Colossians 3:18-21
If you’ve been with us, we’ve been going through the book of Colossians and Paul’s letter to the church at Colossae. Let me give you a little bit of background and context here, and then we’re going to jump into our topic this morning. So, Paul, the Apostle Paul, is under house arrest in Rome.
He actually stays there for two years. He’s awaiting trial. He doesn’t know if he’s going to live or die.
And while he’s there, he’s able to receive visitors. A fellow by the name of Epaphras makes a 1,300-mile journey. Think about that in the first century.
It would have taken him weeks or maybe months. 1,300-mile journey from Colossae to visit the Apostle Paul. And the reason he did that is because some things were happening in the church at Colossae.
Now, Paul had never been to this church. Paul had never met these people. Epaphras was the pastor.
And so, there were some problems within the church, some doctrinal problems about who is Jesus, some other problems about legalism and other things that were going on. And so Epaphras tells the Apostle Paul that, and the Apostle Paul writes this letter to correct the doctrinal error about who Jesus is and also to encourage them. So, the first two chapters are more doctrinal.
When we get to chapters three and four, it’s more practical application. In other words, if you’re a follower of Jesus, if you’ve received Jesus as your Savior, here’s the question, how should we then live? That’s what this discipleship was all about after those police officers come to know Christ. Okay, what difference should this make in my life? And so, Paul writes in chapter three, verse one, since then you have been raised with Christ.
Okay, this is how you’re to live. Set your hearts and your minds and affections on eternity. That’s the priority.
And then he goes on through the text here and he tells us to put off some things. This is the life change, the sanctification process. Put to death therefore sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed.
And he goes on to list 10 things. And then last Sunday, we looked at the next section of chapter three where he tells us who we are in our new position in Christ. We’ve been chosen.
We’re now positionally holy when God looks at us. He sees us as justified, just as if we’ve never sinned. And he also sees us as dearly loved.
And then he talked about a new practice, clothe yourselves. Here’s the characteristic traits that we’re supposed to incorporate into our life. Compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience.
And finally, he talks about, as we’ve closed last Sunday, our new purpose. And that was found in verse 17. Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
So now we have a new purpose. It’s not living for self and our own selfish desires, but it’s what, to glorify God. And to do everything we do in his name and to glorify him.
Well, this morning, just in the next 25 or 30 minutes, we’re going to look at Colossians 3. And we’re going to look at verses 18 and 19. And then next Sunday, we’re going to look at verses 20 and 21. And this is entitled, God’s Design for the Family.
God’s Design for the Family. And so, God gave us three divine institutions. He created the family, marriage.
That’s Genesis 2, verse 24. Therefore, shall man leave his father and mother, cleave to his wife, they shall be one flesh. Marriage and a family is God’s idea, God’s plan.
He also instituted government. Romans 13:1, the powers that be are ordained of God. And government is God’s idea.
To seek justice, to prevent evil. And then thirdly, the church. Well, it’s no surprise that whatever God creates and institutes that we have an enemy that wants to push back and destroy.
And so, this morning, we’re going to look at God’s design for the family. And think about that for the next few minutes here. Let me, by way of introduction, read a brief article from Dr. Rob Rienow, who’s with Visionary Family Ministries.
It’s titled; Families are Under Attack. You know that, don’t you? That the home and the family, it’s a spiritual battle. That’s Ephesians chapter six.
Here’s what he says. Family ministry is urgently needed in the church because families are under attack. Satan has been attacking marriages and families from the beginning.
When sin entered the world, Satan drove a wedge between Adam and Eve. In their shame, they retreated not just from God, but from each other. Satan then set his sights on Cain and Abel in order to stir up more sin, hatred, and brokenness.
Jealousy and anger boiled over into murder and then banishment. Satan drove a wedge deep into the heart of the family and he continues to do the same today. Satan and the demons also wage their war against the family through the spirit of this world.
Culture itself stands in opposition to God’s plan for marriage, parenting, and a family. Boy, we’ve seen that in our United States in the last 20 years, haven’t we? A cultural assault on what God says, this is marriage. There are two genders, male and female.
