People generally know that a life-long marriage is good; but everyone agrees that marriage takes commitment and work. Writing in the London Times on July 18, 2012, Janice Turner commented: Marriage is gruelingly hard, astonishing, a feat of endurance.
So what advice does the New Testament offer on the subject of love and marriage? It’s worth exploring words that today are simply dismissed. In Colossians 3:18-19 Paul the Apostle writes: Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. Husbands love your wives and do not treat them harshly.
In too many cultures women have been exploited and treated as chattels – especially by their husbands. In contrast, a striking feature about Jesus of Nazareth is that he treated women with courtesy and respect.
Furthermore, we can note that Paul himself wrote that there is no division between men and women – both are equal before God. In Galatians 3:28 he writes: There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Consistently the Bible affirms the equality and dignity of womanhood alongside men.
The qualifying words to wives, as is fitting in the Lord, point to a deeper truth about the marriage relationship that is found in the nature of God who is one, yet three persons. Furthermore, the three persons of the Trinity are identical in being: each of the three is wholly and fully God. No one person of the Trinity has a higher or lesser status than the others.
That said, each of the three is different from the other. For example, God the Son chose to draw into himself human nature – something that is not true for God the Father or God the Holy Spirit. Furthermore there is an order of movement (Greek: taxis) between the three Persons. This is not about rank or hierarchy, but about the way they operate with respect to one another. The Father sends the Son; the Son does not send the Father. Furthermore, the Son’s actions are voluntary: he delights in doing the Father’s will. This doesn’t mean that there is no conversation before a decision is made. The way Genesis 1:26 speaks of the creation of men and women, “Let us make humankind in our image…” points to a pre-cosmic conversation.
A clearer understanding of the Trinity helps us to appreciate the richness of Paul’s words about the ‘order’ of a marriage relationship. Indeed we begin to see how tightly wrought are Paul’s words to wives and husbands, and to husbands and wives in Colossians 3:18 and 19. The two commands must be taken together.
He is therefore not saying that wives are to submit to abuse or be marital doormats – people who take what is handed out to them and who speak only when spoken to. He is not saying that wives are to be weak or to see themselves as inferior. Jesus was not weak when he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane: “Father,… not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). In contemporary English, deference captures the essence of Paul’s, submit.
Yes, this is counter to our culture’s thinking and practice. But notice that Paul’s tougher word is to husbands: Husbands love your wives and do not treat them harshly.
Having enjoined wives to show deference to their husbands, Paul does not say, ‘and men, you rule’. Husbands are not told to control their wives let alone exercise dominion over them. They are told to love. And here again, our Western world has been led astray.
Our one English word love is used to translate four Greek words – one of them being eros, from which we get our word ‘erotic’. It is a word associated with intense emotional feeling. Yet neither Paul nor the New Testament uses this word to speak of marriage. Rather, we find a very different word — agape. There are no rapturous, mystical experiences associated with it. It is the same word the New Testament uses to speak of God’s costly sacrificial love for us.
Eros is a word of self-gratification – a demanding, craving love, a love that demands a lover. Agape is a word of self-forgetfulness. It is a generous, altruistic sacrificial love, more interested in the welfare of the one who is loved. Eros wants to take. Agape wants to serve.
When Paul speaks of a husband’s love in Colossians 3:19, he is writing of a love that is committed to serving the very best interests of the loved one. This doesn’t mean he’s called on to serve his wife’s selfish whims but rather her deepest needs.
When we have a better understanding of God our lives and relationships are enriched. How much are we dependent on God’s written self-revelation for our better appreciation of him and his ways. And, fallen human beings that we are, how much we need to ask for his grace of forgiveness and strength joyfully to follow his commands.
‘Peace’ is a word that goes to the heart of the Christian message. It’s something we all long for, yet it is one thing the world does not have. Everywhere we go there are tensions, injustices, and conflicts.
In fact today, April 25, Australia remembers the sacrifice of tens of thousands of Australians who died in war. A special focus this year is on April 25, 1918, the start of the turning point on the Western front with the liberating of the French village, Villers-Bretonneux under the command of the Australian, Lt.-General Sir John Monash. ‘The Great War’ as it was called, was said to be the war that would end all wars!
Yet daily we learn of appalling atrocities perpetrated in Syria and Yemen to name just two places. Wars subvert people’s trust in the existence of a good and loving God.
It is significant that in Colossians 3:15 Paul writes: …Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful.
He echoes Jesus’ words to his followers on the night of his arrest: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35).
