There is a whole lot of confusion today about the parent-child relationship. In some families the child is basically a mini god who the whole family worships and adores. In other families the child is woefully neglected. He or she is mostly being parented by television, movies, and the internet. In even worse situations, the child is regularly abused.
In Colossians 3:20-21 however we see how we can have right parent-child relationships. This passage lays out what it looks like when the gospel gets applied to our families. We begin by noting first the children's responsibility in a Christian family. v.20 tells us that their responsibility is to obey their parents in everything. This obedience ties in directly to the Lord. As they obey their parents it "pleases the Lord."
The implication here then is that kids are not at the same level as their parents. Rather, parents rightfully have a commanding role in the lives of their kids. Kids should listen to the Lord and in accordance with this listen to their parents and do what they say. Parents should give clear and consistent expectations to their kids and lead them in all areas of their life.
We get more guidance on how parents might rightly do this in v.21, where we find the responsibility of parents, and in particular of fathers. Parents, but especially fathers, have great capacity to destroy their kids through their "provoking." Provoking happens when parents constantly criticize and belittle their kids. It happens when parents are consistently absent from their kids' lives. It happens through excessively harsh punishments. Such provoking produces discouraged kids. It kills their joy and their passion.
Instead the Christian dad sees it especially as his responsiblity to steer his kids in directions that will stir their passions, revive their hearts, and allow them to be all that they should be. This means bringing not so much yourself to your kids, but bringing Jesus to them (cf Eph 6:2). Fathers, and mothers, must be diligent to teach their kids what it means to love the Lord and they must demonstrate this love by loving them like Jesus as they parent them (cf Deut 6:4-9).
When we bring to a child what the Lord wants for them, we can know for sure that we are bringing them absolutely what's best for them. We are bringing to them what will give them life and joy and peace and hope and purpose. We are bringing God himself to them and allowing them to taste and see that the Lord is truly good.
Kids who are raised in this way grow up into teenagers and adults who will have healthy trusting relationships with their parents. They will know without a doubt that they have parents who will always guide them as best as they can to what's true and good. They will have seen Jesus in you, and by God's grace, placed their own faith in Jesus because of how they've seen Jesus in you. This is in fact the only way we can be the parents we need to be and for kids to be the kids they need to be. It will only happen if Jesus is in each of our lives.
What are some of your thoughts on this passage? What are some practical ways for parents, and in particular fathers, to encourage their kids instead of provoking them? What will it tangibly look like to raise children up "in the discipline and instruction of the Lord" (Eph 6:2)?
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
How to Have Right Relationships in Your Home - A Look at Marriage" Colossians 3:18-20
In order to understand what God intends marriage to be we must go back to Genesis 1:27. There we read about how man was created in the image of God. Out of all the creatures in the world only humans were allowed to bear God's image. We are able to reflect God and so know God in a deep intimate way. However this reflection of God happens in the context of relationship. As we see in v.27, mankind was deliberately created as male and female.
Marriage then, being the most intimate human relationship we can experience, serves as one of the most powerful ways for us to reflect God. That's because marriage is meant to exist in a state of oneness (Gen 2:24-25). Just as there is one God and yet at the same time three persons, similarly in marriage there is to be "one flesh" even while at the same time there are two persons of husband and wife.
Yet as unique and special as marriage is, it is only an arrow that points to the oneness between Christ and the church. Indeed, the relationship between Christ and the church is the most key marriage relationship in the universe. It is the one marriage that most reflects God and in which we most experience God. It is the one marriage that will last forever.
Our marriages today then are echoes of that spiritual union between Christ and the church. God brings a man and a woman together in marriage to echo this union and by doing so reflect himself (cf Matt 19: 6). Thus, the ongoing state of marriage must be oneness. When people see a truly godly marriage, they should not see two separate people primarily but a true union, a joining together, that points people to God. This means then that there can be no superior or inferior roles within marriage. There are no second class participants in a marriage. Rather, a marriage is made of two people who are together heirs of the grace of life (1 Peter 3:7). They both have full and equal access to all the richness and beauty and glory of eternal life with God. And when both people fulfill their God ordained roles within marriage, they form a union in which they uniquely glorify God.
There are however unfortunately many perverted versions of the marital roles within marriages today. There are errors of aggression, where the husband leans more towards being the dictator or bully and the wife is more of rebel or usurper. And there are errors of passivity, where the husband acts like a wimp and the wife is a doormat. These roles can be found in various combinations, some much more destructive and harmful than others (e.g. husband as dictator with wife as doormat). All of these perverted roles are functions of sin. When we rebelled against God, the perfect harmony in which God had designed the marriage relationship to function was destroyed. Our marriages became defined more by struggle than by union (cf Gen 3:16).
