(“Relating According to the Spirit”)
“Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. 19 Husbands, love your wives and do not be embittered against them. 20 Children, be obedient to your parents in all things, for this is well-pleasing to the Lord. 21 Fathers, do not exasperate your children, so that they will not lose heart. 22 Slaves, in all things obey those who are your masters on earth, not with external service, as those who merely please men, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. 23 Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men, 24 knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve. 25 For he who does wrong will receive the consequences of the wrong which he has done, and that without partiality. 1 Masters, grant to your slaves justice and fairness, knowing that you too have a Master in heaven."
It may be an unfair thing to ask this question the way I’m going to ask it, because it will be sort of like asking you to not think about an elephant. There, you just thought of an elephant, didn’t you?
But I do wonder, and this is my question, how many of you if asked what being a Christian means, would answer that it means believing in the death and resurrection of Christ and having your sins thereby forgiven so that some day you will go to Heaven.
Well, your wording might not be exactly like that, and I think many people would not be even that detailed in their response, but I do think that is close to what a large number of professing Christ-followers would say.
In his book, “The Divine Conspiracy”, author Dallas Willard cites Gallup surveys that say 94 percent of Americans believe in God and 74 percent claim to have made a commitment to Jesus Christ. He then adds,
“These figures are shocking when thoughtfully compared to statistics on the same group for unethical behavior, crime, mental distress and disorder, family failures, addictions, financial misdealings, and the like.” Gallup polls cited in ‘Christianity Today’ magazine, June 21, 1993, p.30
The concern Willard expresses in the early chapter of his book is that for too many Christians their faith is about being forgiven and eventually going to Heaven, but is not translated into any real change in their life now; as though it does not occur to them that God could play any significant role in the here and now. His first chapter is entitled, “Entering the Eternal Kind of Life Now”, so you can get an idea from that where he is going.
In chapter two, “Gospels of Sin Management”, the author says this.
“The sensed irrelevance of what God is doing to what makes up our lives is the foundational flaw in the existence of multitudes of professing Christians today. They have been led to believe that God, for some unfathomable reason, just thinks it appropriate to transfer credit from Christ’s merit account to ours, and to wipe out our sin debt, upon inspecting our mind and finding that we believe a particular theory of the atonement to be true – even if we trust everything but God in all other matters that concern us.” Dallas Willard, THE DIVINE CONSPIRACY, HarperCollins Publications Inc., 1998, pgs 38, 49
I have to agree with the author of this book. My own past church experience has been one of hearing a great deal about coming to Jesus and believing in Him for salvation – from Hell to Heaven – and forgiveness of sins.
But whenever portions of scripture like the one before us today were preached on it was done with a sort of legalistic, guilt-trip tone that had everything to do with the average believer’s failure to live according to these admonitions, and little or nothing to do with God’s ability to be the primary influence in family and work life so that we might actually live successfully with one another in the way Paul describes.
Could that be because even many pastors and preachers do not really believe that the good news of the good news is that it is pertinent and vital for our lives in this world?
Well, the Apostle Paul certainly believed that it was and the only differences between the folks he first wrote to and the people reading his words today are all external. The inside of each human heart from the beginning to the present looks exactly the same and the gospel is as unchanging as the God who provided it, and the good news for the true Christ-follower is that He never commands us to do anything that He is not ready at the waiting to help us complete.
So let’s take these verses of our study today in overview, not picking them apart one by one, but considering what the Apostle is talking about fundamentally and how we all go about walking in this light, whether husband, wife, child, servant (employee), or master (employer).
WHAT IS A SPIRITUAL RELATIONSHIP?
The first thing we need to do then, is to define a spiritual relationship. What is that?
Well let me begin by approaching it from the negative sense. In using the term ‘spiritual relationship’ I am not talking about some mystical New Age sort of spiritualism.
Just for fun I Googled the words ‘spiritual relationship’ and I cannot begin to list for you the plethora of weird sites that popped up, talking about “The Seven Feeling Spirits and Their Special Gifts”, and “Special Gifts for Our Soul’s Chakras”, “Transforming Our Flaws to Virtues”, “Discovering Your Lovableness”, and so forth.
I am not talking about any of these things. I am not talking about the world’s philosophy of what makes a relationship and what makes a good relationship.
Even at a surface glance it was obvious at most of these websites that they did not go deeper than the topic of sexual or romantic relationships. The big thing that jumped out at me was that the advice of all of them, without exception, was that good and strong relationships with those around us are dependant upon our finding our best inner self and doing some spiritual exercises to develop our good and bringing it out so it may shine to others, and on and on…
But we’re in the Bible. We are talking about an entirely different kind of spiritual relationship that cannot have anything to do with these other things.