Yet tragically, disagreement and division plague many churches.
In Colossians 3:12 Paul sets out personal attitudes to adopt: As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, he writes, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Instead of indifference we need to work at compassion and kindness; instead of pride, humility and gentleness; instead of impatience and resentment, patience.
And, he continues: bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, that binds everything together in perfect harmony (Colossians 3:13-14).
Here are ways we should be different from the wider society. In our relationships heaven’s values should begin to prevail – love and mercy, forgiveness, and reconciliation. God expects us to show grace.
Paul also sets out an action plan for changing our attitudes and relationships. In 3:16 he says: Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God.
Keeping the peace doesn’t mean simply sweeping our differences under the carpet. That is not what Paul means. We need opportunities to speak our minds to one another. And he tells us, that the way we do it is by coming to the Bible together. Rather than giving one another a piece of our own mind we can bring our disagreements to God’s Word and to his mind. There is no place for strong-willed, aggressive, individuals insisting on their way. We need to let God’s Word and the principles of his Word do the directing.
Furthermore, we are to do this with all wisdom. Our Bible reading is not to be uniformed and subjective. All of us are expected to work at understanding the Scriptures and therefore to speak to one another with sensitivity and tact. The Bible is key to peaceful relationships.
And, Paul says: With gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. We tend to think of Christian hymns only as songs of praise to God. Paul is suggesting another purpose: instruction and exhortation. We do not have to address God every time we sing in church. We also speak to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
Here is a reason we need congregational singing where we can hear one another sing songs that are grounded in a rich understanding of the Scriptures. It gives us a taste of heaven.
And something else needed: we need to be grateful to God. Whatever you do, Paul writes, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him (3:17).
Nothing brings about tension and division more than a discontented, ungrateful spirit. To be thankful is to trust God in every situation, no matter how difficult or challenging. Paradoxically, when we are thankful to God, we will discover joy and contentment. Indeed, where God’s people are thankful to the Lord, we will find people who are at peace with one another.
Here then are some clues as to how we can begin to show those around us where to find peace.
Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts – in our attitudes to one another, and in practical action. So let’s remember that because the Lord has forgiven us, we must forgive. And let’s remember Jesus’ words: “Love one another as I have loved you” – and so keep the peace.
In his article, ‘Choosing My Religion’ in The Weekend Australian Magazine (April 14-15, 2018), Bernard Salt says that while he had ‘a deeply religious (Catholic) upbringing, my faith lapsed in my 20s’.
That said, he goes on to observe: ‘Christianity is connected with so much of humanity over two millennia because of its central tenets. The idea of forgiveness is both bold and powerful; it takes courage to forgive, and it cultivates the positive qualities of the human spirit. Without forgiveness there is vengeance and anger. Don’t get me wrong: I think there are times when it is entirely appropriate to show anger. Vengeance I’m not so sure about …’
Further, he comments: ‘In our increasingly godless society, I wonder whether in casting off what I see as the far-fetched bits of religious belief systems we aren’t also losing those bits that over time have made a proven contribution to the quality of human life. A community that practises forgiveness is stronger than one that never forgives. Anger taken to the grave achieves nothing; it is forgiveness that cultivates love and humility’.
While Bernard Salt’s observations are helpful, his solution that we draw the best from all faiths to ‘create an even better society for the future’ is at best only partial. In the uncharted waters of new values we are creating, apart from ‘forgiveness’ what other values should we include in, say the top ten? Furthermore, and this is more telling, where will humanity find the inner resources to implement such values? We don’t even live up to our own New Year’s resolutions.
In this kind of discussion we need to pause and ask ourselves afresh, and others too, what we know about Jesus. For example, on one occasion one of his close followers, Philip, said to him: “Lord show us the Father…” (John 14:9). To which Jesus responded, “He who has seen me has seen the Father…” Popular thinking concludes that Jesus is the ultimate good guy, or one of history’s great teachers, but neither comes near what Jesus said to Philip. He is saying that he is not just God’s emissary or ambassador, but God himself. He was claiming to be God in our shoes.
One of the striking things about Christianity is that it is grounded in history. The Gospel writers insist that Jesus of Nazareth not only lived but is unique. He is not just a prophet, he is more than a prophet. He is not just a man, but God’s Messiah who came to serve us by providing the means whereby God could forgive us.