2 Introductory Truths
God created that and established that in Genesis. And so, we’re going to look at God’s instruction for the family, God’s design for the family. And let me just begin to set this up with a couple more introductory truths and then we’ll get to the texts.
1. God designed the family to function according to His design where each member understands and fulfills their God-given role.
So, here’s two truths. I think they’re on the screen. God designed the family to function according to his design where each member understands and fulfills their God-given role.
So, if God created marriage, he also gave us kind of a playbook, this is how marriage is supposed to work. And the family functions best when it functions and understands that and follows those God-given roles. Here’s the second one.
2. Men and women are equal before God but function in differing roles in marriage.
Men and women are equal before God but function in differing roles in marriage. So, both of them have been created equal in the image of God, but God has given different roles for a husband and a wife and also the children in the family. So, let’s look at the role of the wife and we’ll get to Colossians 3:18 in just a little bit.
i. The role of the wife… a suitable helper.
But there’s a reason I’m giving some more background to this because we’ll get there in just a little bit. But here’s the role of the wife and we’re going all the way back to Genesis. The role of the wife from Genesis 2:18, and there’s an interesting Hebrew phrase here, is to be a suitable helper, a suitable helper.
So back to Genesis 2, here’s the creation account. Then the Lord God formed a man, Adam, from the dust of the ground and breathed in his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul. So, what did God do next? First, he created Adam out of the dust.
Adam is now alive and he puts him in the garden and he is the caretaker of the Garden of Eden. So, he puts him in the garden to take care of it and the Lord God commanded the man, you are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil for when you do, you will certainly die, physical death and spiritual death. Now it’s interesting and I think I knew this, but as I read this again, God gave those instructions to Adam, but Eve hasn’t been created yet.
Eve did not hear those instructions from God. I don’t know if that became part of the factor of why Eve took part of that fruit. But when we come to verse 18, here’s Adam and God says to him, and remember the creation account, read like six times, God created this, it was good, it was good.
He declares it was good. And now we get to the chapter two, verse 18, and God says something’s not good. What’s not good? It’s not good for the man to be alone.
I will make a helper suitable for him. That’s the NIV translation. I looked this up in four or five different translations.
The ESV says a helper fit for him. The King James says they help meet. Good news translation says a suitable companion to help him.
Someone has said Eve was the solution to Adam’s deficiency. So, this word helper, it can be understood in a wrong way, like a little condescending. That’s not meant in any way.
So, the Hebrew word for helper is E-Z-E-R, Ezer. This Hebrew word means a God-given partner who compliments her husband, not an inferior. In fact, this Hebrew word Ezer, E-Z-E-R, is used to describe who God is.
Psalm chapter 70, verse five, Psalm 75. Oh God, you are my helper and my deliverer. So, it’s not a condescending word in any way.
It’s used to describe God himself. The word suitable is the word Mata’ay. Ezer means a counterpart, somebody parallel to.
God created a husband and wife to work together as a team in his purpose for them, complimenting one another in their various strengths and weaknesses. So, the role of the wife is to be a suitable helper. I think I have a little credibility when it comes to speaking on marriage because in August of this year, Diane and I will have been married for 49 years.
So, I’ve traveled a little journey on the marriage journey. And I got to tell you; Diane has been exactly what’s being described here in my life. She compliments my weaknesses.
So let me describe how that plays out in our marriage. About what Diane brings to our marriage. Number one, she is very creative.
I do not have a creative bone in my body. And you know, in the summertime, she runs this huge craft room up at Maranatha Bible Missionary Conference. And she’s just got that creative gene.
She also, confession time, she knows how to fix things better than I do. And I grew up in a pastor’s home and my dad wasn’t gifted in working with his hands. And so, he either had somebody in the church come fix it or he hired it out.
Diane’s dad was a carpenter and she just picked up this ability to know how to fix things better than I do. Another confession, she has much more common sense than I do. It’s the only amen I’ll get all Sunday morning.
So, here’s an illustration of this. And this is like 25, 30 years ago. I’m dropping our kids off at Chelsea Elementary School.
And the car that we owned, you could get in the driver’s side from the outside. But when you got in, you couldn’t open the door from the inside. And I don’t know, it’s like, oh man, we need to fix this.
