The Letter to the Colossian Church- 12

Subtitle: A New Home- 1

Colossians 3:18-23.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on Sunday, October 12, 2025.

Up to this section, Paul has spoken to the Colossian Christians in general terms that would apply to them all.  In this section, Paul moves to the different relationships within the home.  How does a Christian wife, husband, child, parent, etc., live?  What is Christ calling them to do?

The Roman world and the Greek world had picture of what the family should look like.  In general, the husband was the king of the home and his word was law in the home.  Yet, Paul begins to speak to people in these situations about how Christ would have them live.

Of course, not every person hearing Paul’s admonitions would have a home that is fully Christian.  It would be able to complain that our situation is not perfect.  Yes, that is true, but the Perfect One is with you to help you honor God the Father and please him.  God does desire for us to experience His goodness in this life.  However, in those cases where we are experiencing a relationship that falls short, and may even be with someone who is not a believer, the eternal goodness of God can swallow up any evil that is done to us.

Let’s look at our passage.

Jesus is the Lord of our relationships (v. 18-21)

Throughout these verses, Paul continually reminds us that the Lord is not just a part of our relationship with others.  He is also the Lord of how we operate within those relationships.  He is the one that we are trying to please.  This is opposed to trying to please the other person, or only ourselves.  When we please Christ, we become a part of the solution, but when we please ourselves, we are a part of the problem.  I may not be the largest part, but I am a part nonetheless.

All of our relationships need to be surrendered to the Lordship of Jesus, in which we ask him this.  “Lord, how would you have me to be in this relationship?”

The first relationship of the home that Paul deals with is that of wives and husbands.  Before we get into the specific exhortations that Paul gives to them, we should talk about how different churches approach these passages.

There are some who approach these passages with a view called complementarianism.  They are said to be complementarians in regard to the husband and wife relationship and in regard to the roles of men and women beyond the home.  A wife is to complement her husband in the sense of completing him or making him perfect.

Here is an image charting their differences.

Complementarians believe that men and women were created with equal human dignity before God.  However, they were created with a distinct function and role.  Women can use their gifts, but it is not their role to lead the home, lead a church or to lead society.  Thus, God will not call and empower a woman to lead the home, church or society.  Some of them will leave room for situations when men refuse to do their role.

Egalitarians.  These are those who approach passages like this with a view called egalitarianism.  This word comes from the idea of equal.  They believe that men and women were created equal, not just in human dignity, but in all things.  They do recognize that men and women have distinct gifts and roles within this equality.  However, those distinctions do not warrant exclusive male leadership in the home, in the church or in society.  They believe that God can empower any person He chooses, male or female, to fill roles in the home, in the church and in society.

Both believe some similar things, but disagree about whether God intended there to be a hierarchy in the home and the Church that must be led by males.  A way of thinking about this is to use the concept of a team.  Whose team is the home?  Is it the husbands team, i.e., Team Husband, and the wife is simply on the team in order to help Team Dad win?  Or, are they one team before God, i.e., Team Husband and Wife Unity, in which both work together through their unique God-given abilities as one in order for Team Unity to win?

We should recognize that modern feminism has muddied the waters here.  It makes it easy for complementarians to accuse egalitarians of compromising with society, letting culture drive their theology.  Let me just say that some egalitarians are doing just that, which is the wrong reason to be an egalitarian.  Conversely, egalitarians can accuse complementarians of continuing an unjust subjugation of women for the sake of their own ego and power.  Again, let me say that some complementarians are doing just that, which is the wrong reason to be a complementarian.

At the root of this debate, there are God-fearing Christians who sincerely disagree about the purpose of God in the creation of men and women.  When you approach passages with one view of God’s purpose, you will read passages such as this in a particular way.  But, if you adopt a different view of God’s purpose, you will see that the passages may not be saying what you thought they were saying.

There are many women who are complementarians.  Are they trying to subjugate themselves for the sake of the ego and power of men?  I don’t think so.  You can believe they are brain-washed, but many of them are godly women who are seeking to honor God and His Word.

There are also many egalitarians who believe that the Bible is fully inspired of God.  They have arrived at their position, not by ignoring Scripture and portraying it as outdated and uninspired.  Rather, they have arrived at their position with sound Scriptural arguments.

Both sides of this debate need to honor one another by dropping attack lines that become ad hominem when we attempt paint the other group with a broad brush.

We are a Pentecostal church.  Pentecostals are not a liberal movement within the Church at large.  They held to the inspiration of the Scriptures and believed that many of the Protestant denominations had ignored parts of the Bible (the gifts of the Spirit) through a self-serving theology that was not right.  Pentecostals were among those first groups embracing the healing of black and white relationships.  They also saw that the Holy Spirit empowered women to preach, evangelize, and go into missions.  Many a church in America was started by a woman who believed God enough to do something.  Many a mission field in this world was opened by a woman who dared to believe God and stepped out in the power of the Spirit.  Some of them were put in those positions when their husbands were either killed or simply died.  They stepped up in faith and continued the work.

