Colossians 3:18 - 4:18

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Colossians 3:18 - 4:18

In his exposition of Colossians 3:18 - 4:18, Steve Gregg examines various roles and relationships outlined by the apostle Paul. Gregg contends that while cultural practices may have influenced certain instructions, they are ultimately grounded in God's original ordination of marriage. He emphasizes the importance of obedience to God rather than seeking to please men, acknowledging that societal expectations and norms do not always align with biblical principles. Gregg also explores the concept of accountability and the significance of prayer and a relationship with God in one's Christian walk.

Transcript

Colossians chapter 3 and we pick up at verse 18. At the beginning of chapter 3, we begin to see the practical application of the theology that is found earlier in the book. Most of the verses up to this point have had to do with putting off what Paul calls the old man and his deeds, and putting on the new man and his deeds.

This has been fairly general. He has talked about the kinds of sins that need to be put away from the Christian's life and the kind of general virtues that need to be added. In addition to speaking generally along those lines, he has said in verses 14-17, he has set out guidelines for knowing the will of God and particular choices that need to be made.

One is in verse 14 that everything has to be done in love. Knowing the will of God is made much more simple when we realize that it's always the will of God for us to do what is loving. Unless, of course, there is more than one possible thing that would be equally loving, and yet both cannot be done simply because you are one person.

You have one opportunity to make a choice to do one thing or another, and you cannot decide between the two options simply on the basis of love because both of them would arguably be loving things to do. And therefore, verse 15 adds that the peace of God is to play the umpire in your hearts. That is, which of the choices that are open to you, which of the loving options in behavior, do you feel the greater peace about? Do you feel a check in your spirit about one of the things? You just don't feel quite the peace of God about it.

The peace of God can make that decision. Also, verse 16 says that you need to let the word of Christ dwell richly in you. The word of God, the words of Jesus, these things are the surest indicator of the will of God in our lives.

And finally, verse 17, whatever you do in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, which means, of course, do exactly what he would do and do it as his representative. So, a lot of times, if you're thinking, well, should I do this or that or the other thing, if you just ask, well, could I picture Jesus doing this? Is this something I really expect Jesus would do if he were here? It will often answer the question just without going any further in the inquiry. So, these are some of the guidelines for knowing how to do the things that please God, to do the will of God.

You make your decisions according to the principle of love, according to the rule of the peace of God in your heart, according to the words of Christ that you allow to dwell in you and abide in you richly, and according to what essentially would be representative of Jesus' own actions, doing in his name the thing that he would do if he were here. And he is in you, and you are his agent. Now, Paul gets more specific.

He's been general. In general, Christians are supposed to stop sinning and start being righteous. In general, Christians are supposed to do what the will of God is, the loving thing, the thing that the peace of God approves of, the thing that Jesus would say, the thing that Jesus would do.

But in specific situations, there are categorical obligations of people who are in various classes. In a sense, everyone is in one of these categories. He addresses wives and husbands and children and fathers, and he addresses servants and their masters.

This combination of instructions, this addressing of these individual groups, is found elsewhere in Scripture as well, both in Ephesians 5-6, and also in 1 Peter 2-3. You'll find that the members of households and also servants and masters are addressed as separate groups because of the special obligations that are, by definition, a part of being in these categories. Paul has made it clear already that in Christ there is no distinction in terms of status, whether it's Jew or Greek or circumcised or uncircumcised.

In Galatians he says even male and female are thrown into that mix, slave or free. Different categories of people do not have different status before God, but they do have different functions in the institutions that are ordained by God, and in the institutions of society generally. The ruler has a different function in society than the ordinary citizen.

That doesn't mean that the ruler is more dear to God than the ordinary citizen. The child has a different function in the family than the parent has, but that does not mean that the parent is more dear to God or more significant to God than the child is. Jesus made that very clear.

Of such is the kingdom of heaven. Be careful not to despise these little ones, Jesus said. However, notwithstanding the equality of status before God between a child and his parent, there is a difference in function in the institution called the family, which is a divinely created institution.

If it were a humanly instituted institution, then of course God might not tamper with it, might not ordain special roles within it. If man invents an organization, then I suppose man might arguably have the right to regulate the roles of the officers and so forth in that organization, but the family is not a humanly created institution. It is divinely created, and the one who created it had ideas in mind for how it is to be regulated, how it is to be expressed.

And so, Paul and Peter also frequently address the issues of what it is that God had in mind for husbands and wives and children and parents when he created and ordained the family. It seems to me that the wives are always addressed first. In Ephesians 5, though Paul addresses both husbands and wives, the wife is addressed first and then the husband.

The same is true in 1 Peter 3. The wife is addressed first and then the husband. And you will find a consistency, regardless of which author or which book you are reading in the scriptures, you will find a consistency of instruction to the various persons in these roles. And although there is consistency, they are not always worded in precisely the same way, but the role of the husband, the role of the wife, and of the child and the parent are consistently laid out in scripture, so much so that there is really no excuse for Christians who claim to be evangelical to find some confusion over this matter.

There is, of course, as we know, confusion in the evangelical church over this matter, but not because the scripture is confusing, but because Christians are not as committed to scripture as I think they ought to be. The scriptures have fallen on hard times in our modern culture, and the church often has to make the hard choice. Will we be obedient to God or to man? Will we seek to please God or please men? Paul said in Galatians 1, verse 10, If I sought to please men, I could not be the servant of Christ.

And that is the epithet that will have to be written over many churches. Not the servant of Christ. Because you cannot seek to please men and be the servant of Christ.

And those who wish to know whether God has a word about the subject, those who wish to know whether God's mind has ever been expressed, never have to be in doubt. All they have to do is open the pages of scripture, and there is plain as anything taught in scripture. If we think that scripture teaches plainly that Jesus is the Son of God, and that no one has any excuse for coming up with some other doctrine than that, then we can say with equal certainty that the Bible teaches there are distinct roles of husbands, wives, children, parents, in marriage, which God has made very clear there is no more excuse for being confused about that issue in the scripture than for being confused about whether Jesus is the Son of God.

Both are stated with equal clarity, perhaps not with equal number of times, but certainly a great number of times each. And there is never a conflicting voice in the scripture. You never find some scriptures say Jesus is not the Son of God, or where there is some ambiguity about that.

And you never find any scriptures that indicate that the husbands, wives, children, and parents roles are somehow different than what most passages seem to say they are. There is one voice of all the writers of scripture on this topic. Now, Paul says, wives, submit to your own husbands as is fitting in the Lord.

Husbands, love your wives and do not be bitter toward them. Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing to the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.

And then he addresses servants. I'll pause on that for a moment, because servants and masters gets us into a slightly different institution. Although servants were part of the household also, just as a man's wife and children were part of his household, his servants were part of his household in that society.

And so Paul is not really extending his gaze beyond the borders of the home when he begins to address servants and masters. Many times in teaching these passages about servants and masters, we make application to employees and employers. And I think that's more or less a legitimate extrapolation.

But when we think of employees and employers, we're thinking usually about life outside the home. The man is at home with his wife and children, then he goes away from home into another environment to be with his employer and his fellow employees. In scripture, moving from the discussion of husbands, wives and children to the subject of servants is not a move outside the home, because the servants were part of the household stuff.

They were part of the household. And so Paul is looking at the Christian home here, and he's telling them how to behave. Now, we should not think that Paul is simply following the cultural norms of his time.

There are some people who will acknowledge that Paul did make very clear instructions about the roles of different parties in the home, but they say, well, you know, Paul, he sometimes would give instructions that were intended to just have the Christians not rock the boat culturally or with society. After all, Paul does not challenge slavery as an issue. And certainly we Christians know that slavery is not a good thing.

And yet Paul speaks about slavery without criticism of it. Now, isn't this evidence that Paul is willing to just kind of bow to the culture and not cause problems and that the instructions he gives are not necessarily universal, but in a culture that accepts slavery, which ours does not, you know, his instructions are applicable. But if he were writing to our culture where there are not slaves, he would not give these instructions about slavery.