And so, for about two or three days, I’m dropping our elementary age children, it was probably 40 years ago, off at school. And there’s all these cars. And so, I need to get out of the car.
And so rather, what I was doing, I was, anytime I needed to get out of the car, I was crawling across the console and opening up the passenger side door to get out. And I was telling Diane about that, like, this is such a pain, we need to get this fixed. She said did you ever think of rolling down the window on the driver’s side and reaching out and opening the door like that? I never thought of that.
I’ve just been crawling across the console and going out the other side. See, much better common sense. I might get another amen.
I’m directionally challenged. I mean, I just, I get lost very easily. I’m one of these that, when I park in the mall or in the shopping place and I come out, I have no clue where the car is.
And Diane has a much better sense of direction than I do. She enjoys things that I don’t, cooking and shopping. Although she enjoys the Amazon shopping a little bit too much, but that’s okay.
But you get the picture that God then places two people together and I bring some strength. And the role of the wife is to be a suitable helper. Well, all that to say in preparation for the text here.
So, we’re going to go back to Colossians 3, verse 18. So, I need to read the text. And so, we’re going to use, and it talks about the role of the wife.
We’re going to use the S word. This is why I did some preparation here before we got here. Let me read it.
Wives, this is what God says, submit yourselves to your husbands as is fitting to the Lord. Doesn’t say submit to all men. Doesn’t say to submit to other husbands.
It says, submit to your husband. Now that word and that concept has gotten a bad connotation in the church and outside the church. It’s gotten a bad connotation in the church because some husbands have taken that concept and use it almost as a club to get their own way, to beat down their wife, to quote these Bible verses to them.
And that’s not what this verse is all about. It’s gotten a bad rap outside the church because people think that, well, this is from 2000 years ago. Hey, the apostle Paul was a chauvinist and this is not for today.
And so, this whole concept of submission has gotten a bad connotation to it. I want you to know that wherever Christianity has made inroads in a culture, it has elevated the role of women. Wherever Christianity has made inroads in the culture, and maybe you guys see this in your discipleship training, that it elevates the role of women.
Here’s an Orthodox Jewish prayer that the Jewish men would pray. It’s called Blessings of the Morning. Blessed are you, Lord, our God, King of the universe, who has not made me a Gentile, a slave, or a woman.
That’s the Orthodox Jewish prayer that some of the Jewish men would pray every day. Thank you that you didn’t make me a Gentile, a slave, or a woman. And so, this whole idea of submission, and whenever you look at a verse of scripture, you got to look at all the contexts.
And so, if we go to Paul’s letter to the Ephesian church, and he’s talking about the family in Ephesians chapter five, here’s an overlooked verse when it comes to family dynamics. This is Ephesians 5:21, and the entitle inserted in the NIV, Instructions for Christian Households. Here’s what Ephesians 5:21 says.
Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. And so there should be a mutual submission in the way that marriage works.
And when one person, one spouse, calls all the shots, makes every decision without input from their spouse, when they get their way 100% of the time, or else the partner’s life is miserable, that’s not submitting one to another in the fear of Christ. And so, there’s to be a mutual give and take. Submit to one another out of reverence for who Jesus is.
So where does submission come in? Well, I really think that submission comes in when you can’t agree on something. You know, so when you both agree on something, nobody needs to submit. But when you can’t agree, when you can’t come to some sort of compromise, and compromise has been a saving grace in our marriage for the last 49 years, we have, where we sit and chill the rest of the night, we have two TVs.
Diane watches her stuff, and we watch a couple of things together, but she’s got her likes, I’ve got my likes. I like sports, she likes movies. And we watch a couple of shows together, and then we kind of watch our own thing.
I have to turn my sound down though, but oh, I submit, you know, mutual submission. So where does submit come in? Where do you need a tiebreaker? When you can’t agree on something. And when you cannot work it out, cannot agree, then the God-given responsibility, and believe me, every husband’s going to have to give an account before God of how they’ve managed and led their family.