In Colossians 3:18-19, however, we find the essentials for marriage that lay the groundwork of undoing the pervesion of sin and restoring the creation ideal. In essence, the role of the husband and the wife in marriage is to be like Jesus to one another. The wife acts like Jesus towards her husband by her humble submission towards him, which mirrors Jesus' submission to the Father. The husband acts like Jesus towards his wife by his loving initiating sacrificial service towards his wife, which mirrors Jesus' loving service towards the church in his death on the cross.
More specifically for the wife in Christ to submit to her husband means that she willingly brings herself under the leadership and protection of her husband. She submits "as is fitting in the Lord" (Col 3:18). So how does "fitting" submission look like? It will involve the following things:
1. Submit actively
Biblical wifely submission means the wife is actively engaged in the marriage, helping her husband make their marriage a true union in Christ. This will mean giving support, encouragement, counsel, advice, and even correction at times. She should do all these things humbly and kindly, but also directly and truthfully. And any true Christian husband should gladly invite and welcome this from his wife.
2. Submit willingly
Submission can never be forced. It should not come out of the husband's manipulation or exploitation of his wife. It's worth noting, for instance, that the husband is never commanded in the Bible to make his wife submit to him.
Rather, true biblical submission is a voluntary intelligent conscious action on the part of the wife. This is what makes submission such a powerful act on the part of the wife. The wife is fully equal with her husband, and yet she willingly chooses to put her husband first. She willingly yields her will for the sake of being one with her husband.
3. Submit respectfully
The wife in Christ works to respect her husband and the role to which he's been called (Eph 5:33). She looks for the qualities of Jesus she sees in him and encourages him when she sees them. She does this privately and publically. She does this frequently. And she does this graciously. In other words, she seeks to respect her husband not based on certain conditions but as measure of unmerited and unconditional favor towards him.
4. Submit humbly
1 Peter 3:3 talks about how the wife's beauty should come out not so much from what she wears but from her "quiet spirit." The wife in Christ rightly submits to her husband when she is humble in all her interactions with him.
Now let's consider more specifically the husband in Christ. It's worth noting that in other similiar ancient household codes husbands are never told to love their wives. Instead they are encouraged to maintain good, proper, orderly homes. So there is a radically new and transformative ethic being promoted in Colossians 3:19. Husband have a God-given responsibility to love their wives. How should we describe this love? This love is to be like the love of Christ. This gets drawn out further for us in Ephesians 5:25-33, and what we see there is that the love of Christ was self-giving and self-denying. In the same way a husband ought to deny himself, to put aside his rights and preferences and instead take on the life of his wife, caring for her as if he were caring for his own body. The husband is to relate to his wife in this way instead of being harsh towards her. Indeed, there can be nothing worse to a wife's faith than a critical, judgmental, harsh husband. The guiding principle for a husband out to be to love his wife just like Jesus has loved him. As Matthew Henry writes, "Eve was not taken out of Adam's head to top him, neither out of his feet to be trampled by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected by him, and near his heart to be loved by him."
In a sense, the husband's role and the wife's role in the marriage are very similar. Basically, both are called to self-denial for the benefit of the other person. The main difference between the two is that the husband's love is to be an initiating love. The husband is called to lead the way, to "move out" (cf Gen 2: 24). The "Peter Pan" man never moves out, because he never wants to grow up. He avoids responsibility and treat his wife as she were an addendum to his life. The adult "Jack Bauer" man, on the other hand, accepts and embraces responsibility for his marriage. He takes the inititative to know what his wife needs and wants and then leads the way accordingly. He view his wife as his crown (Prov 12:4). It is the best thing about him. When people see his wife it's obvious that she is where he has put the prime portion of his time and energy.
When the man is rightly loving and leading his wife, he will in effect be like Jesus in her life. And when a guy is acting like Jesus towards his wife, what wife wouldn't want to respond? For there is nothing more fulfilling for the wife in Christ than to submit to a husband who's being like Jesus to her. She will respond to him with confidence, trust, and love.
To draw out the husband's role a bit further and more specifically, we list the following (see also the book, "Love that Lasts"):
1. Love graciously
The husband loves his wife not based on what she does or does not do. He loves her unconditionally - that's what makes it grace!
2. Love sacrficially
The most powerful example we have of this is Jesus. Our love must and should cost us something. The love of the husband in Christ then should be expressed by the husband willing to sacrifice his all for the sake of his wife and her eternal benefit in Christ.