He wouldn't tell slaves to submit to their masters and so forth. Well, there's a good reason for that, folks, and that is because there aren't slaves in this culture to address. If there were, we have every reason to believe that Paul would give the same instructions to them that he gave to the slaves in the Roman Empire.

And there are husbands and wives and children still to address. And there's no reason to believe that Paul's instructions to husbands, wives and children in the 20th century in the Western culture would be different than those which he gave to the Western culture in the first century in the Roman world. And the burden of proof for those who wish to simply throw out Paul's instructions and not make them applicable is a crushing burden on those that wish to maintain such a thing, because they have not only Paul to contend with, but Peter and the scriptures generally.

Furthermore, they have experience to contend with, because a culture that has turned from these principles has destroyed its families, destroyed its children, and to a large extent destroyed womanhood altogether, so that there's very little distinctiveness about what was once called woman or man, for that matter. And childhood is very much altered in our culture as well, because of the way society has rejected biblical norms. So we proceed in this section with the assumption that Paul was an apostle of Jesus Christ and spoke for Christ, and that we do not have the right to alter his instructions unless we found compelling reason to believe that he was, in this case, just acquiescing to the culture of the times.

There are cases where I do understand that to be the case when Paul says, Greet one another with a holy kiss. I don't feel like, even though he probably gave those instructions a dozen times in his writings, I mean, there's hardly a command more frequently found in scripture than greet one another with a holy kiss, and yet I feel no problem about not literally practicing that custom, although I don't have a problem practicing it either. When I was in Chile, they all greeted with a holy kiss.

But the point here is that there is strong reason to believe that the holy kiss was simply a reference to the normal method of greeting in that culture, and there's nothing that we can see that Paul bases that on that is somehow transcendent, universal, that a kiss is forever better than a hug or a handshake or some other form of hearty greeting or affectionate greeting. In principle, one cannot find an argument for the holy kiss that would make it superior as a greeting than some other forms of greeting that express the same kind of love and affection. And whatever Paul lays down as principle must have its basis in the character of God.

The matter of head coverings in 1 Corinthians 11 is another issue which I feel is a lot like the holy kiss. I think it's an area where Paul is instructing people along the lines of what the culture practices. And although many Christians disagree with me on this point, that's nonetheless my take on it.

I've done my best to understand it. I may not understand it correctly, but Paul says after he discusses the head covering, if anyone seems to be contentious, we have no such custom, nor do the churches of Christ. And in the context of Paul's own life, his teaching elsewhere, and what is known of the culture of the time, when he says we have no such custom, he seems to be saying that outside of the Greek churches, outside of the Greek culture, we, Paul, who is not a Greek, a Jew, a Roman citizenship, different culture altogether, we don't do these things.

We don't practice these head covering rituals. Now, I have good Christian friends who disagree about this. And they point out that the church fathers in the second and third centuries, whenever they wrote about the head covering, they always assumed it to be universal.

And that may be a very strong argument for it being understood universally. But I don't follow the church fathers as much as I follow the teaching of Scripture itself. And when Paul says we don't have such a custom, I believe the only reasonable way to understand that, in view of all biblical factors, is that he is saying this custom is not a universal.

This is local, and the instructions I'm giving you have to do with your behavior in your culture. It's in the same context, by the way, in 1 Corinthians, with the discussion that immediately preceded it about eating meat sacrificed to idols. Another strictly cultural issue, although there are principles of not offending people and so forth that are universal, and that is what Paul is amplifying in a cultural context when he talks about not eating meat sacrificed to idols, or when he talks about head coverings, I believe there are universal principles that underlie his instructions.

He's giving instructions about how in that culture to observe these principles. The principles are universal. The expression may differ from culture to culture.

At least this is my understanding. Some Christians would feel that that's wimping out on this thing. But I don't see any basis for doing that with Paul's instructions about family life.

Once again, whenever he does give a basis for it, he does so by appealing to creation, or to God's original ordination of marriage, or some other thing like that, as the basis for his instructions. He sees prevailing and transcendent principles as the basis for his instructions here, and I don't really see any exceptions being made by Paul in other cultures, or Peter when writing to them either. Now, he addresses wives, husbands, and then children and fathers.

Obviously there's going to be an overlap in some of these categories. A husband might also be a father, and most fathers are likely to be husbands. So the instructions to husbands is addressed to married men in their role as husbands.

The instructions to fathers may be instructed to the same men in another role, in their role as parents. Now, there are no direct instructions to mothers, although there are to wives, and perhaps that is because the responsibility for the raising of the children is the man's. You do not find instructions in the scripture telling wives to train up their children.

You do find instructions telling fathers to train up their children. But the wives are instructed to be cooperative and assistants and partners to their husbands. So it has, of course, been traditional, and there's every reason to embrace it as a reasonably good tradition, that the husband can delegate to his wife much of what is involved in the training of children, especially if he must be making a living outside the home and she's the one who's at home.

There's no reason why she can't, as the assistant to her husband, take on many of the things that are, strictly speaking, his responsibility, if that's what he wishes to do, to delegate them. But even if he does so, he does not absolve himself of personal responsibility for the outcome. If a man's wife does a poor job of discipling the children, he can't just blame her for the outcome.

He is responsible for the outcome. In this place, it's interesting that fathers are given instructions with reference to their children. In Ephesians, the instructions to the fathers are even somewhat more expanded, because here he only says, Fathers, do not provoke your children lest they become discouraged, and that's all he says.

But in Ephesians, when addressing the fathers, in Ephesians 6, 4, he says, And you fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, similar to what he says in Colossians, but then he says, But bring them up in the training and the admonition of the Lord. So the training of the children and the admonition in the Lord of the children is what the father is told to do. As I say, there's nothing in scripture that denies him the right to share the duties or to delegate some of the activities to his wife, maybe many of them.

But he cannot absolve himself of personal responsibility if his wife does a poor job. It is not her responsibility, primarily it is his in the final analysis. Now, wives are told here to submit to their own husbands as is fitting in the Lord.

The only difference between the way this is worded here and the way the same instructions are worded in Ephesians is that in Ephesians chapter 5, where Paul instructs the wives along the same lines, Ephesians 5, 22, he says, Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. Now, the only difference here is that in one case he says, submit as to the Lord, but in Colossians he says, submit to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord. And both of these things, of course, give the woman the same instruction, that is to submit to her husband, but give different aspects of the instruction.

In Ephesians, the woman's degree of submission is to be comparable to her degree of submission to the Lord. That is to say, her submission to the Lord can be measured along the same scale as her submission to her husband. With one caveat, of course, and this is always implied in Scripture, it is not always stated, but it is always implied, and there are many times we read of what this implication is expressed in action, and that is that no one, no Christian, should ever sin in order to submit to somebody that is otherwise in authority over them.

Citizens are told to submit to the government officials, but they are not supposed to do so if the government officials are commanding them to sin. And wives are told to submit to their husbands, but they should not do so in instances where their husband is commanding them to sin. Likewise, children are told to obey their parents, but I do not believe they should do so if their parents' instructions require them to sin.

And that is a given. It is assumed throughout Scripture, and it is stated explicitly in a number of places. We don't need to go into that in detail now to prove that point.

But apart from that one exception, that is, on the occasion where the husband would be required as such to sin, and hopefully a Christian husband would never do that. I could easily imagine a woman being married for 50 years to a man and him never asking her to sin, especially if he is a Christian. Apart from those rare instances in the case of a Christian marriage, that might happen more in a non-Christian marriage, the woman is to submit to her husband as if he were the Lord himself.

As to the Lord. Submit to your husband as to the Lord. Now, that is not the point Paul makes in Colossians.

He says, wives, submit to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord. So in Ephesians it says that Paul is making the comparison of the husband's role to the role of the Lord toward the church. And the church is to submit to Christ as its husband.

And the wife to her husband as to Christ. But in Colossians that is not the point that he makes. What he is saying in Colossians is that the wife should submit to her husband because this is right for people who are in Christ.

This is right for Christians. In the Lord, of course, means in Jesus, in Christ. Paul's common expression for the state of the Christian life.

