Colleen and Nikki discuss the third part of chapter three of Colossians. Husbands, wives, and children have unique roles that not only make life better but show us the gospel. Transcription by Gwen Billington.
Colleen: Welcome to Former Adventist podcast. I’m Colleen Tinker.
Nikki: And I’m Nikki Stevenson.
Colleen: Today we are continuing our discussion through the third chapter of Colossians. We’re only addressing four verses today, verses 18 through 21, the part that some people have called “Paul’s household commands.” But we’re going to spend some extra time on it. Sometimes when we look at certain commands in Scripture, it’s helpful to ask ourselves, “Where else does the Bible discuss these principles?” We’re going to do that today because this is a passage that has caused a lot of people a lot of consternation over the years. Today we’re going to talk about wives being subject to husbands, husbands loving their wives, children obeying their parents, and fathers not exasperating their children. But before we get any further into this passage, I just want to remind you all that if you have any questions or comments, you may write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com. You can go to proclamationmagazine.com and subscribe to our weekly email. You can find our online magazine there. You can also donate there online to help support all the work of Life Assurance Ministries, including Proclamation! magazine, this podcast, and even the annual FAF conferences. So please like our podcast on Facebook and Instagram and write a review and rate us wherever you listen. Thank you to all of you who have done that because these things really do help expand the reach and the listenership of Former Adventist podcast. But now we’re going to look at Colossians 3:18-21, and I want to ask you, Nikki, before we look at the text, how did you relate when you were an Adventist to Paul’s command that wives are to submit to their husbands?
Nikki: You know, I really had a liberal perspective on this. I believed that a verse like this went along with other verses that talked about wearing head coverings, just more cultural than theological command. It was a liberal thing. I could dismiss this, and I could find the principle in it. It wasn’t something that I understood to be a command for Christian women today because I didn’t understand the authority of Scripture, I didn’t understand the nature of Scripture, and so I certainly didn’t submit to it. How do you submit to your husband when you don’t even really know what it means to submit to Scripture?
Colleen: That’s kind of how I felt about it too. I did feel like it was something that was a command of God, like all those other commands in the Bible that were somehow on my shoulders to do if I wanted to be ready for heaven, but I really didn’t understand how to do it. And I suspect that if I were really going to put a word in there instead of the word “submit,” I had the idea that sometimes I was supposed to defer to my husband, so that if he really wanted to do something and it wasn’t something I necessarily wanted to do, I would just defer to him because, you know, after all, he was my husband. But I didn’t understand the concept of coming under his authority. I would have really struggled with that. And I know I struggled with the way I heard some people in the Christian community talk about it, wives who would submit to their husbands, and they ended up being like domestic servants.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: That rubbed me wrong, and I wasn’t going down that road, whatever the case. So I just thought of it as defer and kind of didn’t think any more about it.
Nikki: I felt a heavier responsibility to – I don’t want to use the word “manage,” because I don’t think I would have used that word, but to direct and push my husband toward religious and spiritual things. I felt the weight of that. And I felt like it was my responsibility to make sure that our family behaved like Seventh-day Adventists and that these things mattered to us, and I would push for church and push for Sabbath rules, and I felt responsible for that. I felt the weight of that. And I think that that was supported by what I saw around me in Adventism. I saw a lot of matriarchal families where the women drove these kinds of things and the men almost begrudgingly went along to the committee meetings to the, you know, whatever it was they were supposed to be doing. That was sort of what I saw modeled, and so that was where everyday life happened. The idea of submitting to my husband, I do remember having moments where I would think, “Well, yeah, that’d be nice, if I had a husband who would actually lead.” But I felt like it was me who was doing it and that he was sort of disinterested in religious things, and I saw that modeled in the home too.
Colleen: You know, I think that we came by that idea naturally, as Adventist women, because Ellen White had a lot to say about women setting the tone, the spiritual tone, in their homes, and she would talk about the necessity of women being kind and well-modulated and compassionate in their responses and keeping their voices low and not expressing lots of loud emotion and being the light in the home. In fact, just before we started recording, I was looking through a booklet that I found on our shelf, because we have a study library here in our office, that’s a compilation of Ellen White’s – some of her writings, and it’s called “Testimonies on Sexual Behavior, Adultery, and Divorce, a compilation from the writings of Ellen G. White.” This is something that the Ellen G. White Estate has produced. I mean, they’ve actually compiled her writings on this subject. So I was looking through that book in preparation for this, and I saw a quote where she ended up by admonishing a wife that she needed to be kind and compassionate because she was the light in the home. And I do believe Adventist women had that idea, that if your husband isn’t going to lead, you need to, and somehow in the general Adventist milieu, that translated into wives were the spiritual heads of the family most times, because we learned to be concerned and worried and sure that it was up to us to make sure our children were saved, and somehow we just kind of took the reins and ran with it. You know, if our husbands had a preference, maybe I would defer if my husband said something, but in general, I had that same idea, that the wives were more likely to have the spiritual sensitivity in the home. That’s just not biblical.