It was in this environment that Pentecostals began to see that perhaps these passages had been used to emphasize hierarchy when they were never intended to teach it.

Let’s be clear about a few things.  God loves women AND men.  He loves wives AND husbands.  He loves kids AND parents.  He loves slaves AND masters.  This does not mean that God condones of everything that we do.  No, He loves us enough to tell us the truth about all the ways we are destroying ourselves and one another.

The Assemblies of God is egalitarian, but it has not made it a core doctrine or even one of the Fourteen Fundamental Truths.  These can be found at AG.org.  I dare say that there are many people in the pulpit and in the pew who are on both sides of this issue.  May God help us to have grace with one another.

In our passage, Paul’s goal is not to subjugate women, kids and slaves.  He is teaching us all how to honor God in our relationships.  He is teaching us to operate out of a desire to accomplish the purpose of God rather than declaring our rights.  So now, let’s get into our passage.

To the wives:  Be subject to your husband as is fitting in the Lord.

There are many reasons why a woman might be chafing in a marriage.  Some of these would be in her husband and the society around her.  However, when she is honest, some of them would also be within herself.  We should recognize here that Paul is giving “homework” to each person for them to do.  It is in our nature to look at the other person’s homework and complain that ours is too hard or not fair.

Paul’s purpose here is not about protecting a patriarch.  Rather, we need to remind ourselves of what he had written just moments before this in chapter 3 verses 9 through 11.  Christians are being renewed into the image of Christ, which is not impacted by our relational differences.  Paul had listed racial difference (Greek or Jew, barbarian, Scythian), religious difference (circumcised or uncircumcised) and class difference (slave or free).  He could have listed the difference of male and female because he actually does this in Galatians 3:28.  Paul is not saying these differences no longer exist, but that they do not change the fact of what it means to become like Jesus.  Anyone in any situation or station of society is able to become like Jesus.  In that sense, it makes no difference what you are.  It does make a difference in what you may need to do and what you may need to sacrifice in order to be renewed into the image of Christ.  Paul is not denying that.

The word that Paul uses for “be subject” is an imperative.  However, it may come across as something that is done to you, i.e., “Let yourself be subjected.”  This is not what Paul is saying.  The word is not passive.  It is something that she is doing to herself, and it has the idea of taking a place under another.  It does not have a connotation of worth and importance.  The general of the military would be subject, “take their place under,” the king, or Caesar.  It is ultimately about taking a place to serve.  In this case, it is to serve their husband.  He does not say that husbands are kings and should rule thus over their wives.  He simply tells wives that they should give themselves to serving their husbands.

He then adds the phrase “as is fitting in the Lord.”  The idea of it being fitting is that this activity measures up to the bar that has been set by our Lord.  The Lord Jesus subjected himself to becoming a servant in order to serve humanity.  He even subjected himself to death on a cross.  He did so out of love for us, not out of hierarch.  We were not greater than him.  We didn’t even deserve him at all, much less in that capacity.  Yet, Jesus did so out of love.  He did not hold on to what his rights were and, instead, served the purposes of God the Father.  If this is the One we say we are following, if this is the one who is our master teacher and who we are becoming like, then it is fitting for to look for ways in which we can pick up a towel and serve others in our life.

Because Jesus took the lowest place and served us, God is even now subjecting all things to him (1 Corinthians 15:27).  Do we trust the same Father that Jesus trusted to lift us up at the proper time?

When people read hierarchy into this passage, it is coming from this word “be subject,” precisely because it has the sense of under in it.  Yet, I believe that I have shown above that it is not about hierarchy.  You must always lower yourself in order to serve another, and this is what he is asking wives to do.  Serve your husband for God’s purposes (not his).

Of course, Paul does not describe what this should look like.  There is a cultural issue here that can affect what a wife who loves Christ will do to serve her husband (be he Christian or not).  Our society is very different.  The ways in which a wife is to choose to serve her husband will be impacted by it.  Yet, ultimately, the wife is not called to serve the purposes of society or herself, but of God.  The only hierarchy that is actually here is that of Christ over the life of all Christians (wives or husbands).

One last thing about this.  Ephesians 5:15-33 is a passage in which verse 22 is parallel to this verse.  We should notice that the verse 21 actually commands each Christian to subject themselves to one another.  Again, not out of hierarchy, but out of love.  Interestingly enough, the verse about wives and husbands is actually “borrowing” this verb from the prior sentence.  It literally says, “and wives to your own husbands as to the Lord.”  We would say it is missing the verb, but this is a common technique in Greek.  The prior verb from verse 21 is implied in the statement.  “[A]nd wives [subject yourselves] to your own husband as to the Lord.”  Again, it is the Lord who is the hierarchy here.  We are all to be subjecting ourselves to one another.  And, in this context, wives are told to subject themselves to their husband for the purposes of Christ.