We are in Christ. And certain things are fitting in Christ and are not fitting... other things are not fitting in Christ, as it were. There are some things that are appropriate for Christians to do.

And Paul appeals to the wife to submit because this is appropriate for Christians. And people who are Christians should behave in a way that is appropriate for Christians. And that is what Paul is saying when he says it is fitting in the Lord.

I believe that what he is saying here is that certain behaviors are consistent with Christianity. Fitting, suitable, proper. They are consistent with Christian profession.

Whereas other behaviors are simply not consistent with it. Now, people who behave inconsistently with Christian profession are not necessarily thereby showing themselves not to be true Christians. Because in many things we all stumble, James says.

He is writing to Christians. In many things we all stumble. You can watch any person's life you want, any Christian's life you want, and at some point, if you watch long enough, you will find something they do that is not really consistent with what they believe.

Paul himself complained that there were things he did that were not consistent with what he had proved. So to say that somebody is doing what is not consistent or appropriate for Christians to do is not the same thing as saying they are not a Christian. But certainly, if a person is a genuine Christian, they will be mindful and conscientious about what kinds of behavior are fitting for Christians.

For one thing, because we realize that the testimony we have to the world is not just the testimony of words, but we have a visual testimony to the world. And if people do not behave as Christians ought to behave, then it causes reproach to come on the gospel. Servants and others in Scripture are sometimes told to behave in a certain way because it says they will adorn the gospel that way.

They will make the gospel attractive because their behavior preaches as well as their words. In fact, Paul said in Titus 2, verses 4 and 5, actually, are where Paul tells the older women to instruct the younger women in their behavior. He says the younger women should be instructed by their older peers to love their husbands and love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, so that the word of God may not be blasphemed.

That women who are not behaving appropriately as Christian women are going to bring reproach on the gospel that they profess to live by. There is nothing more damaging to the testimony of the gospel than an inconsistent Christian life, than a Christian who is perceived as a hypocrite by non-Christians. I'll tell you, a hypocritical Christian can do more damage to the faith of unbelievers or to the potential for them to come to Christ than a room full of atheists arguing against Christianity will.

Because anyone can realize, as they listen to the arguments against Christianity, that these arguments might be biased. These are coming from people who oppose Christianity, don't believe in it. They might not be telling the whole story.

They might be twisting the truth. But when they see someone who professes to be a Christian, and that person's life seems to give the lie to what they profess to believe, this conveys very strongly the idea that Christianity isn't really real, because those who are within it don't believe it. Their lives provide a greater argument against their beliefs than their enemies could provide.

Paul said that if women are not taught properly and don't behave properly, the word of God would be blasphemed. And so it's important that we, both women, men, children, and everyone else, conform to the revealed will of God and behave in the way that Christians should, if the world has changed its mind about what Christians should do. And it has.

The world today probably is not going to say, oh, look at those submissive wives, isn't that wonderful? They'll probably say, look at those submissive wives, aren't they fools? At least some will think that way. But Paul said he didn't mind being a fool for Christ. The foolishness of God, he said, is wiser than the wisdom of men.

And, of course, the world is going to tend to judge things shallowly, initially. But the long-term results of lives that are following the pattern that God made them to follow will produce fruit that none can ignore. And when you find Christian families operating in the pattern of God's direction for Christian families, the fruit of those families is something that even the most cynical heathen, you just have to look at it and say, well, I have to admit that is a happier family than mine.

I have to admit, they did stay together for life. They did overcome the obstacles that caused me to divorce my wife or my husband. These people got through that hard point in their life, and now they're happily, fruitfully, you know, they have this lifelong relationship.

In their old age, they're still committed to each other. Their children have not brought reproach upon them. Their children are productive citizens.

Their children are well-behaved. I mean, it's in the long term, often, that the virtues of the Christian life are seen. It's not, I mean, when people look at you and the way you're making choices now in your youth, and it goes against the grain of the culture, they might just say, what an idiot, what a fool, how out of touch, how out of step with modern times you are.

But Christians can wait. We're told to be patient, after all. The whole Christian life is one of waiting, waiting for Jesus.

And in the meantime, we're waiting for other things, too, results. We're waiting for the fruit. Remember what James said, be patient, therefore, brethren.

The farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth and has long patience for it until he receives the early and the latter rain. We need to be diligent about doing what is right, even if it is what the world criticizes now. In time, the fruit will be manifested.

It says in Galatians chapter 6 that we should not be weary in well-doing. I believe it's chapter 6 of Galatians. For in due time we shall reap if we do not faint.

The harvest and the fruit of our labor is manifested at a later time. But it's important that we do not... It's Galatians 6, 9. Let us not grow weary while doing good. Why would you get weary doing good? Because there's opposition in the culture.

There's opposition in the world. There's criticism. Of course there's a tendency to get weary of swimming against the tide.

If you're just going to flow with the tide, you can relax. You never get tired of flowing with the crowd, running with the lemmings. But if you turn around and go against the traffic or swim up against a stream, yeah, it's going to be tiring.

But he says, don't get tired. Go against the grain. Go against the flow.

Because, he says, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart. If we don't faint. So, the instructions Paul gives here are way out of step with our current culture.

It doesn't save us a bit. If we want to flow with the current culture, we're in the wrong religion. You shouldn't be in this school.

You shouldn't even be calling yourself a Christian if you want to flow with the world. Because whoever loves the world has no love of God, the Bible says. He that loves the world has not the love of God.

So, we've got to make a decision here. Jesus said, if you are of the world, the world would love its own. If the world says I have called you out of the world, the world hates you.

Well, fine. If the world called me Beelzebub, what are they going to call you? He said, so what? If that kind of stuff bothered us, we wouldn't have become Christians. Or if it does bother us and we became Christians, we became Christians without knowing what we're getting into.

And that's why Jesus said you need to count the cost. Because to start and not finish is more of a reproach than not to start at all. And so, let us be not weary in well doing and say this is what God says is fit.

This is what God says is proper. Now, husbands are told to love their wives and not be bitter toward them. That's an interesting instruction.

Don't be bitter toward them. Why would that particular instruction be necessary? I mean, he didn't say husbands love your wives and don't beat them. Or husbands love your wives and don't cheat on them.

Or husbands love your wives and don't neglect to support them. There's all kinds of things he could have said. I mean, there's a lot of things husbands ought to do and ought to be told not to do, which husbands frequently do.

But essentially Paul sings about this one thing. Don't be bitter toward them. And I think that the reason for this is that Paul was an astute, was astutely aware of human nature and of the differences between the sexes.

In fact, Paul was so aware of the differences between the sexes that there are some scholars who feel he must have at one time been married, which I don't believe he was. But they marvel at his intimate knowledge of the difficulties that married couples face. In 1 Corinthians chapter 7, when he talks about the sexual needs of the husband and the wife and the pressures there and so forth, many people think he speaks like an insider.

We know he wasn't married when he wrote that, but some people think he must have been married before. Because he recognized so realistically what goes on in a husband-wife relationship. And I think Paul recognized that husbands and wives are hardwired different.

And they think differently and they feel differently and they experience things differently. And they react differently. And I'm being general.

We can't be over-general because there are men who think a lot more like women and feel a lot more like women. And there are some women who fit much more the stereotype of what we would think of as what men are like. And this should not be thought as a criticism.

If you meet a woman whose temperament is not like other women generally, but her temperament is a whole lot more like men generally. Or you meet a man who likes things that we usually think that women would like. I mean, there's nothing in the Bible that indicates what things men must like and what things women must like.

It's just an observation that there are, in general, different ways in which men and women relate to their environment and in relationship. And these differences are rarely learned by the opposite sex. That is to say, men very rarely ever really get a handle on what it is that makes a woman tick.

And women hardly ever get around to understanding men. I think perhaps in the old days they got around to it more because there was less narcissism. I think in the old days it was understood the wife and the husband had to live together for life.

And they had to get to know each other. They had to learn how to make each other happy. These days we're told, you know, marriage is for you to be happy.