Nikki: I have to admit, that was my argument too for ordaining women. When I was at La Sierra University, I would say, “Hey, if men aren’t going to step up and do these things, then ordain the women to do it.” There was almost this passivity among a lot of men that I knew, and the women tended to be more assertive, and it was kind of a feminist perspective, you know. They had to work harder to have their voice, and so they spoke louder, and that colored so much of how I understood things. And I have to say, what I didn’t recognize then is the places where my husband to me seemed passive and disinterested, those were places that were really not significant. They were not important things. It was me trying to manage our reputation, trying to make sure we made every appointment, that we did everything I thought we were supposed to do, but they weren’t actually spiritual, biblical things that mattered. And ultimately, he’s the one who led us away from that fake way of that manmade religion. He led us into truth by refusing to participate in what felt like a circus to him.
Colleen: That is so interesting, Nikki, because with Richard and me it ended up being a similar thing in terms of Richard is the one that led us out of Adventism. I don’t know that I would have had the courage to do it on my own, but he’s the one that started researching when his questions couldn’t be easily answered. He started doing online reading and digging into Ellen White and looking at what the Bible said. He’s the one that led us out. Far from being passive and quiet, as I sometimes thought at the very beginning of our marriage, he was actually the spiritual leader in our family and continues to be. It’s quite a remarkable thing, and my perspective has changed as I’ve understood what the Bible says about these roles. I see Richard differently, as I see my own role differently. Before we talk more about this, I think we should read our four verses today. Would you mind reading verses 18 to 21, please, from Colossians 3?
Nikki: “Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them. Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.”
Colleen: It’s interesting that these four tiny little verses pack such a punch. We find in the Book of Ephesians that these ideas are fleshed out with more verses and more explanation. Ephesians and Colossians actually ended up being written at about the same time, and Nikki, you were telling me one of the interesting things you discovered as you were prepping for this. There was a third book or letter from Paul that was written along with these two, Colossians and Ephesians. Do you want to tell us a little about that? And next week we will look a little more closely at that phenomenon.
Nikki: Yeah. Well, Paul is going to write – after this discussion about wives and husbands and children, he’s going to write about bondservants and talk about how they’re to obey their masters and all that goes into that, and it’s fascinating to me that he’s writing this letter, and he’s going to send it with Tychicus, who is going to carry it with him, along with Onesimus, a runaway slave of one of the church members in Colossae, and Tychicus is going to bring Onesimus back to Philemon, he’s going to do the work of reconciling them with Paul’s letter to Philemon. It’s an incredible thing to think about the history behind this and what is on Paul’s heart as he’s writing this to the Colossians.
Colleen: Many people think that Paul doesn’t go into very much detail about this business of wives and husbands in the Book of Colossians because he goes into more detail in Ephesians, and Ephesians and Colossians were intended to be shared with the sister churches and read to each other. They were all supposed to read both books. Just so we get the filled-out picture, why don’t we also read the corresponding passage in the Book of Ephesians. That’s Ephesians 5:22-33, and we’ll refer to both of these as we talk about this section of Scripture today.
Nikki: “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, His Body, and is Himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her, that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that He might present the church to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of His Body. ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.”
Colleen: Let’s turn back now to Colossians 3, and let’s just look at verse 18 again, “Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord,” as the NASB says it. Nikki, what did you find out about the word “be subject” or “submit”? What does that word mean? What does the Greek suggest? Understanding the underlying meaning of this word has helped me understand how to submit to a husband.
Nikki: Well, I don’t know if I will pronounce it correctly, but the Greek word is “hupotassó,” and it means to “rank under.” And the literal translation is “submit yourselves to the husband.” So it means place yourself under, your ranking would go under your husband. It’s not something that your husband does to you. It’s what you do. It’s your posture before your husband and in your marriage.
Colleen: That’s very different from the way some people have used this text to say a husband has the right to demand that his wife submit and do what he says. “Submit” does not mean “obey.” It is, like you said, a chosen reaction, a chosen position of placing yourself under your husband’s authority. And you know, I’ll be honest, when I finally understood that and understood that God is holding my husband responsible for loving me, as he says in Ephesians, “as Christ loves the church,” but that my job is to come under his authority, there’s a tremendous amount of safety and freedom that comes with understanding that. I’m not responsible for figuring out how to make my husband behave. I am protected by him, or I am under his authority, and if he fails, he answers to God, not to me. It is not up to me to get things to run smoothly. It’s my job to honor and respect him.
