening. I had grown up in the church but had no personal relationship, no connection with Jesus, no connection with God. That night, what struck me was not the words of the speaker but the love I saw demonstrated amongst the people who were attending. That's what drew me in. There was this authentic witness of the transforming power of Christ's love in their lives. I think that's what Paul is thinking about. He wants the Colossian Church to be a witness of Christ's culture in the household, not the world's culture.

Wives and husbands

So I'm going to talk about the wives and husbands piece. This is probably the one that can be the most tricky. But what I've found in reflecting upon these scriptures is that Paul's message here is not so much one of wives only submitting to husbands but of husbands and wives mutually submitting to one another.

Where I draw that from is there are several parallel passages to Colossians 3, particularly Ephesians 5:21. Paul expands on the idea of submission and states:

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Ephesians 5:21

This mutual submission is really modeled on the Trinity. The relationship between Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the Father is what's being called for here.

The word for submit in Colossians 3:18 is hupotasso, and it can be translated submitted, but it can also be translated attached or supportive. Hear this translation from the Passion Translation and see if it sounds different to you:

Let every wife be supportive and tenderly devoted to her husband, for this is a beautiful illustration of our devotion to Christ. And let every husband be filled with cherishing love for his wife and never be insensitive toward her.

Colossians 3:18-19, Passion Translation

Doesn't that change the tone of what we commonly hear: wives submit to your husbands?

How is that going to be possible if you're a husband or if you're a wife in a marriage relationship? Well, we see that immediately following wives submit to your husbands, what's the command? Husbands, love your wives. So guys, Paul puts that responsibility squarely on the husbands to love as Christ loved the church.

Look at Ephesians 5:25-27, where Paul expands on this idea:

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, to present her to himself as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives.

Ephesians 5:25-27

The link between submission or mutual submission is really built on this selfless love that husbands are called to bring and to demonstrate in their marriage. The word there, love, in this verse, is agape. That self-sacrificing love that we've talked about a few times in the Colossians series.

So really what Paul is saying is: husband, love your wife with agape love. And this, in the culture of the day, would have been a jarring revelation. It would have been really unheard of. It was not something that was found in the Greek or Roman household culture. This idea of self-sacrificial love between husbands and wives, particularly for husbands towards their wives, was radical. And I think to some degree it's still radical today as we think about the call for a flourishing household, a flourishing marriage. Mutually submitted to one another in a context of self-sacrificial love.

Love languages in practice

Let me get practical. How many of you guys know what your Enneagram number is? How about your Myers-Briggs personality profile? How many of you know what your love language is? Quite a few. Well, I'm going to briefly talk about a practical way of thinking about self-sacrificial agape love.

Gary Chapman was a Christian counselor. He came up with this idea of the five love languages: affirming words, thoughtful presence, physical touch and affection, quality time, and kind actions. All of these are expressions of agape love that, when spoken through the posture of self-sacrifice, build intimacy.

Quick question: which of these love languages do you think Jesus spoke? Not really a tough question, right? I think we all know it from scripture. He spoke all five. If you want to study Jesus and the Gospels and the way he interacted with people, you'll see that he manifests, demonstrates, or connects with people in all five of these ways.

Chapman talks about these five love languages and also about an emotional love tank. In a relationship, you have a love language which is one that you speak most comfortably, and it may or may not be the same love language that your spouse speaks. That can be challenging because we typically show love in the language that we speak. But if that's not the love language of your spouse, it's going to hit, but it's not going to evoke the love feelings that we might hope for.

Let me give an example. My wife and I had a relationship before the five love languages were named. We met in the Philippines. We were both doing Christian work there. She's from Green Bay. I'm from Missouri. My work schedule meant that I traveled a lot outside the country. I had returned to the country but was only going to be in town for four or five days. A huge typhoon hit the northern part of the Philippines where we lived. I was in Manila. Mary Ann was with her team in Baguio, a city up in the mountains.

I didn't know this at the time, but she got permission from her team leader, trekked across a landslide, and waited for a bus on the other side so she could get down to Manila to see me. Now, I mean, I had a few things going back then, but I am not worth going across a landslide. But really, what it said more about was Mary Ann's strongest love language: quality time. She was willing to do that. She made it through, you know, on a bus with pigs and cats and chickens and all kinds of things, but she got there.

The second thing that happened: since I was traveling so much, this was pre-internet, pre-email. We wrote letters back and forth. My wife's second love language is affirming words. Guess what I don't have? Either of those. My love language is kind actions, acts of service. I just love to do for people.