And if you're not happy, you might find someone else. Look for someone who will make you happy because you have a right to be happy. That's the message of our age.

And because of that, instead of learning the hard lessons of why does my husband think this way, why does my wife think this way, most couples just think this person and I are incompatible. That person is on a totally different wavelength than I'm on. And therefore they typically break up.

Or if they don't break up because of religious pressure to stay together or whatever for the children's sake, they often learn to resent each other rather than to understand each other. It's a very, very natural thing for a man who does not understand how a woman operates, and I'm not going to make an exception of myself, I don't understand. But I've had, oh, close to 17 years now in this marriage to work on it, but I still don't understand it.

But I've got the rest of my life to learn. It's a lot. It takes longer than a college education, I'll tell you that.

But it's a very strong temptation. When a man expects his wife to act rationally, like he and the guys would in a situation, for her to break down crying when there's no, he can't see a reasonable world why she would cry. I mean, for him to feel like, man, this person is weird.

You know, this person just, you know, they're not normal. I mean, with the guys, I was always able to talk freely about everything I'm going through, and no one got offended. The guys are easy to get along with, and this person, I can't even tell her what's going on inside because she holds it against me for three weeks.

Or she cries when there's nothing sad, and I don't understand. You know, I was always on time places until I got married. And then, you know, whenever my wife has to go, we can't get there on time.

And it's easy for guys to say, this is a burden here. This is just not easy. And to see the wife is the cause of the complexity in life.

Because, and no doubt, women feel the same way. Because they don't understand why the husband can talk so callously about certain things and not be emotional about it. And, you know, he's got her in tears, and he doesn't even know he said anything that should be, you know, controversial.

Men and women are different. And it is the attempt of our culture to deny this fact that has destroyed so many marriages, trying to make men and women be the same. And make us think that they're supposed to be the same.

And make us think that, you know, if they're not the same, then just find another spouse who's more like you than the one you're leaving behind. Because getting to know this person is going to be hard. It's going to take a big commitment.

And, as I say, a lot of times marriages don't stay together, very largely because of this kind of misunderstanding. And the ones that do, for various reasons, often stay together only with great difficulty and a great deal of resentment. And I think when Paul says to husbands, love your wives and don't be bitter toward them, he means don't be resentful toward them.

Although the word bitter can also have to do with behavior rather than just a feeling. We talk about someone being bitter, and we, in our modern vernacular, we always are talking about an attitude they have of resentment or something like that. But bitterness in the Bible also is a description of certain circumstances.

The treatment that the Jews received in Egypt as slaves is described as bitter. Bitterness. In fact, even to this day at Passover, they eat bitter herbs to remind them of their bitter circumstances in Egypt.

And a man could be bitter toward his wife in another sense. Not in the sense of being resentful, but in the sense that he treats her bitterly. He treats her harshly.

And I don't know that Paul means it that way. I'm not sure how he would use the word. But the way it would be understood in our language, don't be bitter toward them, it has to do with don't allow yourself to resent them.

But there is that temptation perhaps, more often than many of us would think. Now, here's instructions to husbands and wives, of course. We don't need to go into great detail on these.

We've talked about them under other topics or in topical treatments. Let's go on and talk about children. Children, obey your parents in all things.

Once again, all things has to be moderated by, you know, if your kids, if your parents want to sell you into prostitution, that would be an area where you don't obey them. But how often do parents do that? Certainly in Christian homes, you're not going to find that very often. You know, the important thing here is when I say, well, submit or obey except when they tell you to sin.

The real danger here is that the wife or the child who is in this role of submission, except when they're told to sin, is that they will make themselves continually the judge of the parent or the husband. Because sometimes the child has different opinions about what's right and wrong. Or the wife might have a different opinion of what's right and wrong than the husband does.

And it could not be argued that the parent is literally telling the child to sin in the sense that the Bible, you know, gives commands against such things as what the parent is commanding. But rather that the child simply thinks it's wrong. Or the wife simply thinks it's wrong.

Not because, you know, there's some direct biblical commandment. It just goes against the grain of their conscience. And therefore, the child or the wife or whoever is in the submitted role makes themselves not the one who is the willing partner and submitted member of the family, but they make themselves the judge of the person in authority on a continual basis.

And I know that when I was a child in my parents' home, when I was in my teens, I've mentioned this before, they wanted me to cut my hair. I didn't want to cut my hair. I said my long hair was part of my ministry, part of my testimony.

Because I was in a Christian band. And back then you had to have long hair if you were in a rock band or else it wasn't credible. And I really believed that God wanted me to have long hair.

Now, there's nothing in the Bible that said He wanted me to have long hair. But when my father said, cut your hair, I felt like we've got a tension here between my dad and God. You know, God wants me to grow my hair out.

My dad doesn't want me to. And there was a great deal of self-righteousness there on my part and resistance to my father's authority. And my father would say, well, the Scripture says to honor your parents and obey your parents.

And I'd say, well, but we must obey God rather than men. You know, there's some problems there. But it was my problem.

Because the Bible, I was not resisting my parents' authority on the basis of direct biblical commands. But on an assumption I had of what God wanted. And this is too often the case with people who want to violate authority.

A wife or a child or someone else under authority. That they know that their one out is to interpret the instructions that they don't like as sin. And therefore they, of course, I would otherwise submit to you in this, but what you're asking is obviously sin.

And I can't do that. And that's the only excuse the person has for not obeying, you see. So they appeal to that as often as they can.

But let me just say this. The only way that I understand a person could really appeal to that is if there's direct command of Scripture. Do not do this.

And the husband or the parent says do that. Then you have a case where God has given a clear command and the parent or the husband is given an opposite command. And the person who would otherwise have to submit must say in that case, I'm sorry.

The Scripture says God has said this. Because anything short of that. If it's just that I think it's wrong.

I think it would be a violation of my conscience to do what you're saying. Even though the Bible doesn't say it. I have to deal with the fact that if I'm going to go by what the Bible says, the Bible says submit in all things.

I mean, if I'm going to say, well, I need to obey God rather than men. Well, what about where God said submit in all things. Submit as unto the Lord.

Or are we going to be selective in our obedience to God? And only obey God when it gives us an excuse not to submit. And when it commands us to submit, that's when we don't obey God. We are experts at making excuses for getting our own way.

And that's something that we need to really change. We need to get to a place where we're willing to recognize that the authorities that God ordains are his authorities. And although they're not perfect, and even may make a wrong call once in a while, and even in the case of Christians, rarely, may make even a call that would be sinful, because they're not perfect.

It's only in those latter cases that their authority is to be rejected. At all other times, God says submit. And to submit to them is to submit to God.

To rebel against them is nothing else than rebelling against God. God has appointed them. And you cannot disappoint them.

You cannot defrock them from their ordained position that God has ordained. And you cannot ignore it without violating God himself, who is the one who gave the instructions to submit to this person. Now, children, now the big question that comes up, certainly in a room like this, full of single young people, is do I still have to obey my parents? I'm twenty-something years old.

I haven't lived at home for years. My parents don't even pay attention to what I'm doing. Am I supposed to obey my parents and the Lord? That is a hard call.

I will say this, though. I think the... when Paul uses the word children here, he is not referring to adults, in my opinion. I believe that adult children should honor their parents.

But it's clear that there are times when adult children are... they break free from their parents, legitimately. The parents allow it. In biblical times, this didn't really happen until marriage of the child.

When the child was old enough to marry, generally speaking, the parents would give them away. They were under the parents' home and part of the parents' authority and structure and so forth until they were married and then they became part of another home and another authority structure. We have a phenomenon that I don't think was very common in biblical times in our society, and that is a whole population of young people who are not part of any home.

They're not part of their parents' home and they're not part of their own home. They don't have a home. They're lone rangers.

They're isolated agents. They're out looking for partners, but they're kind of a free agent out there, not connected to any authority structure. And I frankly don't know exactly what Paul would say to adult children who are of the age that in his society, in his day, they would have left home and been married by now.