Forgiven. In leaving God out of the equation of life, we omit the starting and the end points of the whole notion of forgiveness. In his great penitential psalm King David cried out to God: “Against you only have I sinned…” (Psalm 51:4). As Derek Kidner in his helpful commentary, Psalms, observes: ‘Sin can be against oneself and against one’s neighbour but the flouting of God is always the length and breadth of it, … Our bodies are not our own; and our neighbors are made in God’s image’ (p.190).
In Colossians 3:13 Paul the Apostle writes: Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord has forgiven you. God has every reason to be angry with us: we are sinners, we flout his law, and we ignore him. But what did he do? Having sent his only Son to die the death we deserve, he offers full and free pardon to anyone who turns to Jesus Christ in true repentance and faith. So Paul exhorts: ‘If God has forgiven you, shouldn’t you also be prepared to forgive those who have wronged you?
Here we have a response to Bernard Salt’s concluding comments where he writes: ‘… I am troubled by what I see as the evolution of an increasingly harsh – vengeful, even – society, especially when dealing with perceived transgressors. Justice of course must be served and must be seen to be served but society should not be above forgiveness…’
Forgiving. Christianity offers us God’s full and free forgiveness, and with it the motivation we need to forgive one another: Forgive as the Lord has forgiven you.
Furthermore, taking us beyond the limits of human wisdom, God gives us the framework to achieve this – the way of love. Put on love which binds you all together, Paul writes.
Love. He knows how easy it is for us to be angry and bitter. He is aware of the destructive effect of wounded feelings. But he also knows of the one force that can heal and enable us to grow into maturity – love. Love is patient and kind he writes in 1 Corinthians 13. Lovedoes not insist on its own way; itis not irritable or resentful. Rather, love bears all things, endures all things, and hopes all things (1 Cor. 13:4-7). We need God’s love at work within us to forgive. Knowing we are forgiven, we will be forgiving.
“I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.” So wrote the noted 20th-century science fiction writer, Robert A. Heinlein.
He anticipated the thinking that has become commonplace in Western Society. Like Caligula in Albert Camus’ play of the same name, freedom has come to mean the absence of self-restraint.
A good question to ask is whether Caligula was really free? A careful reading of Camus’ play reveals Camus’ doubts about this. In the closing scene, we find Caligula saying, as he looks in a mirror: “I have chosen a wrong path, a path that leads to nothing. My freedom isn’t the right one…”
Properly understood, freedom is choosing to submit to good and wise constraints.
It is essential that we know in our minds and hearts that Christianity does not begin with rules. Rather it begins with a new life made possible by Christ Jesus. In Colossians 1:13 we learn that God is committed to rescuing us from this present world of darkness and sin, and giving us a new life in the new world where his Son is king.
In Colossians 3:1-4 Paul frames our new life with specific exhortations – on a vertical axis: If then you have been raised with Christ, set your minds on the things above; and on a time axis: For you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
Paul urges us to let the light of our resurrection state fall on every aspect of life— our priorities and goals, our words and actions, and our attitudes. Everything is to reflect our new identity.
‘Let this new life of ours be the governing principle’, he is saying. ‘Everything in our old world will die. But in Christ, we are now linked to a new existence on the other side of the grave. In one sense we’re in heaven already. If our physical body packed up now, we wouldn’t cease to exist.
It makes a great deal of sense therefore that we start living as members of the new age to which we belong. It’s logical that we should adopt a new lifestyle.
All the dos and don’ts that follow on in Colossians 3 flow logically from this. Since we have entered a new kingdom, we should …Put to death therefore what belongs to our earthly nature…
This is so different from the legalism Paul writes about in Colossians 2. The legalism he rejects is this: ‘Here is a list of rules, obey them, and one way or another you’ll maneuver yourself into God’s presence’.
Instead, he is saying, ‘Since you have been transferred into God’s kingdom, live accordingly’.
Let me identify three themes that Paul addresses – sexuality, the tongue, and relationships.
First, Put to death… what is earthly in you: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. ‘If you say you are one of God’s people’, Paul says, ‘sex outside of marriage is not on’. People sometimes say they are ‘making love’. Rather, Paul is saying that it is ‘self-gratification’ – hence his reference to greed.
Second, Paul speaks about the tongue. But now you must get rid of all such things—anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth.Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator (Colossians 3:8-10).
To us it seems strange that Paul speaks about controlling the tongue in the same context as controlling sexual appetites. Anger, wrath, malice, slander, and foul talk are so much part of everyday language that it seems incongruous for them to be put alongside sins of the flesh. We forget that Jesus taught that angry words are the same as murder.