3. Love attentively
The husband who is rightly in Christ pays close attention to his wife. His wife is always his main project. He always takes great pains to fully understand her (1 Peter 3:7). If his wife is not growing spiritually, he sees it as his responsibility. If she is feeling unloved or ignored, he makes it his main task to correct this. Thus, the husband is always taking the initiative to ask his wife what she needs in order to be nourished and cherished and then acts accordingly (Eph 5:29). At the very least, this will mean leading his wife in prayer and in the word (cf Eph 5:25,26; 1 Cor 7:5).
4. Love redemptively
Above all, the husband loves his wife in ways that help her identify and cast off her sin and be made more complete in Jesus. He seeks to love her so that she might be fully remade in the likeness of the Son and together with him have a marriage that is a shining reflection of God. He washes her regularly with the word. He prays with her and for her. He leads her in being involved in the church community. And he reminds her often of the gospel of Jesus and displays this gospel often to her in his own life.
In the end, the gospel is central if we are to have the kind of marriages we were meant to have. In the gospel we will be led regularly to forgive our spouse and repent from our sin, to depend ultimately not on our spouse or our marriage for our validation but on God, and to have a sure and confident hope that even the most difficult circumstances of our marriage God will work to our greatest good and for his maximum glory.
Reflect on what Genesis 2:24-25 tells us about marriage and what Colossians 3:18-19 tells us about roles in marriage. What does it mean and look like for the wife to submit to her husband so that there might be a God-glorifying marital oneness? What does it mean and look like for the husband to love his wife so that there might be God-glorifying marital oneness?
Marriage then, being the most intimate human relationship we can experience, serves as one of the most powerful ways for us to reflect God. That's because marriage is meant to exist in a state of oneness (Gen 2:24-25). Just as there is one God and yet at the same time three persons, similarly in marriage there is to be "one flesh" even while at the same time there are two persons of husband and wife.
Yet as unique and special as marriage is, it is only an arrow that points to the oneness between Christ and the church. Indeed, the relationship between Christ and the church is the most key marriage relationship in the universe. It is the one marriage that most reflects God and in which we most experience God. It is the one marriage that will last forever.
Our marriages today then are echoes of that spiritual union between Christ and the church. God brings a man and a woman together in marriage to echo this union and by doing so reflect himself (cf Matt 19: 6). Thus, the ongoing state of marriage must be oneness. When people see a truly godly marriage, they should not see two separate people primarily but a true union, a joining together, that points people to God. This means then that there can be no superior or inferior roles within marriage. There are no second class participants in a marriage. Rather, a marriage is made of two people who are together heirs of the grace of life (1 Peter 3:7). They both have full and equal access to all the richness and beauty and glory of eternal life with God. And when both people fulfill their God ordained roles within marriage, they form a union in which they uniquely glorify God.
There are however unfortunately many perverted versions of the marital roles within marriages today. There are errors of aggression, where the husband leans more towards being the dictator or bully and the wife is more of rebel or usurper. And there are errors of passivity, where the husband acts like a wimp and the wife is a doormat. These roles can be found in various combinations, some much more destructive and harmful than others (e.g. husband as dictator with wife as doormat). All of these perverted roles are functions of sin. When we rebelled against God, the perfect harmony in which God had designed the marriage relationship to function was destroyed. Our marriages became defined more by struggle than by union (cf Gen 3:16).
In Colossians 3:18-19, however, we find the essentials for marriage that lay the groundwork of undoing the pervesion of sin and restoring the creation ideal. In essence, the role of the husband and the wife in marriage is to be like Jesus to one another. The wife acts like Jesus towards her husband by her humble submission towards him, which mirrors Jesus' submission to the Father. The husband acts like Jesus towards his wife by his loving initiating sacrificial service towards his wife, which mirrors Jesus' loving service towards the church in his death on the cross.
More specifically for the wife in Christ to submit to her husband means that she willingly brings herself under the leadership and protection of her husband. She submits "as is fitting in the Lord" (Col 3:18). So how does "fitting" submission look like? It will involve the following things:
1. Submit actively
Biblical wifely submission means the wife is actively engaged in the marriage, helping her husband make their marriage a true union in Christ. This will mean giving support, encouragement, counsel, advice, and even correction at times. She should do all these things humbly and kindly, but also directly and truthfully. And any true Christian husband should gladly invite and welcome this from his wife.
2. Submit willingly
Submission can never be forced. It should not come out of the husband's manipulation or exploitation of his wife. It's worth noting, for instance, that the husband is never commanded in the Bible to make his wife submit to him.
Rather, true biblical submission is a voluntary intelligent conscious action on the part of the wife. This is what makes submission such a powerful act on the part of the wife. The wife is fully equal with her husband, and yet she willingly chooses to put her husband first. She willingly yields her will for the sake of being one with her husband.