Probably. And they would clearly not be under their parents' authority because the Bible says, for this cause, a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to a wife, and they become one flesh. It's clear that leaving the father and mother's house also means leaving the father and mother's control so that man starts another family unit.

He still must reflect honor toward his parents, but he's not part of their household anymore. Now, it could be argued, though I wouldn't be certain about this, that if you have left your parents' house with their approval, although you're not married, they have released you, just as if you had been married. That could be a possible way of understanding it.

In which case, his instructions to children obeying their parents and the Lord might not be applicable to you anymore than if you had left the home to become married. But I'm not sure of this. I would say this.

It's very important, if possible, to honor your parents in all things, and especially if you're not yet married because you don't have any higher obligation. If you're married, you have a higher obligation. Your higher obligation is to your present family.

But if you don't have a new family, you've got an old family. And God puts... The Bible says God puts the solitary in families. A family is the basic environmental unit for human life.

And although it may not appear to be so in our culture, it may be that in the sight of God, all those who have not established a family of their own have a family that they belong to, their parents' family still. That you leave one family to be part of another. In which case, even though you have not lived at home for a very long time, it may well be that God considers you to be under your parents' covering, under your parents' roof still.

Maybe the roof doesn't really extend to the geographical area you're in, but figuratively speaking. My father, for example, told me that as long as I was under his roof, as long as I lived under him, he wanted me to keep my hair cut. When I left home, which was the day after I graduated from high school, I started growing my hair out.

Though I wasn't married. I didn't wait very long to get married. I got married a couple of years later, but... My father had already given me the approval to leave home at that time and to do what I wished in the matter.

So I did not feel that I was disobeying him by growing my hair out after I left home. This idea of growing hair out probably seems like a ridiculous issue in the 90s. No one cares about hair length in the 90s.

But it was a big issue in the 70s. The early 70s, it was a big cultural issue. And anyway, it was important at the time.

But I will say this. While those of you who are adult children, who have left your parents' home with their approval, and they do not even see themselves as authorities over your life now, because you're now, in their opinion, an independent adult, or you're married, in cases like this, I don't think Paul's instructions necessarily are meant to apply. When he says, children, obey your parents, I believe he's referring to a household.

He's referring to the inhabitants of a household, the children who are under their parents' oversight and direction. If your parents have released you from being part of their household, I would say with that release probably comes a relinquishment of any claim they are making to have authority over your actions. Although, as you know, I've said in another setting that when it comes to getting married, I think something like that, or any major decisions, I believe an adult Christian would be very wise and very honoring to God to consult their parents and to seek to please their parents as best they can in matters such as these.

Because your parents, they do have an emotional bond, and justly so, to the well-being of their children. He says, children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well-pleasing to the Lord. Isn't that what people care about? Christianity, at one level, is nothing else but changing the person you're seeking to please.

Before you were a Christian, you were pleasing yourself. When you become a Christian, you now are to please the Lord. That's the basic difference in conversion.

And so, it's not a matter of saying, children, obey your parents or God will punish you, or you're violating the law of God, but it's pleasing to the Lord. That should be enough. That should be enough incentive for anyone to do something.

Oh, this pleases the Lord? That's all you need to know. All you need to tell me is what pleases God, and that's what I will do. You don't have to give me laws.

You don't have to put chains on me. You don't have to threaten me with punishment. Just tell me what pleases God, and that's enough for me.

Because, as a Christian, it is my commitment to please God, not myself. And so, Paul says, for children to obey their parents is pleasing to the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they be discouraged.

If a child is committed to obey the parents, or even if they're not, they are still under the authority of the parents, and as long as they're small children, they have no power to resist the parents. Now, sometimes teenagers get bigger than their parents, and sometimes it causes an ugly scene, if there's not a submitted attitude there. But when children are little, especially, they have no power to resist their parents.

And if the parents are unreasonable, and violate the sense of justice that's already in the child's awareness, that child can easily become discouraged because it's an imbalanced contest there. Great big father, little kid, and the kid knows that there's injustice happening there, that the child has no recourse because the dad's bigger, and of course, that's how it needs to be. Because, in the case of a godly family, the father knows a whole lot better than the child what's right.

Children do more naturally what's impulsive for them to do, or what their drives want them to do. And, unfortunately, some grown-ups have never grown up in that respect, and their students still do that. But, in a day where father knows best, which is essentially what the Bible envisages as the norm for Christian families, the father knows more than the children.

The father's wiser, more godly. He's there bringing them up in the nurturing and admission of the Lord. He does so not with a dictatorial, you know, I said so, and that's why, kind of approach.

Although there may be times he has to do that, because the kid will just argue incessantly, and won't accept any arguments from the parent, even if they're perfectly good arguments. Sometimes the parent just has to say, well, because I said so. That's all I can say.

I've got good reasons. When you're older, you'll understand them. Right now, it's not your duty to understand, it's your duty to obey.

But, to do that as the only way of exercising authority is going to often convey to the child the idea that maybe the parent doesn't have good reasons, maybe he just doesn't like to be resisted. Maybe he just wants to dictate and has an ego trip. Now, I mean, whether the child's right or not, if the child perceives that to be true, it can cause the child to become discouraged.

It can make them eager to leave home at the first opportunity. And parents should parent in a way that doesn't drive their children away or discourage them in that respect. Obviously, you have to cross their wills at times, but you don't have to be unreasonable.

Now, he turns to the servants and the masters. It's strange how the chapter division is here, because as he speaks to wives, he then speaks to husbands. He speaks to children, then he speaks to their fathers.

He speaks to servants, then he speaks to their masters. But, for some reason, the masters are set off from the rest by chapter division, because he addresses servants until the end of chapter three, and then chapter four, verse one, he addresses the masters, and it would have been just as easy to have the chapter division a verse later. After all, these divisions of chapter are not inspired.

They're a human innovation. It seems to be one of those strange places where, inexplicably, the person who made the chapter division wasn't paying close attention. But he says to the servants, Obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, meaning your earthly masters, not with eye service as men pleases, but in sincerity of heart, fearing God.

That means not just when the master is looking. The most common thing that we all are aware of in an employment situation is that when the boss is there, everyone has to look busy. When the boss has gone out to do some banking or something like that, and there's not customers, the employees sit around on the counters and shoot the breeze when they could be cleaning the grill or doing something else.

You know, they could be doing... I'm talking, of course, about minimum wage job scenario here, but in any kind of job where responsibility is given to servants or employees, and they are expected to give an honest labor for their wage, and yet many times they only do so when there's accountability. They only do so when it's eye service. And this brings up the whole issue of accountability generally.

A Christian's accountability is to God, and it's a good thing. Because in the world, the only way to keep people well-behaved is by a human structure of accountability. There are many people, many Christians, whose view is that you must have a structure of accountability in your church or else you'll backslide.

That if you're not accountable to a pastor, if you're not accountable to an institutional body, that somehow there's something missing in your Christian life. You're somehow disobedient to God, and you're probably not only a loose cannon, but probably doomed to backslide and to be a heretic. Obviously, I've heard this many times since I obviously am not submitted to a pastor anymore.

I don't have a body of elders or an institutional church that I belong to. I'm in church every Sunday, but I don't belong to any institution. And that is by conviction.

That is not a matter of neglect on my part. That is by conviction. Because I don't believe that institutional churches have a place in Scripture.

Not such as we have. But then people say, well, where's your accountability? Now, what's accountability mean? Accountability means that somebody is watching you and going to make sure you don't do what's wrong. That's what accountability means.

And, you know, when people ask, I don't mind being asked. I don't mind answering. My answer is, well, my accountability is to God.

But, you know, God's invisible. Isn't there anyone human keeping you accountable? Oh, yeah, I'm accountable to everybody. I'm public in my life.

I'm transparent. I'm public in my opinions. If I started to go into heresy, it would be, you know, everybody would be the first to know.

Because I'm not secretive. I have no secrets. I have no secrets.

I'm a private life. I'm accountable to everybody, like Paul. Paul said, we commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God.

That was Paul's accountability. Who kept Paul accountable? Think about it. Think about the book of Acts.