The reason it cannot, is because when we say ‘spiritual’ in a Christian sense, we are talking about something that cannot exist apart from the Holy Spirit of Christ, who gave life to our spirit; indeed, who is our life according to the 4th verse of chapter 3.
“When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.
So explaining it in the positive sense, when as Christians we talk of spiritual relationships we fundamentally mean the kind of relationships that can only exist because of Jesus Christ. When a person is born from above and becomes what the Bible calls a ‘new creature’ in Christ, he or she immediately becomes a member of a spiritual family that is both vertical and horizontal. The born again believer is now spiritually related to God and also to every other born again believer.
There is no third kind. No matter what someone’s human relationship is to the believer, if the other person is not a believer in Christ then there is no spiritual relationship; there is only fleshly, human relationship, even if that other person is the believer’s spouse, child or parent.
Now that is fundamentally what a spiritual relationship is using Biblical definitions.
It is not precisely what I am talking about today however, when I say ‘spiritual relationship’. We do need to understand all of this in order to move on, and in fact we cannot have the kind of relationships with people I will be talking about unless we first have this. But what I want to talk about really is ‘relating according to the Spirit’.
Because when I say it like that, then I can include both our spiritual and human relationships; I can talk about the believer’s relationship with anyone, whether the other person is born from above or not.
RELATING ACCORDING TO THE SPIRIT
This next part of my sermon is subtitled ‘Relating According To The Spirit”, but I might also have worded it, ‘Relating “BY” The Spirit”.
You see, while Paul is writing to Christians, and we know that because this letter is addressed to the saints in Colossae, that does not mean we are to assume that he is teaching both the Colossians and us that it is only to other believers we are to behave in these ways he mentions.
Do you see what I am saying? When he writes, “Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord”, he does not say, ‘your Christian husbands’ or ‘only if your husband is a Christian’.
When he says, “Husbands, love your wives, and do not be embittered against them”, he means it whether the wife is a believer or not, and whether she is easy to live with or not.
Now we could go down through these verses and make the same application throughout, and let me point out that the admonition becomes much more burdensome when talking about employee/employer relationships. But if you think about what it was like in Paul’s day or any time and place where there are slaves and masters, the burden is multiplied a hundred fold.
Nevertheless, the exhortations are as they are and this is the Holy Spirit-inspired Word of God, and I repeat, none of it assumes that we are dealing with another Spirit-filled believer in Christ. We may be, and that often makes it easier and nicer, but it is not and will not always be the case. Common sense tells us that unless we run off and join a monastery or determine to never have any contact with anyone outside our saved family and certain Christian friends, we will be expected to relate also to unbelievers ‘according to the Spirit’/’by the Spirit’.
So let me explain what I mean by ‘BY the Spirit’.
I will say it as briefly and bluntly as I can, then I’ll step back and explain in more detail. In using the terms ‘according to the Spirit’ and ‘by the Spirit’, I simply mean that if you are a believer in Christ you have His Spirit in you, and because His Spirit is in you His Spirit enables and empowers you to relate to the world you live in and the people around you in a way that is influenced by that same power and enablement.
In the eighth chapter of Romans Paul teaches us the fundamental difference between those who do not have the Spirit and those who do. It is really very simple. Either you have the Spirit and you are a child of God or you do not have the Spirit and you are not a child of God.
You are according to the Spirit or you are according to the flesh. Verse 14 of that chapter says, “For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God”. Now that is not a condition of our effort. We cannot infer from this that if as a Christian we are presently not letting the Holy Spirit lead us then we have ceased being a child of God.
The point is that if you are a born again believer you do have the Spirit of Christ in you and He leads, period. The Holy Spirit leads the believer in his or her walk and always toward Christ.
In other words, I might rephrase verse 14 to say, “The sons of God are all being led by the Spirit of God”. That’s what Paul is teaching in this chapter from verse 5 through 17. How do you know you are a child of God? The Spirit in you testifies to it. He leads you and as He does you find yourself minding the things of the Spirit; you find yourself mortifying the things of the flesh; you find that the fear in you has been replaced by a sense of belonging to your heavenly Father.
In Bible College a fellow student asked our instructor why some Christians seem to have such a strong relationship with the Lord and others seem to always struggle. He made the statement that it didn’t seem fair to him that some seem to have greater leading because they become so strong and even famous for their walk, like Billy Graham or Mother Teresa. Our professor paused for a moment and then said, “All are equally led; not all equally follow”.
Therefore, speaking to people of the church, Paul says that wives are to be subject to their husbands, husbands are to sacrificially love their wives, children are to obey their parents, servants are to work diligently and in obedience to their masters and masters are to treat those subservient to them justly and fairly. If you think about each of these things you will realize that they are all things that often go against our base nature.
On a human level, even in a situation where the married couple would both quickly avow their love for one another, and the children are well-behaved, and in the workplace all seems to be peaceful and both progress and profit are being made, still, wives don’t always find it pleasant to be subject to their husbands.