Nikki: And you mentioned that it doesn’t mean “obey.” If you look in verse 20, the word “obey” shows up in reference to children, but that’s not the word that Paul chooses to use here in verse 18. We see a different Greek word even there. It’s clear that that’s not the same exact idea that Paul has. And it’s something that we see all over Scripture. Like you said, in Ephesians we’re told to submit to our husbands. I have to say, Titus 2:4 and 5 has been another verse that has been very helpful to me in understanding this. Paul’s speaking to older women, and he says, “So train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.” In that text, he says “their own husbands.” He did in Ephesians as well, “submit yourselves to your own husbands.” I know some people have tried to use these verses to say that women are to submit to all men. This is a context of marriage, this is in marriage. We submit to our own husbands.
Colleen: And that’s a really important point. It’s especially interesting and clear when you look at Ephesians because Paul makes a very explicit case for the fact that marriage represents the relationship of Christ and the church. God did not give us the metaphor of Christ and the church being like a bride and a groom so that we would understand it because He gave us marriage. No. It’s the other way around. Christ and His church is the eternal relationship. Marriage was given to us so that we would have a way to picture what is already true with Christ and those who trust Him. Marriage is a representation of Christ and the church, not the other way around. And that has helped me as well because I understand from this way of looking at it that, as wives, we represent the church in a bigger way, and our husbands are representing Christ to the church. And I find it fascinating in the Ephesians passage that we read that Christ loved the church, gave Himself up for her so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word so that He might present the church to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. This is the picture that the marriage relationship is representing. Even to ourselves, inside the Body of Christ, that’s how we’re to see our relationships with our husbands. We’re representing Christ and the church, and it is interesting to me that Jesus presents the church to Himself. The church, as His Body, does not clean herself up, get rid of her spots, her wrinkles, her blemishes. Christ does that for the church, and then He presents the church to Himself as a spotless church. So when you think about it, “a wife being subject to a husband, as is fitting in the Lord,” means we place ourselves under our husband’s authority as the church places itself under Christ’s authority. We don’t place ourselves under His authority to sin. If we have an unbelieving or disobedient husband who’s saying, “Now, you have to submit to me, and I want you to do x, y, and z,” and we know those things are sinful, that is not what this is saying. It says, “as is fitting in the Lord.” So we submit ourselves to our husbands as is fitting in the Lord, but not for the purpose of sin. We do it, Nikki, as you read in Titus 2:4, “so that the word of God will not be reviled.” We do it to honor the Lord.
Nikki: And we do it even when it isn’t easy. I remember the first time I read Titus 2:4. I had just come out of Adventism. Honestly, Carel and I had just discovered the gospel, and we were in what I would call a “honeymoon phase.” Our marriage was so great. We were so happy, we were so excited. We were leaving Adventism together, which is rare. Everything just sort of seemed perfect. All the pieces had fallen together, and actually – Carel and I were just talking about this before the podcast – our previous church had asked us to give a testimony at a Christmas Eve service, and there were three or four services, and we shared how God had entered our lives and entered our marriage and everything was just wonderful. What we didn’t know is that we were about to enter the most sanctifying period of our life together, and it wasn’t going to be short, it wasn’t going to be brief. We laugh about that Christmas Eve service now because if people had only known what God was about to do in our lives. And so, when I first read Titus 2:4, that women were to be taught to love their husbands and children, I thought, “Well, that’s easy. Why do we have to be taught to do that?” Well, enter all of the sanctification that God was going to bring us to. I understood that I needed to have an older woman come alongside me who, during the most challenging and difficult moments, the moments that felt the most hopeless, who would tell me, “You need to love your husband for God. You need to be what Scripture has called you to be.” Scripture makes it very clear in other places that we’re to do this even when it’s difficult. 1 Peter 3:1 says that wives are to be subject – in English it’s translated “subject” in the ESV, but the Greek word is the same as the one used in Colossians – so to be subject to your own husband so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see their respectful and pure conduct. This falls right after Peter has just told bondservants to submit, even in their suffering, and he gave the example of Christ, who went to the cross and who submitted to the Father in the middle of His suffering, and He did not lash out, He didn’t retaliate, He didn’t revile when He was reviled. Then when he goes to talk to wives, he says, likewise be submissive to your own husbands. We don’t only do this when we have these great husbands who are leading like I thought in Adventism.