To whom was Paul accountable? The church that sent him out? The church of Antioch? Yeah, he visited about once every three years. He didn't send them back email every week to make sure that they knew what he was doing. We don't have any communication with him as far as we know, you know, for years at a time.

This is accountability? Sure, when he went to Jerusalem, he submitted to James, but that's because that was James' turf. That wasn't Paul's turf. He was a visitor there.

But in Paul's life, there was not what anyone today would call a structure of accountability, of human accountability. You know why? Because Paul said, every one of us will give account of himself to God. Now, think of the benefit of this.

Paul is instructing servants. He says, be accountable to God. Servants generally will get lazier about their duties when the master isn't looking.

Why? Because accountability in their life is just human. They serve with eye service as men pleases. But he says, you serve as your servant of the Lord.

He goes on to say, and whatever you do, do it heartily as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. For you serve the Lord Christ, but he who does wrong will be repaid for the wrong which he has done. And there is no partiality.

He doesn't mean your master will repay you, because you can get away with stuff if your master is not looking. He's saying, you are serving Jesus Christ. You will be rewarded or punished according to your works, even if your master never knows what you did.

You might be stealing from your master, and he may not know it, but God does. And whoever does wrong, they'll be punished by Jesus. He's the master.

He's the one you're accountable to. Now, there are, of course, situations in life where you have additional structures, where there is accountability in a job or a marriage or even in the church. There are elders in the church.

But the point I would make is this, that accountability in Scripture is spiritual, not institutional. You will never find in the Scripture that the church has an institutional kind of accountability. Paul didn't have it.

Who is Jesus accountable to? Who told Jesus what he, you know, who did he report back to? You know, well, that's Jesus, that's not us. Well, I'm supposed to walk even as he walked, the Bible says. If he was accountable to God, hey, and guess what, he didn't fall into sin.

He didn't backslide for lack of human accountability. It must be that people who walk like Jesus walked won't backslide, even if they don't have human structures of accountability. Paul didn't backslide.

He didn't have any human structure of accountability. The reason I'm going on about this structure of accountability thing is because I've had a lot of people bring this up. Because it's a big thing now.

When the televangelists fell about a decade ago, Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Baker, you know, it was a great embarrassment to the evangelical world. And evangelicals were scurrying to come up with some kind of explanation of how such a scandalous thing could happen and how to avoid it happening in the future. And I don't know if you were a Christian back then or how long you've been in touch with these things.

But I was there. I was in ministry in those days. And boy, reading the Christian magazines and hearing the Christian radio programs and stuff, they kept talking about accountability.

These people didn't have enough accountability. We need more accountability. And it got to be, everyone was under pressure to have accountability because if you don't have accountability, you might commit adultery, you might fall.

There's a church in this town that hopped on me about that. Interestingly, that very church had an elder who was involved in a structure of accountability. He met regularly with his fellow elders.

He was in the local church. He was accountable to man. But he happened to have two adulterous affairs going on for eight years in the church without anyone knowing.

His problem was he wasn't accountable to God. If he was, it wouldn't matter if there were elders in his life or not. He would not commit adultery because carnality is good when people are watching.

That is, behaves when people are watching. Spirituality behaves whenever God's watching. And that's all it is.

When I've been told that I should join a church so that I'd have more accountability, I've pointed out to these critics that if I joined a church in this town, I could join the biggest church, I could even join the most compromised church in this town. And no one would complain that I don't have adequate accountability, even if the pastor didn't know my name. At least I'm accountable now.

In what sense am I accountable? In a carnal, institutional sense, I'm part of an organization. That doesn't help me spiritually. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with being in a church.

I'm saying that it does not solve the problem of carnality. It doesn't solve the problem of obedience and holiness. It does not in any sense provide the accountability that keeps people holy.

Churches where all the members are technically accountable are full of members whose lives are lived in unbiblical ways. They spend their money, they entertain themselves, they conduct their family relationships in unbiblical ways. There's compromise, worldliness, carnality, sin, and all that among people who are said to be accountable.

And yet I know a great number of people who don't go to any structural, accountable institution, and none of them are committing adultery. They're ordering their family, raising their children in a godly manner. They're not wasting God's money and they're not entertaining themselves in carnal ways.

The people I know who are living the holiest lives are the ones who are not in these so-called structures that provide accountability. Because those structures do not provide accountability. They provide a sham and a pretense of accountability.

Real accountability is in the conscience toward God. If a man is accountable to God in his conscience, he will live a holy life whether or not there are people watching. Whether or not there are persons to whom he defines himself as accountable to.

But if a person is not accountable to God in his conscience, he can have all the persons around him who are called the abode to whom he is accountable, and he can still secretly sin because they won't know. And he doesn't care because he doesn't care about God. And I've seen both.

In fact, I see them regularly. I see far more sin, secret and blatant, among Christians who would technically be called accountable because they're members of churches. And I see a great deal more holiness among some people that aren't in any sense connected to a church.

Now, I'm not saying there is no overlap. I'm not saying there aren't holy people in the churches. I'm saying that the evidence does not support the notion that human structures of accountability are somehow biblical or necessary.

Every Christian should live a transparent, honest, open life, living in the light, walking in the light. Not concealing things in his life, living holy because God wants him to. And he then becomes accountable to everyone who knows him or hears him or sees him.

And if he begins to slip, everyone knows because he's got no secrets. It's not because there's some body of men who have been ordained because they went through some seminary or something like that, or some power structure has trusted them with responsibility, and somehow now they will keep you from sinning. Don't count on it.

It doesn't happen. It isn't happening. Look at the churches that have, in many cases, the strongest authoritarian structure.

You'll find as much sin in the lives of the believers there as you will outside the church itself. It is not human eye service that keeps Christians on the straight and narrow. It is realizing that we serve the Lord Christ.

The servants obey their masters, and they be good servants. They're honest. They don't rip off their masters.

They work hard out of conscience toward God. That's what Paul's saying. That's the difference between a Christian and a non-Christian.

The non-Christian servant will work very hard and diligently and obediently when the master's watching, with eye service as men pleases. The Christian servant, on the other hand, serves equally diligently, faithfully, honestly, when the master is nowhere to be found and when the master will never have any way of knowing what he did at that time because he's got another master. He's serving the Lord.

It is a reproach to Christianity when Christians, in a place of employment, follow the pattern of the world in taking longer coffee breaks, going to the bathroom more frequently than they need to, coming in late, leaving early, taking a day's wage without putting in a day's labor. And, to my mind, it's a reproach to Christ when the Christian on the job is not the most diligent worker on the team. Even if the other crew members are all slothful.

If a Christian is on the crew, that Christian should be working if he's on the clock because otherwise he's robbing somebody. The person who is paying him is assuming that they are exchanging a certain wage for a certain amount of work. And if the wage is coming and the work is not being done, and the work is not being done as well as it can be done for the glory of God, then that Christian is ripping someone off, and it's God that he's ripping off because he's serving the Lord.

He's also ripping off his employer. I don't think that servants and masters are exactly parallel to employers and employees because a servant was owned. He was a slave.

And the master was... The servant could not just leave employment like we can. If you don't like what your employer wants you to do, you can get another job. You can say goodbye to that employer and never see him again.

The slave didn't have that option. He was more like a child in the home. Or like a wife.

They were there for keeps. I mean, the child eventually grows up and leaves, but these were people who couldn't just change families. They couldn't just change homes.

And so the servants were in a hard spot. So masters are addressed, just like husbands and fathers are. In chapter 4, verse 1, Masters, give your servants what is just and fair, knowing that you also have a master in heaven.

So, treat your servants the way you, as a servant of God, would want God to treat you. Because he will. The measure you meet, it will be measured back to you, Jesus said.

The way you judge others, you'll be judged. Forgive and you'll be forgiven. Give and it shall be given to you.

Do not condemn and you'll not be condemned, Jesus said. If you are a master, he says to them, You treat your servants the way you want your master to treat you. Which is just another application of the golden rule, of course.