The modern world may accuse the Bible of hating women and subjecting them, but this is what men have done who either don’t understand what Paul is saying or are using him for their own purposes wickedly.  All through the New Testament Paul is teaching Christians to follow the example of Jesus and even his own example.  That is the example of laying down your rights in order to serve the purposes of Christ, God the Father, in the life of another person.

This brings us to Paul’s instructions to husbands.

To the Husbands  love your wives and do not be embittered against them

Paul could have turned around and told husbands to submit themselves in service to their wife, but instead, he uses the term “love.”  “Husbands, love your wives and do not be embittered against them.”  In the Ephesians 5 passage, he adds “just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word…”  The sacrificial love of Christ did not demand that his position in heaven be honored.  Instead, he laid his body and life down for the good of the Church.  Husbands should sacrificially love their wives for her good and in obedience to God with humility.  Clearly, this would cancel out acting like Caesar over your wife.  If the husband is a king, then the wife is a queen.  However, she should not be a queen in the way pictured in the book of Esther.  Rather, she should be a queen who sits at his side, a team, ruling the home.

Notice that Paul adds the idea of not becoming bitter towards her.  What sorts of things make a man bitter against his wife?  Whatever offenses a husband may have experienced from his wife, he must still love her by forgiving her and not letting his heart be hardened toward her.  Hebrews 12:5 warns that a root of bitterness can spring up and cause trouble and defile many (i.e., both of you, the kids, and beyond). 

How can a husband not love a woman who is submitting herself to serving him?  Also, how can a wife not serve a man who is sacrificially laying his life down in order to love her?  Even when we agree with the wisdom to this, we may withhold with the excuse that the other person is not doing their job.  However, we do these things to please the Lord, not to get a specific action out of our spouse.

Paul does not flesh out what it would look like for a husband to sacrificially love his wife.  Does the husband simply let the woman run the show and never have strong opinions about things?  Should the woman submit in everything without question and without opinion of her own?  Is the husband always right?  Or does the husband die to his own opinion and let the wife always be right?  As you walk through those questions, you may see that there is a mutual submission beneath to these commands for wives and husbands.

To the Children  be obedient to your parents in all things

As we come to verse 20, this should go a bit quicker.  Children are called to obey their parents in all things.  God has given their parents charge over them.  The parents are not perfect, and God knows this.  Yet, no kid is perfect either.  They all need good correction, nurture, and supervision.

Children are called to submit to the will of God in their life and obey.  Of course, we can come up with all kinds of questions.  “What if your parents tell you to worship Baal?  Do you have to obey then?”  I believe that this is pushing the passage further than Paul intends it. 

We can also recognize that this is a command to a child within a home, and not a command to adult children that they obey their parents.  No, they will leave their parents and cleave to their spouse.  Yes, they are commanded to still honor their parents, but that is not the same as saying you should continue to act like a child in their home.  The relationship is moving to a new phase.

In all of this, we can see that kids have to deal with a rebellion problem that is in their hearts.

To the Fathers  do not exasperate your children

This command is given to fathers, but that does not mean mothers are unimportant.  Children are told to obey their “parents” plural. Yet, in these societies (specifically the Roman family), the father ran the home and would be the disciplinarian.  Thus, Paul addresses them.  Yet, the instructions would apply to mothers as well.

“Do not exasperate your children so that they will not lose heart.”  To exasperate a child is the idea of stirring them up or provoking them.  This can lead to them losing heart, being broken-hearted, or even dispirited with a broken spirit.  Parents are responsible for the raising of their children, but this does not mean that God wants you to break them like a wild horse.  Children are not animals to be trained.  They are made in the image of God, and their training and instruction should reflect that.

It is a sad thing to see kids who have been traumatized by parents who have abused their duties.  This is not what God wants.

Yet, stern discipline in and of itself is not trauma, if it is done rightly and for the right purposes.  If it is done in anger, then it is wrong.  If you are angry during discipline, then stop and take hold of your anger.  Bring it into subjection to the love of Christ.  Then, discipline them out of love and with the right spirit.  We need wisdom in this area.

Of course, both parents and kids fail.  We can repent of our failures and forgive one another.  A lot of parents who really messed up their kids have later come to Christ.  This is sometimes because of their kids, but sometimes not.  Of course, imagine the shame of a person as they realize that their sinfulness harmed their child and it continues into that child’s adulthood.  It is good and right for such a parent to apologize and ask the forgiveness of their adult child.  However, you should then give them space to work through it.  Pray for them.  Do not pressure them but love them regardless of their choices.

You may have a beautiful restoration of relationship, and then again, you may not.  The point is to take ownership of your own sin and love your adult children (or your parents if forgiveness is needed the other way. 

Parents, discipline your kids, but don’t break them.  They are the one that God the Father loves.  He asks you to train them for their future life.  Yet, he does not want you to cause them to stumble.  We will all give account to the Lord Jesus one day and should live with a healthy respect for that truth.

A New Home 1 audio