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: We do this because we’re submitting for the Lord, for the sake of the Lord, for the integrity of the word in this, loving our husbands for God and submitting to God. It gives room for the Holy Spirit to work in both of us and to bring us to that place where God wants to have us to give up our right to be their Holy Spirit, but to entrust them to God, even if they’re not obeying the word. Even if they’re born-again believers and they’re not submitted to Scripture, we can trust that as we obey the Lord and as we submit to Scripture, which tells us to submit to our husbands as to the Lord, that gives the Spirit the room to work in our hearts and bring us to a healing place, and He’s done that for Carel and I. I have more of my husband now than I ever imagined I ever would because of the work that the Lord has done in our lives as we have – we moved away from trying to manage each other, and we pressed into the Lord and trusting Him with each other.
Colleen: You said it really well, Nikki. It’s so important. We gave up trying to manage each other and pressed into the Lord, trusting Him with each other. I think it’s really significant and important that at the end of the Ephesians passage that parallels our Colossians one, the one we just read a few moments ago, Paul begins the passage by saying, “Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as to the Lord,” but he ends the passage with this sentence: “However, let each one of you” – meaning the husbands – “love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.” It’s interesting that he ends with that word “respect.” That has helped me a lot. As an Adventist, I grew up in the same Adventist milieu, only a couple decades ahead of you, two and a half to three decades ahead of you, Nikki, but the sense of the underlying feminist mindset has probably always been there. I grew up with the idea, like we talked about a little earlier, that wives had to make sure their husbands were properly spiritual, that family worship was properly honored, that church was properly done, and that the family presented a proper spiritual front to the community. And I did feel responsible for keeping things together and managing the household in that sense, managing the spirituality, managing the obedience, managing everything so that everything looked good. But this passage in Ephesians commands husbands to love their wives as they love themselves, which is a selfless, self-sacrificing way to love, and then it says, “Let the wife see that she respects her husband.” Now, respect was not a word that I would have used generally to describe wives and husbands within Adventism. Now, I can’t say there was no respect. I can’t say my mother didn’t respect my father, but respect wouldn’t have been at the top of the list. And I realized, as I became a Christian and moved into the Christian community, that respecting my husband was probably the counterintuitive command that Paul could have given women. Men tend to operate in the realm of respect, mutual respect, respecting one another’s careers, respecting one another’s accomplishments, and women tend to love. They tend to maybe even drown their children and husbands in what they consider to be love and care. And Paul is here asking us to do the thing that is least natural for us in our natural selves. He’s asking men to love, which is a tenderness and a compassionate reaction that may not be the first reaction that a man will have long term, and he’s asking women to respect their husbands, which is also not the first reaction they would have to their husbands long term. And as I started thinking of submitting and putting myself under my husband’s authority, along with the word “respect,” it became much more clear what God was asking me to do. My husband is gifted and assigned by God to certain jobs in life and jobs in the marriage, and my job is to respect him and to honor him and to thank God for him, and that idea of learning to respect my husband has made such a difference in my own personal life.
Nikki: Again, a difficult one to obey when you’re struggling with your opinion of your husband as you go through those sanctifying times, and coming out of a religion like Adventism, I don’t know many marriages who leave unscathed. Even if you do leave Adventism and you feel really good about your marriage, if you’re born again and your husband is born again, God doesn’t leave you where He finds you, and so you can anticipate that there are going to be sanctifying times ahead, and there’s a lot of redefining that happens in the life after. Just like with anything we learn in Scripture, family roles also become redefined as we submit to the authority of God’s word and what it says. It’s inevitable that there’s going to be struggle, and learning to respect in the middle of that is something that happens when we look over their shoulder, like you’ve often told me, and we see Jesus, and we remember that we are doing this, again, like Titus says, so that the word will not be reviled. In that same passage, the word for “love,” where it says to train women to love their husbands, it’s only used in this verse in all of the Bible.
Colleen: Interesting.
Nikki: It’s “philandrous,” and it has with it the idea of a stewardship. It’s our stewardship to love and care for – it even has the meaning of friendship, to be that for our husbands, and that includes the respect. It’s a stewardship that God gives us in our role as their helpmates, as their wives.