Now, the whole idea of people owning other people, masters and slaves, is repugnant to our cultural sensibilities. And many people think it's strange, even offensive, that the Bible does not repudiate slavery. Why doesn't Paul come out... It's one thing for Paul to say to the servants, Submit to your masters, because they have no choice.

But when he addresses the masters, he certainly would be able to say, Masters, release your slaves, because slavery is a wicked institution and has no place in the Christian church. But that wasn't true at all. Slavery did have a place in the Christian church.

In fact, there were times when the majority of the members of the church were slaves and the others were probably masters. Almost everyone who owned property owned servants. Slaves were simply part of an estate.

They're part of the property, of the owner. And as I say, in our culture, enlightened as we view ourselves to be, the idea of a man owning another man is simply repugnant. It's below human dignity.

But we might realize that ours is the first culture to ever come up with that idea. And ours is a very new and young culture. And by the way, the fruit of our culture has not been excellent.

I'm not saying slavery in this culture was good either. Slavery was accompanied by many abuses, as it inevitably will be. Whenever there is slavery, whenever one person has power over another, there will be abuse because there are wicked people, and some of those wicked people are in power.

But that's not just true of the institution of slavery. That's true of marriage. That's true of parents and children relationships.

That's true of government and citizens. Whoever... Our own government abuses its citizens. And many husbands abuse their wives, or parents abuse their children.

It happens. That's not an argument for abolishing all government, or abolishing husbands or wives, or children. The institution is not what is corrupt.

It is human nature that is corrupt. Christians in these same institutions will not be abusive. In a society where every husband beats his wife, the Christian husband will not beat his wife.

In a society where every man molests his daughters, the Christian man will not molest his daughter. In a society where every owner of slaves abuses his slaves, or treats them as dirt, a Christian man will not do that to his slaves. It's a radical thing for Paul to say.

When he says, Masters, give your servants what is just and fair. What? Slaves have no rights. How can anything be regarded as just or fair to a slave? He doesn't have any rights.

The nature of being a slave is he has no rights. He doesn't own any stuff. He's a piece of property.

And yet Paul tells masters, he doesn't say, Release your slaves, because that would not be desirable even to all slaves. We do not understand this. But in biblical times and throughout most of history, some people preferred to be slaves.

It was a more secure way to be. Many people actually sold themselves into slavery because they couldn't manage their economical life. Their finances were such that they couldn't pay their bills, so they sold themselves into slavery.

Common thing in biblical times. And really, when you think about it, the man who sold himself into slavery, if his master was a decent fellow and was not cruel, and treated him well, that person had guaranteed housing, guaranteed utilities, if there were any, water, food, clothing, transportation, whatever. The tools he needed for his work, those were all provided by the master.

It was in the master's interest to take care of him. Believe it or not, a slave in a situation like that could be in a lot more enviable position than a man today who has to work two minimum wage jobs and still can't pay rent and isn't sure he's got enough food to feed his family. Because a master could treat his servants well, and a Christian master would.

And there are many people who are, you know, laboring in two and three minimum wage jobs with huge burdens of rent or mortgages or families to support, and they're still not making ends meet. And if they could have a situation like some slaves had, they'd trade it in an instance. Now, I'm not saying that we should reinstitute slavery.

I'm just saying we shouldn't assume, we shouldn't be so provincial, so historically provincial, as to think because our society detests slavery, it must be a universal wrong. If it was, then the Bible would condemn it. Instead, the Bible regulates it.

And just because many marriages are unhappy is not an argument against abolishing marriage. The Bible doesn't abolish slavery, doesn't abolish marriage, even though many people have unpleasant situations in those institutions. But it regulates them.

Even in the law, the Bible regulated slavery in the Old Testament. In fact, it even made provision for a slave to be released after seven years, but if he wanted to stay a slave, he could. We can't imagine why anyone would want to stay a slave, but we're not in that culture.

Some people, that was security. And, you know, guaranteed, you're a slave, you will always have a place to sleep, out of the rain, you'll always have enough clothes, your family will be fed, you'll have medical care such as is available to anyone, and that's a pretty good situation. Better than a lot of people in America have now, although the difference is Americans have their freedom.

And frankly, I would rather have my freedom, personally, this is my own preference, I'd rather have my freedom than the security of someone providing all my needs and taking away my freedom. I'm kind of a... just that kind of person. I don't like having my freedom taken away.

But, at the same time, I can acknowledge that it's not wrong and that some people would prefer I give up my freedom in order to have my family fed. Guaranteed. And there's a lot of people in America who want to change this society into that kind of society.

They want the government to be the nanny. They want the government to be the master and take care of all the things. I don't favor that myself.

And you might think from what I'm saying that I'm in favor of slavery. I don't prefer it at all. I wouldn't like to be a slave.

I would not be one of those who would sell myself into slavery. But some would. And I'm saying that if some find that preferable, there's nothing morally wrong with it so long as there's not abuse.

And even in southern slavery in this country, not all masters abused their slaves. Some did. We hear about those stories.

But some slaves, after the Emancipation Declaration, didn't want to leave their master's houses. They've been treated well. They were living comfortably.

They had steady work. Their families were taken care of. And it should not be thought that just because we hear the horror stories, and there were many of them, that slavery has always abeigned to people.

In some people's case, it was their ticket to financial security, being a slave. But masters are to treat their slaves like people, not like property. To give them what is just and fair, just like they would to someone who had rights, knowing that you have a master in heaven.

Some people think that the only reason that Paul didn't abolish slavery is because it would have been too disruptive in Roman society. But Christianity was disruptive in Roman society. Paul was not afraid of saying things that were contrary to Roman society.

Idolatry was even more integral to Roman society than slavery was. And yet Paul spoke vehemently against idolatry. So Paul didn't care how much what he said went against the culture.

What he cared was what he said reflected the will of God. And so we would have to say that although slavery was abolished in modern times through Christian efforts of men who believed it to be an immoral institution, they were right. There was a great deal of immorality going on in the practice of slavery.

And probably the world is a better place, this part of the world is a better place, for lack of slavery. Likewise, slavery is still practiced in many Muslim nations to this day and there's terrible, terrible abuse. And where all men will not be Christians, perhaps it is better to have no slavery.

Because where men are not Christians, men who have power over others, typically because of their own corrupt nature, will abuse others. But in a world where all men were Christians, there would be not too much to object to in the institution of slavery if some chose to be in that role of slaves. Now, in biblical times, some slaves were not slaves by choice, they were captured.

Instead of being killed in battle, they were taken as slaves. Perhaps they thought that was better than being killed too. There's really nothing immoral about keeping a person alive rather than killing them.

And it seems to me that most of the slaves in Roman society were either captured rather than killed in battle or else were voluntary slaves who were enslaved because of debt. Because they sold themselves into slavery rather than go to jail. And so, really, those who were in slavery, though in a situation not enviable by our standards, were often in a better situation than the alternative would have been for them.

And as I say, if masters were kind to their slaves, it might be a very comfortable and pleasant place to be. Joseph, until Potiphar's wife began to accuse him, Joseph probably had a very comfortable life as a slave in Potiphar's house. He was given much liberty and much responsibility and yet he didn't have freedom.

Anyway, let's go on. There's a few things at the end of this book. Continue earnestly in prayer.

Chapter 4, verse 2. Being vigilant in it with thanksgiving. This is, I think, the third or more time that he's mentioned being thankful. He said in chapter 3, verse 15, at the end, be thankful.

And then verse 17 of chapter 3, he said, Do all things in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. And now he says, continue earnestly in prayer. Be vigilant in it with thanksgiving.

I might just make this one observation. Thanksgiving, I'm going to suggest this, Thanksgiving is not a part of prayer. Now, that may seem like a strange thing to say, but I observed this some years ago when I was reading the Lord's Prayer.

I thought it strange. He said, when you pray, say. And then he gives us a prayer to pray.

A model prayer. There's not one line of thanksgiving in it. I thought, that's weird.

The Bible says, enter into his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise. Why wouldn't thanksgiving be in the prayer? I always figured that I'd begin my prayers with thanksgiving. That's how I enter into his gates and his courts.