So the self-sacrifice part, the agape love between husband and wife in our relationship, has required me to try to learn to love as Mary Ann needs: quality time and affirming words. Have I written any more letters? Oh no. That's kind of embarrassing. I'm not a really good writer. It's amazing what you do during the courtship phase that you forget to do once you get married. So not a good thing.

But what I want to mention is that it's quite challenging to learn to speak another love language and to relate to someone in a way that you're not used to. There was a time in our relationship when I tired of that self-sacrificial love that Mary Ann needed from me, to spend quality time with her and to affirm her through positive words. And that led to a crisis in our relationship that we had to address.

So this idea of mutual submission and of agape, self-sacrificial love is huge in a marriage. It requires the focus and support of both parties. Quick plug: the marriage course that New Culture Church sponsors is awesome. It's put out by the Alpha folks. If you want to learn more about love languages and communication and other things, it's a great way to learn about those things.

Parent-child relationships

One more area I want to talk about is the parent-child relationship. Verse 20 and 21:

Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged.

Colossians 3:20-21

We want to bring Christ's heart into the marriage because marriages are not only for happiness but also to build holiness. We also want to bring Christ's heart into the parent-child relationship to experience Christ's healing and wholeness there.

What's important about Paul's emphasis here is the obedience that children show their parents and the nurturing that parents show their children. The why of that is because it pleases the Lord. Paul keeps bringing us back to the motivation: not by the things of this world, but in order to please the Lord. He places parenting in this context of it being an expression of love, not only for your family but also of the Lord.

I think about Proverbs 22:6:

Train a child in the way they should go, and when they are old they will not turn from it.

Proverbs 22:6

That training piece that parents provide I think of as intentional actions that involve instruction and loving connection. It's really like a call to discipleship.

In the parallel passage, Ephesians 6, Paul writes:

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise, so that it will go well with you and that you may enjoy a long life on the earth.

Ephesians 6:1-3

We are called to obey but in the spirit of honoring. As I was thinking about this, when you're young, your parents often impose external rules to help you grow. Lots of do's and don'ts defined by the parent: do brush your teeth, don't hit your brother, do finish the vegetables on your plate, don't talk back to your mom in that disrespectful tone or you're going to be grounded.

But as we get older, the framework of obedience begins to arise more from an understanding of what it is to honor our parents. Since all of us here are adults, I think that the challenge for us is: how do we honor our parents and obey them in the ways that we can as independently functioning adults?

One example: I remember when I was in college, not long after I'd made a commitment to Christ, I had an opportunity to attend a missions conference over the Christmas break. In my family, Christmas break was family time. I knew I really wanted to go to this missions conference, but I also knew I needed to honor my parents in that and have a conversation with them about my choice. For the most part, my parents were supportive of my faith journey, but I knew this was going to be sensitive. So I chose to have that conversation and to honor my parents by seeking their permission to attend.

At that age, I was probably twenty-two or twenty-three. I could have just said, hey, Mom and Dad, I'm going. See you. I'll be gone from the twenty-sixth through January second. Hope that's okay. But I tried instead to undertake more of an honoring of their input, to consult with them, and communicate both honor and respect.

Closing reflection

As we close, I want to invite you all to think about these major themes. First, I'd like you to take a moment and consider: ask the Lord, in a posture of prayer. Are there things that I've allowed to get in the way of my relationships? Things from this self-centered culture that Jesus may want to address?

Second, in thinking about agape self-sacrificial love: Lord, are there ways you want to reveal yourself to me? Ways that I need to grow in expressing that kind of love? Have I neglected family relationships? Have I become lazy in acting in a loving manner? It's not too late to seek forgiveness or grant forgiveness.

And then finally, Lord, in considering my family, friends, and other relationships, is there something I need to receive from you? The healing power of your agape love.

Let's take a couple of minutes. If you close your eyes and pray for just a couple of minutes, asking God: what is it, Lord, that you might want to show me today? What do I need to receive from you? What do I need to hear from you? What healing do you need to bring?

Lord, we thank you that your Spirit ministers to us and reveals truths to us, each one individually. Lord, I pray that your word today would bring healing and hope and power to each of us gathered here. Continue to highlight the things that you have for us: your agape, self-sacrificing love for us, Jesus. Let it heal the wounded places and bring hope where none is at present. We thank you, Lord, for your word today. In Jesus' name, amen.