Colleen: You know, it’s been really helpful to me to begin to understand these New Testament commands for husbands and wives by going back to Genesis and looking at what happened in Genesis.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And this is all something that I would never have done as an Adventist. You know, as an Adventist, I didn’t understand born again. I just understood that I had commands I had to keep, new, enlightened, more progressive commands in the New Testament than the Old perhaps, but they were all commands. I didn’t understand that there was a literal change that would happen in a believer. But when I look back at Genesis, it’s fascinating to remember that God created Adam without a wife, and He let him learn to miss a companion. He had him name the animals. He started noticing that the animals would come two by two, and he says, “Where’s a companion for me?” God allowed Adam to feel alone, and He allowed him to feel the need for a companion before He put him to sleep, took a rib, and made Eve, a helper for him. Now, it was helpful to me, shortly after I became a Christian, to understand that that word “helper” is the same word the Bible uses within the Trinity for the Holy Spirit. It’s not a denigrating term. It’s a term that is an honorable term. Eve was not to act as her husband’s Holy Spirit, but she was his helper. She was taken from him. She was made second. She complemented him. In a sense, she completed him. The two became one, one flesh. Adam was incomplete without Eve. Eve wouldn’t have existed without Adam, but she was his helper. And then what happened when they sinned? In Genesis 3 we learn that after Eve sinned, God said, “From now on you will bring forth children in pain. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” Now that word “desire” is only used in three places in the Old Testament, and one of the other places it’s used is with Cain when God said to him, “Sin crouches at your door, and it desires to have you.” It’s a word that implies complete consumption. God was saying to Eve, “You will desire to control, to manage, to own your husband, but he will rule over you.” And you think about that conflict, and you think about what people in their natural state discover in marriages, and it’s that kind of combat often, a wife who wants her husband to do certain things and to behave a certain way, and husbands who say, “Woman, not on my watch,” and then dominates the wife. That’s the traditional conflict that we hear and people make jokes about in marriage, but you know, that is the consequence of the curse that came with sin. In our natural state, we can’t rise above that. But now, in the New Testament, Paul is talking about marriage for believers, and with the coming of the new birth and the infilling of the Holy Spirit, there’s a way to overcome the consequence of the curse, and it’s important to understand that in the Old Testament – you know, people sometimes say, “Well, why was there divorce in the Old Testament? Why was there polygamy in the Old Testament?” Well, Jesus told the Jews why there was divorce in the Old Testament. He said it’s because of the hardness of your hearts. But in the New Covenant, we have the Holy Spirit in us, and God Himself teaches us to relate to one another as He created us to relate, not as our natural state of sinful depraved humanity would relate.
Nikki: And I think it’s important to remember that even in their pre-fallen state, Adam was given as head over Eve. When they sinned, Eve was the one who took the apple, she was the one who had the conversation with the snake, but it was Adam that God said, “What have you done?” He was the one He held responsible. In this marriage now, as born-again believers, we return to that, that the man is head. He cares for the wife. He’s responsible for her. And we need to remember that, in our submission, that our husbands are held responsible to God in ways that we are not. And we can trust God with them, and we can know that even when we feel like they could be doing it better, they could be doing it differently, we need to step down, and we need to trust God, and we need to know that He sees and He knows and that He will lead and guide and train and teach our husbands.
Colleen: Sometimes I’ve had to remind myself that, just like I pray for brothers and sisters in my local Body of Christ and in my extended Body of Christ, I also have to pray for my husband, and I know sometimes I have struggled. I pray that God will make me the wife He wants me to be, but it’s also important for me as a wife to pray that God will help my husband be the husband He wants him to be.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: That’s not a selfish prayer for me. That’s not a controlling or manipulative prayer. That’s a biblical prayer. Just as I would pray for anyone to be submitted to the Lord and honoring to His word, I need to pray that for my husband as well. And God is really faithful. He does answer our prayers and keep His promises in our lives. And I know that there’s another aspect to this. Sometimes believers are married to unbelievers, and what do you do with that? What does a believing wife do if her husband is an unbeliever or vice versa. It’s interesting that Paul even addressed that, not in Colossians, but let’s take a quick trip over to 1 Corinthians 7. Do you mind reading 1 Corinthians 7:12-16?
Nikki: “To the rest I say (I, not the Lord) that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace. For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?”
Colleen: I first struggled with this passage years ago when we studied 1 Corinthians in FAF on Friday night, and I really did not understand verse 14, “For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband.” And I realized, as I thought through it, the word “sanctified” simply means to be set apart for holy use. Paul isn’t saying categorically that you must never separate from an unbelieving spouse, but he is saying, if the unbelieving spouse chooses to stay with the believing spouse, and the implication here, especially when we look farther and see if the unbeliever wants to leave, let him leave, the implication here is that the unbelieving spouse loves the believing spouse and wants to stay. If that’s the case, that unbelieving spouse is literally choosing to stay in the presence of the Holy Spirit because the believing spouse is indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and the believing spouse is born again and changed, and the presence of the Holy Spirit in that person will change the whole atmosphere of the house. So the unbeliever is choosing to stay in the presence of God in the believing spouse, and that is a sanctifying effect. That unbelieving spouse is choosing to stay and love the believing spouse. It’s kind of an interesting thing. It even goes on to say a couple of verses later, “How do you know, O wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, O husband, whether you will save your wife?” Well, obviously, none of us knows that, but when an unbeliever chooses to stay with a believer, it suggests that there is a certain amount of openness. It’s not a hostile consent. And it even has an effect on the children. You were talking about this with me a little before, Nikki. What was your take on children who are products of a broken family? You were talking about the effect on the kids.