And it struck me for one time, it's strange that when Jesus said, when you pray, pray this way. There's not one word in there of thanksgiving. But what I have found since being awakened to that fact, looking at what the scripture says, is that we are told frequently to pray with thanksgiving.

In other words, prayer is one thing. Thanksgiving is another. We're supposed to do both.

Thanksgiving is one thing. Prayer is another. And this brings up a point I want to make very briefly.

And that is that sometimes prayer is used in modern Christian thinking and teaching to refer to the whole complex of our relationship and communion with God. Ever heard anyone say, you know, prayer is supposed to be a two-way conversation with God. Anyone ever heard that? Prayer is a two-way conversation.

No, it isn't. The Bible nowhere says that prayer is a two-way conversation. Prayer is when I speak to God, when I lay my petitions before God, when I ask God for things, when I speak directly to God about my needs or about someone else's needs in the form of intercession.

That is prayer. Now, I'm not saying that Christians can't have two-way conversations with God, but prayer is not two-way conversation. Prayer is my part of the conversation.

I speak to God. That's prayer. If God speaks to me, that's something else.

Likewise, Thanksgiving is not the same thing as prayer. Thanksgiving is something different than prayer. Thanking God for things is different than asking God for things.

And we need to realize that when people say, well, you haven't prayed, unless it's been a two-way conversation with God, they don't have one lick of biblical support for that notion. And I think it gives people false expectations. It makes people feel condemned that their prayer life isn't what it should be because, hey, I pray and I don't hear anything from God.

Man, there must be really something wrong with me. No, there's something wrong with your definition of prayer. Someone gave you the wrong line.

Prayer is when you ask God for things. You can do that whether you feel anything, hear anything. You can do that just because you choose to do that.

Now, Thanksgiving is important as well, and we're to be giving thanks in all things. But even that is not a part of what the Bible calls prayer. Thanksgiving is part of our relationship with God.

Prayer is another. Hearing from God is another yet. And there are many others besides.

The communion and relationship with God has many aspects. Prayer is only one of them. But don't let people make you feel uncomfortable about your prayer life because when you pray, you don't hear from God.

You'll hear from God when He speaks, and no sooner. You can pray any time, but you can only hear from God when He speaks. You can speak all that you want.

Some people say, but I pray a lot more than I hear from God. Well, that's fine. That's up to God, isn't it? You pray.

You decide how often you pray. God decides how often you hear from Him. My wife, sometimes when we have conversations late at night, she's upset because she does more talking than I do.

I heard this somewhere not long ago. We were reading C.S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters, and he observed that when men get tired, they talk less, and when women get tired, they talk more. And so these late night conversations after the kids are in bed and we talk, I hardly talk at all.

My wife hardly ever stops talking. And she feels like I'm not involved in the conversation because I only interrupt once in a while to say yes or no or to make a point that she does a whole lot more talking than I do. But that's okay because I'm talking as much as I want to, and if she's talking as much as she wants to, we should both be satisfied.

Likewise with prayer. You may talk to God a whole lot more than He talks to you. That doesn't mean you're not having a conversation.

As long as He's talking as much as He wants to, and you're talking as much as you want to, that's a conversation. You might say a million words for every two that He says, but that doesn't mean you're not having a conversation. He can speak when He wants to speak.

You don't make Him speak, and you don't judge whether you've prayed or not by how much He has said. You judge whether you've prayed or not by how much you have said. That's what prayer is.

It's speaking to God. Yes, I believe that God speaks to us and that our relationship with God is two-way. I just object to people calling this two-way aspect prayer because the Bible does not agree with that.

And unfortunately, because we have mixed the definition of prayer with this whole idea of two-way conversation, people get discouraged when they pray because they're not getting two-way conversation going. They're doing a lot of talking, and God's not talking very much back. That's His business.

It's not your responsibility to hear from God. If He speaks, you'll hear. You could hardly not.

The Bible's full of people who God spoke to and they weren't even trying to listen. He speaks and you hear when He speaks. If you try to hear when He's not speaking, you're going to conjure something, and you're going to think it was Him.

And that's done all too often by charismatic people, I'm afraid. And they hear all kinds of things. They say, hey, it's God, because they thought it's normal.

He's supposed to be talking. So, what I heard must be Him. It's dangerous.

It's a dangerous concept. Very similar to witchcraft. Witchcraft is you make it come.

The thing on the other side that you're trying to get, it comes when you bid, when you want it, when you do the right thing, when you do the techniques, then you get it. In the kingdom of God, God is the sovereign. He is the one who decides when He will speak and how.

You submit. You can speak to Him all you want. In fact, all the time is good.

But don't make demands on when He's going to speak. That's His business. Meanwhile, pray also for us that God would open to us a door for the Word to speak the mystery of Christ for which I am also in chains, that I might make it manifest as I ought to speak.

So, Paul basically talks about prayer here. Interestingly, he first talks about doctrine. Then he talks about changing our minds and valuing things that are above.

Then he talks about lifestyle issues, the nitty-gritty stuff like family life. Then he talks about religion, prayer. He's going to talk about witness now.

He's going to talk about reading the Word, the things that we consider to be religious activities. He saves them for last. The things that come first are right beliefs, right thinking, right behavior and relationships.

Then you can get around to the religious stuff. It's the last priority. Not really the last priority in the sense that it's not important.

But if your relationships are not right, the religious stuff is empty. Jesus said, you bring your gift to the altar and remember your relationship with your brother is not right. You leave your gift.

Forget about it. You go make it right with your brother first. Then we'll talk.

And so, at the very end, Paul talks about prayer. He says, now he talks about your Christian witness in verses 5 and 6. Walk in wisdom toward those who are outside, redeeming the time. Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one.

In other words, you speak graciously, but seasoned with salt. Now, seasoned with salt could mean, could speak of purity, or it could speak of seasoning. I mean, the word seasoned is used.

It could mean that your speech is, has a certain winsomeness about it. Paul is concerned in some of his epistles about making the truth winsome, or adorning the gospel. It's possible to be very truthful, but if you're not speaking the truth in love, you're not adorning the gospel.

You're not making the truth winsome and attractive. And Paul is indicating that you should. You need to walk in wisdom.

Use discernment when you're dealing with those who are outside. That's non-Christians. He says, redeeming the time.

This usually is taken to mean, don't waste any time. Make the most of the time. Buy up all the opportunities you can.

Verse 7, Tychicus, who is a beloved brother, a faithful minister, and a fellow servant in the Lord, will tell you all the news about me. I am sending him to you for this very purpose, that he may know your circumstances and comfort your hearts. With Onesimus, a faithful and beloved brother, who is one of you, that is, he's a Colossian.

They will make known to you all things which are happening here. Aristarchus, my fellow prisoner, greets you with Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, about whom you received instructions. If he comes to you, welcome him.

And Jesus, who is called Justice. Jesus was a reasonably common name among Jews. These are my only fellow workers for the kingdom of God, who are of the circumcision.

They have proved to be a comfort to me. Epaphras, who is one of you, another Colossian, a servant of Christ, greets you always laboring fervently for you in prayers, that you may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God. For I bear him witness that he has a great zeal for you, and for those who are in Laodicea and those in Hierapolis, the other two cities in the same valley.

Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas greet you. Demas later forsook him, according to 2 Timothy chapter 4. He says, Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world. But at this point, he was a companion of Paul.

Luke is mentioned. Notice Luke's not a Jew, because in verse 11, he names all those who are of the circumcision who are his companions, and Luke's not one of them. Luke's a Gentile, mentioned separately.

Greet the brethren who are in Laodicea and Nymphos and the church that is in his house. Now, when this epistle is read among you, see that it is read also in the church of the Laodiceans, and that you likewise read the epistle from Laodicea. We don't have that epistle, unless it is the book of Ephesians, which some people think.

Say to Archippus, Take heed to the ministry which you have received in the Lord, that you may fulfill it. This salutation by my own hand, Paul, remember my chains. Grace be with you.

Amen. Obviously, we have no time to comment on these verses.