3. Submit respectfully
The wife in Christ works to respect her husband and the role to which he's been called (Eph 5:33). She looks for the qualities of Jesus she sees in him and encourages him when she sees them. She does this privately and publically. She does this frequently. And she does this graciously. In other words, she seeks to respect her husband not based on certain conditions but as measure of unmerited and unconditional favor towards him.
4. Submit humbly
1 Peter 3:3 talks about how the wife's beauty should come out not so much from what she wears but from her "quiet spirit." The wife in Christ rightly submits to her husband when she is humble in all her interactions with him.
Now let's consider more specifically the husband in Christ. It's worth noting that in other similiar ancient household codes husbands are never told to love their wives. Instead they are encouraged to maintain good, proper, orderly homes. So there is a radically new and transformative ethic being promoted in Colossians 3:19. Husband have a God-given responsibility to love their wives. How should we describe this love? This love is to be like the love of Christ. This gets drawn out further for us in Ephesians 5:25-33, and what we see there is that the love of Christ was self-giving and self-denying. In the same way a husband ought to deny himself, to put aside his rights and preferences and instead take on the life of his wife, caring for her as if he were caring for his own body. The husband is to relate to his wife in this way instead of being harsh towards her. Indeed, there can be nothing worse to a wife's faith than a critical, judgmental, harsh husband. The guiding principle for a husband out to be to love his wife just like Jesus has loved him. As Matthew Henry writes, "Eve was not taken out of Adam's head to top him, neither out of his feet to be trampled by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected by him, and near his heart to be loved by him."
In a sense, the husband's role and the wife's role in the marriage are very similar. Basically, both are called to self-denial for the benefit of the other person. The main difference between the two is that the husband's love is to be an initiating love. The husband is called to lead the way, to "move out" (cf Gen 2: 24). The "Peter Pan" man never moves out, because he never wants to grow up. He avoids responsibility and treat his wife as she were an addendum to his life. The adult "Jack Bauer" man, on the other hand, accepts and embraces responsibility for his marriage. He takes the inititative to know what his wife needs and wants and then leads the way accordingly. He view his wife as his crown (Prov 12:4). It is the best thing about him. When people see his wife it's obvious that she is where he has put the prime portion of his time and energy.
When the man is rightly loving and leading his wife, he will in effect be like Jesus in her life. And when a guy is acting like Jesus towards his wife, what wife wouldn't want to respond? For there is nothing more fulfilling for the wife in Christ than to submit to a husband who's being like Jesus to her. She will respond to him with confidence, trust, and love.
To draw out the husband's role a bit further and more specifically, we list the following (see also the book, "Love that Lasts"):
1. Love graciously
The husband loves his wife not based on what she does or does not do. He loves her unconditionally - that's what makes it grace!
2. Love sacrficially
The most powerful example we have of this is Jesus. Our love must and should cost us something. The love of the husband in Christ then should be expressed by the husband willing to sacrifice his all for the sake of his wife and her eternal benefit in Christ.
3. Love attentively
The husband who is rightly in Christ pays close attention to his wife. His wife is always his main project. He always takes great pains to fully understand her (1 Peter 3:7). If his wife is not growing spiritually, he sees it as his responsibility. If she is feeling unloved or ignored, he makes it his main task to correct this. Thus, the husband is always taking the initiative to ask his wife what she needs in order to be nourished and cherished and then acts accordingly (Eph 5:29). At the very least, this will mean leading his wife in prayer and in the word (cf Eph 5:25,26; 1 Cor 7:5).
4. Love redemptively
Above all, the husband loves his wife in ways that help her identify and cast off her sin and be made more complete in Jesus. He seeks to love her so that she might be fully remade in the likeness of the Son and together with him have a marriage that is a shining reflection of God. He washes her regularly with the word. He prays with her and for her. He leads her in being involved in the church community. And he reminds her often of the gospel of Jesus and displays this gospel often to her in his own life.
In the end, the gospel is central if we are to have the kind of marriages we were meant to have. In the gospel we will be led regularly to forgive our spouse and repent from our sin, to depend ultimately not on our spouse or our marriage for our validation but on God, and to have a sure and confident hope that even the most difficult circumstances of our marriage God will work to our greatest good and for his maximum glory.
Reflect on what Genesis 2:24-25 tells us about marriage and what Colossians 3:18-19 tells us about roles in marriage. What does it mean and look like for the wife to submit to her husband so that there might be a God-glorifying marital oneness? What does it mean and look like for the husband to love his wife so that there might be God-glorifying marital oneness?
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