Nikki: I was focusing on that verse here that talks about the children being unclean and what that might mean, and he’s talking about the husband being made holy, being set apart, and as long as the family unit is united and being set apart, the children are also set apart and kept away from certain aspects of the world. And the opposite of holy, you might think, is unclean, not being set apart, and if you think of a believing spouse and an unbelieving spouse separating, now you have to share the kids, now they’re going back and forth to two different homes. They’re going into a believing home and then they’re going to an unbelieving home, where they’re not going to be as protected against the effects of the secular worldview and what goes on there, and they’re not going to be as guarded and set apart from all of that as they would be in a home that was intact. As we were talking about this together and kind of trying to work through what this might mean, the subject of abuse came up, and I asked you what about the spouse who doesn’t want to leave because they want to continue to control and victimize the wife and the children, and I love what you said. Can you share that?
Colleen: When an unbeliever wants to stay in the presence of a believer, having the presence of God in that marriage is an antagonistic thing for the unbeliever, an angering thing. Sometimes an unbeliever will perpetrate abuse on that believing spouse and on the children. In a very real way, that is an assault on the marriage. That is leaving the marriage. That is refusing to take any of the biblical commands for the husband or the wife, if the wife happens to be the abuser, and that’s a breach of the marriage contract, and God has never asked anybody to stay in a place where they’re being put in danger in an ongoing way just because somebody is cruel. There is no biblical command for that. Now, we might have discussions about whether or not the Bible permits such a person, who leaves to save the lives of themselves and their children, whether there is the permission to marry again after that. That would be a separate discussion, but as far as staying in the presence of very real danger, where children are being damaged and destroyed and where one’s own life may be in danger, God is not asking for that to happen. And it does say in verse 15, in that passage that says if the unbeliever wants to leave, let him leave, the brother or the sister is not under bondage in such cases, but God has called us to peace. It is not peace when a believer is in a home where the unbeliever is creating continual and intensifying chaos and danger for the spouse or for the children. That is not what God has called us to.
Nikki: And even our parenting is a stewardship. It’s a stewardship, and we’re responsible to protect those children. I listened to Gary Inrig teach through these verses at Word Search in 2015, and one of the things that he said about submission is that it’s not a statement – to be submissive is not a statement of your worth or your value, and he said that Jesus modeled submission through His role of submitting to the Father. One of the things he said, “The Son submits to the Father not out of inferiority but out of a loving commitment to the purposes of God.” So submission is not a statement about your worth or your value, and in a situation where a woman or a man is being abused by the spouse and they feel like they’re supposed to do that because they’re supposed to submit or be subject, they’re being devalued and treated inhumanely. That is not what the Bible is calling us to. That is not the example of Christ, who is equal with the Father, submitting for the purposes of God. It’s a very different, very dysfunctional, very sin-filled situation.
Colleen: I find it helpful just to see that the submission of the wife in the case that Paul describes here in Colossians and in Ephesians and the unembittered love of the husband, like it says in verse 19, “Husbands love your wives and do not be embittered against them. How did your ESV put it, Nikki? “Embittered” is the NASB.
Nikki: It says, “Husbands love your wives and do not be harsh with them.”
Colleen: The same Greek word. But these are the implications of the Greek word that underlies it. Do not be embittered, do not be harsh. It’s interesting that the submission of the wife, biblical submission, which is a voluntary putting yourself under his authority, and unembittered love of the husband towards the wife, these things are the reversal of the curse of sin. It’s the reversal of “Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you.” This is something only possible when people love the Lord, when people have been made alive and the love of God and the peace of God is dwelling in their hearts. Now, it doesn’t mean that a husband and wife will always do this perfectly, but it does mean the commitment to the Lord changes the way they are committed to one another.
Nikki: The call for the husband, it seems almost higher than what the wife is called to. He’s called to love like Christ loved the church, give himself up for her to nourish and cherish her and even to leave his parents and hold fast to his wife.
Colleen: That is a very good point, which brings me, in this Colossians passage, to verse 20, a passage which a lot of people misuse. A lot of parents have actually used this verse to try to control their adult children. “Children, be obedient to your parents in all things, for this is well-pleasing to the Lord.” “Children” in this case is a word that means a minor child, not an adult. The fact that this command is inside this letter suggests that Paul knew children would be with their parents when this letter was read to the church, they would understand it, and they would be able to obey because they were being brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord. This is a command for children, not adults to obey. You say, “Well, what about Ephesians, where it says honor, children honor your parents in the Lord, and it quotes the fifth commandment, this is the first commandment with a promise? Nikki, we were talking about this before, and you had some really interesting insights into the different between “obey” and “honor” and what that looks like. Do you want to talk about that a bit?