Indeed, James says that the tongue is a restless evil (James 3:8). Malice, obscenity, and rage cause damage. ‘Therefore’, says Paul, ‘put off this old self. It isn’t consistent with our new nature’.
Sometimes people say that to be interesting and attractive we need to be a little sinful. But that is to forget Jesus: he was hardly aloof and boring. He was man as man was meant to be.
Third, relationships:In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all! (Colossians 3:11).
People today cry out for the breaking down of barriers that divide – be they race or religion or whatever. Most of us long for a world without antagonism, without need, and without loneliness – a world where there is genuine love.
Churches ought to aim at being such a society. That is the way of God’s new world.
Indeed, one of the purposes of ‘church’ is to set up a signpost to that other universe. So the world can see and wonder. We ought to be a microcosm, pointing beyond this age, this world, to heaven. Rule-keeping won’t achieve this. Lives that are being set free and changed by God’s truth, will.
In his article, ‘The Easter Effect’ in The Wall Street Journal over Easter (March 31 – April 1, 2018), George Weigel asks, ‘How did a ragtag band of nobodies from the… edges of the Mediterranean world become such a dominant force in just two and a half centuries?’ He notes that by the beginning of ‘the 4th century Christians likely counted for between a quarter and a half of the population of the Roman Empire, and their exponential growth seemed likely to continue…’
Weigel goes on to comment that ‘there is no accounting for the rise of Christianity without weighing the revolutionary effect on those nobodies of what they called “the Resurrection”’.
While though at first some like Thomas, questioned and doubted the accounts that Jesus was physically alive, when they saw him their lives were transformed – so, Thomas’s “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28). Indeed it was Jesus’ physical resurrection from the dead that changed their lives.
Let me take up two examples of the way Weigel demonstrates the impact of Jesus’ resurrection on his followers.
Drawing on the work of NT Wright and Pope Benedict XVI, Weigel observes that the resurrection Changed the way they (Christians) thought about time and history. ‘God’s kingdom had not come at the end of time but within time – and that had changed the texture of both time and history. History continued, but those shaped by the Easter Effect became the people who knew how history was going to turn out. Because of that, they could live life differently’.
Furthermore, Weigel notes, ‘The way they thought about their responsibilities changed’. Seeing that their future was caught up with Jesus, ‘they could face opposition, scorn and even death with confidence; they could offer to others the truth and even the fellowship they had been given’.
Indeed, without Easter there would have been no gospel mission. Every outreach talk in the New Testament is founded upon Jesus’ resurrection (so, Acts 17:31).
A better world today? Most of us don’t find it hard to imagine a safer, happier fairer world, but the question is, ‘How do we get there?’
Changed people. In Colossians 3:1-3 we read: So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
We need to read text in context and so recall what Paul writes in Colossians 1 and 2. There he tells us that when Jesus came a dislocation in human history occurred. In Jesus, God’s rule over the cosmos took on a new form. With Jesus a new world order began, and that new world now co-exists with the one we see about us.
In Colossians 1:13 Paul put it like this: God has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and has transferred us into the kingdom of the Son he loves...
God is working out his cosmic strategy in world events and in the arena of our lives. The key element is now in place – Christ Jesus. Truly God and truly man he has given his life as the one perfect and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the world, satisfying in full all of God’s righteous requirements.
But Jesus’ death was not the end. Rather, it was the end of the beginning— the first stage of God’s cosmic plan. It also marked the beginning of the end— the last stage of God’s plan for the cosmos as we know it. How can we be sure about this? Jesus’ resurrection is the key.
Jesus’ resurrection was not simply a good ending to a fantastic life. It demonstrates that all Jesus tells us about God, the world and us, is true. But Jesus’ resurrection points to more than life beyond the grave: it points to a new world order that exists; a world order that we can begin to experience now.
Two great realms now co-exist—the dominion of darkness and the kingdom of God’s Son.
The dominion of darkness we could say, is centered around a black hole. It is a shrinking world, shrinking to eternal destruction. But the other world, the kingdom of God’s Son, is centered around a bright nova, and it is an expanding universe, expanding to eternal glory.
For the present, there is an interface between these two parallel worlds, a door in time that allows people to pass from one world to the other. Those of us who turn to Jesus and give him our allegiance have an identity in both worlds. Physically we are still in the old, but our names are registered in the new.
In his concluding remarks to his WSJ article, George Weigel comments, ‘However important the role of sociological factors in explaining why Christianity carried the day’ (in the 4th century and beyond), ‘there was that curious and inexplicable joy that marked the early Christians, even as they were being marched off to execution. Was the joy simply delusional? Denial?’