Please! Are we kidding? Outside of the church and to a large degree inside the church today, just think about being in a group and declaring that wives should be subject to their husbands. You’ll be lucky if you’re only laughed at and not tarred and feathered.
Husbands, loving their wives sacrificially? How often do you witness that kind of consistent, enduring strength in a marriage? Children obeying their parents? Like I said, even in the best of family situations there are going to be times the child, especially as they get into their pre-teen and teen years, are going to loath to obey what they’re being told. In the workplace, well, anyone who works in this world knows that clashes between employee and employer are commonplace and almost daily.
So let’s just face the reality that if we stop and read these verses of our text carefully and really grade ourselves accordingly, we’d have to admit that on every level we often fail in these things, and so do most Christians around us.
So what is the problem? The problem is that we have not truly believed that God cares enough or is attentive enough to us, to be active and involved in our everyday life, and even though Jesus is the name we trust for salvation He is far too often the last name we trust for wisdom and knowledge and counsel in regards to the decisions we make day to day, hour to hour.
TRUSTING CHRIST FOR SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT
In the book I quoted at the beginning of this sermon Dallas Willard points out that even as Christians there is a wide spread tendency to look to popular speakers and writers for answers to our life’s dilemmas. We say Jesus is our Lord and Savior, but because of this ‘Heaven in our future’ mindset we lose sight of the fact that He is our concerned and present King in the here and now.
In the Gospels you never see Jesus sending anyone to anyone else for help. His message is always, ‘Come to Me’.
“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. 29 “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS. 30 “For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” Matt 11:28-30
“Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. 38 “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’ ” Jn 7:37-38
He chided the Pharisees for missing the invitations of their own scriptures, when He said that it was those – the Law and the Prophets – that testified of Him, and He said ‘…and you are unwilling to come to Me that you might have life’. What is the implication of that? That to come to Him is to receive life.
Does that refer simply to the promise of eternal life? I don’t think so. When Jesus talks of receiving His kind of life it has to do with quality as well as duration, and it is a life that begins at the coming.
“I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” John 10:10b
There is nothing in Scripture to indicate that we should only apply that declaration to our existence in Heaven after we leave this world. Jesus came to give abundant life. He said so Himself and I just can’t help picturing Him with a beaming smile on His face at the time He said it.
He is the One we should be turning to daily, Christian, for all the help we need in living, and for our spiritual development through study of His Word and vibrant prayerful communion with Him as our Teacher and Confidant.
He is the One we should be trusting for now, not some distant future.
TRUSTING HIM FOR POWER TO LIVE
By the same token, we should be trusting Jesus now for power to live the kind of life He calls us to through His Apostle. We need spiritual development for relating to others and we need spiritual power for the daily battle we are in.
When we go about with the mindset that what we have believed in Christ for is forgiveness of sins and the promise of Heaven later, we are as a matter of course going to forget that we are part of a Kingdom that has come to us and we are to be active in it now.
When Jesus said,
“The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of heaven is at hand; repent and believe the gospel” Mk 1:15
He meant that the kingdom was here. Literally, ‘of the hand’ or ‘in the hand’. It was a way of expressing extreme closeness. When Jesus came, the kingdom came with Him and all who believe are ushered in as full citizens in good standing.
He confirms this coming in another discourse with the Pharisees who were accusing Him of doing His miracles by the power of Satan, when He finished with:
“But if I cast out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.”
Did He cast out demons by the finger of God? We know that He did. Therefore it was the truth that the kingdom of God had come upon them.
Notice that to them He did not say, ‘at hand’, but that it ‘came upon’ them.
Christians, we belong to a God who is significantly, vibrantly, present. He is at work and His arm is not short nor does He grow weary.
We do not sing, “He is exhausted, the King is exhausted on high…”
No, He is exalted and powerful and closer than your next breath. He wants us to trust Him now for all that we will ever need to live the Christ-life, the spiritual life, now.
We need to understand that the Kingdom of Heaven is ‘at hand’. It is here, and we were ushered into it when we first believed. Therefore we are all subjects of the King who is all wise and all knowing and all powerful. We can have these Godly relationships Paul exhorted us to, when we become fulltime students, attentive disciples, of our Teacher/King who is ever present and indeed, dwelling in us in the Person of our Comforter/Helper.
The ‘success’ of our relationships with anyone around us is not dependant on them at all. It is not controlled by them. They are not responsible for our spiritual approach and application of our relationship to them. We are. God will take care of the other side of the relationship, as long as we are diligent to link verse 17 of Colossians 3 to our text verses that follow.
“Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.”
We can have a spiritual relationship with everyone in our life. It doesn’t have to be two-sided, and it is only our side for which we are responsible to God. How does He hold us responsible? Because He is ever and always present and powerful to help us walk this walk.