Nikki: So when I look into the Greek words, I always find my definitions on the Bible Hub interlinear app, and the word here used for “obey,” it suggests attentively listening, fully compliant and responsive. Don’t we all want that from our children? [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: Fully responsive, attentive, that’d be great. This is referring to minor children. In Ephesians 6:1-3, where it says, “Children obey your parents in the Lord,” the Greek word there is for a minor child of either sex. Paul is definitely speaking to children. But like you said, in Ephesians he refers to honoring your father and your mother, and one of the things that Gary said as he taught through this passage is that our obedience is for a limited time. It’s while we’re children. But honoring our parents is something that happens over a lifetime. Sometimes as we think about honoring our father and mother after we’ve left Adventism, we struggle with this. It’s quite a betrayal in Adventist families to leave Seventh-day Adventism.
Colleen: True.
Nikki: And there tends to be a lot of fallout. And because of some of the ways that we were taught family systems and family dynamics, we come out of very dysfunctional, very hurtful things, and we have wounds, and it can become a very complicated matter, thinking through how to honor our father and mother. And I know this isn’t true for everybody, but I do know for those who it is true for, these are the moments when we’re listening to these Bible studies, where we kind of start to cringe and feel guilt, and I just want to share some thoughts I had about that. Honoring does not mean giving our parents whatever they want.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: It doesn’t mean being controlled by them, being guilted by them, or allowing them to mistreat you or your children or to allow unsafe or dishonorable parents access to you and the family that God gave you, the stewardship that God gave you. Sometimes valuing our parents looks different from what the world would say. I think of Moses, who refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter and chose rather to be mistreated with the people of God. And I think of how he left a situation where people might have said, “Moses, she saved your life. She raised you. You owe her this honor.” But Moses was convicted by God that there was something different for his life and that he wasn’t to be bound up by all of that obligation to her, and instead he was to follow God. There are verses in Scripture that talk about how Jesus came to bring a sword, to turn family against each other. We know that the word of God is a sword. We know that Jesus told the man who came to Him and said, “I want to follow you, but first let me bury my father.” And there is some suggestion that his father was still alive. He wanted to stay with his father through the end of his life before he followed Jesus, and Jesus said, “Let the dead bury his own dead.” Jesus told the crowd who was listening to Him that His family, His mother, His brother, His sisters, were those who do the will of God.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: And He tells us that, “Anyone who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.” So sometimes, as we leave a false religion and we try to struggle with what does it look like to honor our family, who is very unhappy with our following Christ, honoring them looks a little bit like refusing to allow them to sin against you and your family or doing whatever work we have to do to stop the generational cycles of abuse so that their very offspring can flourish and know God. It means giving up our expectations of them, refusing to look to them for what they can’t offer you and allowing God to meet those needs, kind of letting them off the hook. It means not seeking revenge, not slandering or seeking to destroy them. Honoring them can look very different, even in those very difficult situations. And I’m not suggesting that this is the way it is for everybody.
Colleen: Even if we can’t be in a relationship with family members who are not safe, we can still fulfill Scripture by honoring them as to the Lord in the ways that you mentioned, protecting our family, honoring the fact that we were given life through them and that God made us who we are through their gene pool because He wanted us and He wanted them to be our parents. We can honor God and obey this command even if we’re not in active relationship with people who are not safe.
Nikki: And we can entrust them to God and commit to praying for them.
Colleen: And I want to say another thing too about this subject of honoring. It’s not only parents that people are commanded to honor. Husbands are also commanded to honor their wives, and we see this in 1 Peter 3:7, “You husbands in the same way, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with someone weaker, since she is a woman; and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that your prayers will not be hindered.” And sometimes we get all confused with how do we honor parents, how do we honor a spouse, what if it seems that our parents are trying to pull us away from the spouse or trying to come between us and a spouse? It’s very confusing when we leave a false religion and we have family that’s still in the false religion. It’s hard to know how to navigate all of these things, but this command in Peter is quite helpful. “Husbands honor your wife as a fellow heir of the grace of life so that your prayers will not be hindered.” And Peter is directly attaching the way a husband loves and honors his wife, as a fellow heir with him, with his own prayers being answered. It’s an interesting connection, and it seems shocking, but this is the word of God, and He does ask us to treat one another this way, and He asks husbands to consider their wives in an honorable way so that their prayers will be honored.