Weigel concludes, ‘Perhaps it was the Easter Effect: the joy of people who had become convinced that they were witnesses to something inexplicable but nonetheless true. Something that gave a super-abundance of meaning to life that erased the fear of death. Something that had to be shared. Something with which to change the world.’
Back in August 2011, The Wall Street Journal carried an article, ‘Reversing the Decay of London Undone’ by Dr. Jonathan Sacks, then chief rabbi in Britain.
Dr. Sacks stated, ‘In virtually every Western society in the 1960s there was a moral revolution, an abandonment of its entire traditional ethic of self-restraint. All you need, sang the Beatles, is love. The Judeo-Christian moral code was jettisoned. In its place came: whatever works for you…
He further observed, ‘The collapse of families and communities leaves in its wake unsocialized young people, deprived of parental care, who on average—and yes, there are exceptions—do worse than their peers at school, are more susceptible to drug and alcohol abuse, less likely to find stable employment and more likely to land up in jail…
‘The truth is,’ he commented, ‘it is not their fault. They are the victims of the tsunami of wishful thinking that washed across the West saying that you can have sex without the responsibility of marriage, children without the responsibility of parenthood, social order without the responsibility of citizenship, liberty without the responsibility of morality and self-esteem without the responsibility of work and earned achievement…
‘Much can and must be done by governments, but they cannot of themselves change lives,’ he went on. ‘Governments cannot make marriages or turn feckless individuals into responsible citizens. That needs another kind of change agent. Alexis de Tocqueville saw it then, Robert Putnam is saying it now. It needs religion: not as doctrine but as a shaper of behavior, a tutor in morality, an ongoing seminar in self-restraint and pursuit of the common good…’
Let me, with respect, sharpen the focus of what Dr. Sacks suggested, by saying that, humanly speaking, we need a re-fresh moment of God’s good news. True and lasting changes in society occur when individual lives are transformed from the inside out through God’s mercy alone.
Consider Paul’s words in Colossians 2:13-15: And you, who were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 having cancelled the bond which stood against us with its legal demands; this he set aside, nailing it to the cross. 15 He disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in him.
Paul is writing of the condition of the Jewish and the non-Jewish peoples. The Jewish people cannot keep God’s written law; and the world that knows not God fails to keep the law of their conscience. All men and women are morally bankrupt.
Furthermore, we are captive to spiritual forces we cannot defeat. Satan, holding himself out as a chief prosecutor, holds the catalog of our failures up to God. Being the demanding prosecutor he is, Satan insists that the penalty must be paid – something that God, in his justice, cannot refuse. And because sin is a capital offense we are all en route to a death we cannot avoid.
C.S. Lewis brilliantly captures these elements in his Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Edmund has betrayed Peter, Susan and Lucy, and Aslan himself. The Witch demands Edmunds’ life. “He has broken the laws of the deep,” she insists. “He is mine,” she shrieks. “His life is forfeit.”
On Good Friday this week, we particularly remember Jesus’ crucifixion. It is worth pausing and meditating on Paul’s words. He tells us that God has smashed the bars of the spiritual prison of self-interest – he has canceled the debt through Jesus’ death. That is, the charge sheet against us has been wiped clean. What is more, in the same way that the charge against Jesus was nailed to his cross, he has taken the charges against us and nailed them to his cross as well.
Verse 15 goes on to tell us that Jesus through his death has also disarmed the demonic powers that we could not overcome. Had those powers known the awesome power that Jesus wielded through his voluntary sacrifice, they would have dismissed any thought of putting the Lord of glory to death (1 Corinthians 2:8).
And so it is supremely that Jesus Christ through his own death has abolished death for us. No longer do we fear its inexorable approach: God made you alive with Christ, he says in verse 13.
The cross is where Jesus turned our captivity into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
As Keith Getty and Stuart Townend have written: This the power of the cross: Christ became sin for us. Took the blame, bore the wrath; we stand forgiven at the cross.
Jesus’ death is the means of our transformation from the inside out. This is the news we need to know deep in our own hearts. This is why we pray for opportunities to promote it to our family and friends, our work colleagues and neighbors. God not only exists, but his nature is always to have mercy. And that mercy we see supremely on the first Good Friday.
As FF Bruce comments (Colossians…, p.112): ‘The message proclaimed by Paul to the Colossians remains the one message of hope to men and women in their frustration and despair. Christ crucified and risen is Lord of all.’