They, the husband has to break the tie. The husband has to, as the head, makes a final decision. It’s kind of like the United States Senate, when they’re voting on something, and it’s 50-50, guess who breaks the tie? They bring in, you know, the vice president, and comes in and casts the deciding vote.
ii. The role of the husband… loving leader.
And so that’s the role of the husband, and he is responsible before God to make that final decision. Well, very quickly, we’ll just touch on this, the role of a husband then. Colossians 3:19, husbands love your wives, and do not be harsh with them.
In Ephesians 5:25, husbands love your wives just as Christ loves the church. So, if a husband is loving his wife the way that God calls him to, and the word there, love, is agape, the highest form of love, self-sacrificing love, as Christ loved the church, Christ died for the church, he gave his life for the church. When a husband is loving his wife in that self-sacrificing way, then when there does come a decision and the husband has to make a final decision, it’s much easier for a wife to submit.
Love your wives, husbands love your wives, and do not be harsh with them. So, what do we know about love? We know that love is a decision. I’ve done a lot of reading of Dr. Gary Chapman, and he’s written a book, The Five Love Languages, and I’d encourage you to get that book.
It’s a great groundbreaking book on how each of us have a primary love language and a secondary love language. But he says, love is a decision. And when a couple gets together, he calls it the tingles, there’s this, last usually about two years in dating or in marriage, but then you come down to reality and love then is a decision, it is a commitment.
And so, love is a decision, husband, love your wives as Christ loved the church. And perhaps the greatest description of love, it’s found in 1st Corinthians 13, read at many weddings. Hopefully you can insert your name in these characteristic traits of love.
Love is patient, love is kind, love doesn’t envy, it doesn’t boast, it’s not proud, it doesn’t dishonor others, it’s not self-seeking, it’s not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrong. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices in the truth. It always protects, always trust, always hopes, always perseveres, love never fails.
I hope you can put your name right in there and read this text and say, well, Ron Clark is patient. Ron Clark is kind and understanding and just put your name right there in the text. Well, husbands love your wives and do not be harsh with them.
The new century version says, be gentle with them. One of the fruits of the spirit that God wants to do in our lives is to make his gentleness among those other eight-character traits. So, what does it look like for the husband to be the loving leader of the home? And we’ll just wrap this up and then we’re going to watch a brief video here song and we’ll close with prayer.
Well, I like alliteration. Number one, husbands are called to be the provider. It doesn’t mean that the wife can’t help in that process, but ultimately the husband is to be the provider for the home, not just financially, but in a lot of various areas.
The husband is called to be the protector of the home, the protector. Imagine late at night and it’s like one o’clock in the morning and husband and wife are in bed and the wife wakes up her husband and says, honey, honey, I hear noise. I hear something at the door.
I think someone’s trying to get in the house. Now, what husband would say, well, dear, here’s the baseball bat over here. Why don’t you go and check that out? No, no, the husband is designed to be not only the provider, but the protector.
And the third P is the husband’s designed to be the pastor, the pastor. One of the qualifications of being a pastor is that you must manage your own household well. In one sense, every family is like a mini church.
And so, you can’t call a person to be a shepherd of a lot of people if he’s not pastoring and shepherding his own wife and his own kids well. And so, as a husband, you’re called to be the pastor. You’re called to be the spiritual leader of your home.
On Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, we always give a gift to all the dads and moms that attend on those highlight Sundays. And I’m excited for Father’s Day because I’ve got a great book we’ll give to every dad. It’s by John Beek, How to Lead Your Family, A Guide for Men Wanting to Be More.
A lot of men don’t know how to lead their family spiritually. I was fortunate to grow up in a pastor’s home. And I had a great role model of a dad as a pastor leading a home spiritually.
And we spent some time praying together as a family and reading some scripture verses, not every night, but occasionally around the dinner table. And my dad helped start a Christian school in 1961. And so, we were placed in that Christian school and we just got bombarded with God’s truth.
Not everybody has that experience. And so like, well, how do you lead a family spiritually? So, we will gladly get that book to you. Well, God designed a family to function according to his design where each member understands and functions according to their God-given role.
The wife is a suitable helper, the husband as a loving leader. And next week we’ll look at the next two, the next two verses. And to see what God has called the rest of the family to do.