Nikki: And that last line there, “so that your prayers may not be hindered,” that tells me that this matters to God. This is important to God. This is not a throw-away command. Marriage is very important to Him. Can I tell you a funny story?
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: I heard a sermon once shortly after being born again. He preached on this passage, and he talked about men showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, and that “weaker vessel” was like, argh! I didn’t like that. And he said, “I’m going to give you an example because I know you women just cringed. You didn’t like that “weaker vessel,” and he pulled out this big steel travel coffee mug, and he said, “This is the man.” And then he pulled out this beautiful crystal champagne glass, and he said, “Both of these have value. Both of these are useful for very important things, but one is more fragile. The coffee mug can’t go around colliding into the crystal champagne glass and expect good results.” I just thought that was kind of a funny picture because I can accept being a crystal champagne glass better than I can just being, you know, a weakling.” [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: But the passage here is referring to women as something to be cared for and cherished. It’s not an insulting passage, and maybe everybody else understood that, but the first time I heard it, I didn’t like it.
Colleen: Well, I think our Adventist background tended to help us not like it.
Nikki: Probably.
Colleen: Because we were taught that we had to be as good as any man and that we could get ahead if we were as good as any man.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But it’s been an interesting thing to discover, I remember the surprise I felt shortly after becoming a Christian and starting to attend a Christian church, I felt like God had given me the gift of my femininity for the first time. It was good to be a woman, and it’s not the same as being a man. It was good to know that emotionally, physically, in some ways I’m weaker, and I need my strong husband, who has a clear head and an accurate grasp of surroundings to protect me –
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: – in many ways. And it’s a comfort and a protection, and it’s a feeling of security.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And it does help me understand the relationship of Christ and the church. He protects us. Well, our passage ends with one more command, “Fathers, do not exasperate your children, so that they will not lose heart.” And I can’t help but think of the times I’ve heard parents say, “Oh, I had to break my daughter’s will. She was so strong-willed, one of us had to win, and it wasn’t going to be her. I had to break her will.” That is not what the word of God says.
Nikki: No. The Greek word there for “discouraged” actually means to be disheartened, dispirited, broken in spirit,” and the command is to not do that to your children. There’s never an instance when it’s right or okay to break your child’s spirit. That’s not biblical parenting.
Colleen: And again, this is a command that God is giving to born-again believers who know from experience what it means to be forgiven for all their sins through trusting in Jesus and His sacrificial death on the cross for our sin. This is something that God is asking of us as parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, to do with the younger generation because we know what it means to be forgiven. And we are not to dominate our strong-willed children to the point of forcing them to submit and building incredible resentment in their hearts. We’re to understand that we can bring to them the insight, the wisdom, the love, and the compassion of our true Father and help them to learn to trust their Father as well.
Nikki: You know, I just want to add here, one of the things that Pastor Gary talked about in his Word Search teaching on this passage, he talked about the liberal perspective of these verses, and he said that the liberals will accuse Paul of taking from the writings of Aristotle and the Greco-Roman household rules, which were patriarchal, and we hear a big cry-out against patriarchal society, and there’s a big fight against the Christian worldview, and they ascribe all of that Greco-Roman patriarchy. In that patriarchal system, the secular system, it was all about the father’s rights, and there was no regard for the children, there was no command to love your wife. Your wife was your property. The father had the right to put his children to death. That was the patriarchal system of the Greco-Roman world. Paul is calling believers to something completely different. He’s telling fathers to consider the feelings and the heart and the spirit of his children. That was not cultural. He’s telling husbands to love their wives in the supremely sacrificial way that Christ loved the church. This is not patriarchy. This is God’s biblical order. It’s rooted in creation. It’s rooted in His word. It’s not rooted in this system that our current secular world claims it is. This is actually a beautiful and holy thing, created by God, and when we submit to Scripture as parents, as husbands, as wives, some of the most incredible things come out of that by the work of God.
Colleen: That is so true. And if you haven’t trusted the Lord Jesus, if you haven’t experienced what it means to have your sins forgiven by trusting His finished work of death, of burial, of resurrection, of taking your sins in His body on the cross and giving you life, we ask you to consider it. It will change everything about your life, including the way you are able to love your spouse, love your children, and love one another. We just want to remind you that if you have any comments or questions, you can email us at formeradventist@gmail.com. You can go to proclamationmagazine.com and subscribe to our weekly email. You can donate there to Life Assurance Ministries, and please like our podcast on Facebook and Instagram. Thank all of you who have written reviews, and we appreciate your sticking with us and studying through Colossians with us, and we’ll meet you again next week to finish chapter 3 and talk about work relationships. And we’ll see you then.
Nikki: Bye for now.
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