A Typical Roman Family
This week we move on from Rules for Holy living aimed at the individual, to look at rules for living in a Christian family. It is almost as difficult to describe a typical Roman family in the first century as it is to describe a typical English family in the 21st century. The Colossian church would have had a mixture of
families from many different backgrounds, just as the Billericay church does today. So what was the Roman equivalent of '2.4 Children'? There would have been:
Father
The role of the father was very different to the role that fathers have today. The father was the head of the household. He had absolute authority over everything that happened in the household.
Mother
She was the subject of her husband. She had few rights, and could not divorce her husband except in the most extreme circumstances. Divorce would only be possible if, for example,if the husband caught leprosy. After giving birth she would take the new born and put it at her husbands feet. If he picked it up, the baby
would live. If he didn't it would be taken away to die.
Children
Children were the property of their father and could be sold, or discarded as he saw fit. If sold they would be sold as slaves.
They would most likely have had 6 Children, but only 3 would survive to adulthood.
If the sons were grown up, their wives would be living in the house.
Slaves
There were not many slaves that had a life as good a Lurcio. (That's
Frankie Howard from Up Pompeii, if you don't recognise him.) Slaves were usually prisoners of war. The Roman Empire was always fighting somewhere, and the prisoners were brought back to the centre of the empire and sold as slaves in various locations. This meant that slaves often came with useful skills, or from what we would now consider to be professional backgrounds. As a Roman, if you needed a teacher for your children you could buy a slave who had previously been a teacher somewhere else.
Slave revolts were a relatively common occurrence as many slave were badly treated. It has been estimated that at the height of the Roman Empire up to 50% of the inhabitants were slaves.
Think for a moment about the kind of world that Paul was writing in. It is almost impossible for us to understand the concept of owning another human being, or being
owned by some else. By owning, I mean having the power of life and death, and by being owned I mean that your life depends entirely on your master.
God's Transformational Instructions
Jesus is referred to as Lord six times in this short passage, and Master once. When we chose to become Christians and accept Jesus as our Lord we put ourselves under His authority. If we are serious about living God's way – living under the authority of Christ, then it WILL change the way we live.
Now lets read the scripture again as we try to focus our minds on the type of life that we might have lead in 1st century Rome:
Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.
Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.
Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.
Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged.
Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to win their favour, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord.
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. Anyone who does wrong will be repaid for his wrong, and there is no favouritism.
Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a Master in heaven.
These instructions are so radically different from the way society operated at the time it id difficult for us to believe that they could ever have taken hold.
Obligation – Authority
Notice that in each of the pairs Paul speaks firstly to the person with the obligation, and secondly to the person with the authority. The implication being that if you are carrying out your obligations it is easier for the person in authority to behave as they should. Notice also that each obligation as it is mentioned is in some way linked to your faith in Christ.
Wives submit (as it is fitting in the Lord), husbands love
Children Obey (because it pleases the Lord), Fathers encourage (or at least don't discourage)
Slaves Obey and work honestly (they are serving the Lord) – Masters treat them fairly – because they too have a master.
I'm now going to look at each of the roles in turn, but don't switch off while I'm talking about a role that you can't take. If you can't take the role, you can be on the other side of it.
Our obligation – all of us – is to please the Lord.
Wives
Gen 2:18 The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."
Wives, before you as 21st century women get upset at what Paul is saying, lets try to take a look at just exactly what he is saying. It is important that we don't get stuck on the first word, as some do. Submission is 'to your husband' not 'to any male'. Chambers dictionary says submit means “to surrender; to give in, especially to the wishes or control of another person; to stop resisting them”. It comes from the Latin 'sub' meaning under and mittere meaning 'let go, send'. It has the meaning “refer to another for consideration”.
Submission places no value on the person who is submitting, it does not imply that they are in any way inferior, and it is not slavery.
So it seems to me that Paul is saying that the wife should refer to her husband for consideration anything that she thinks will materially affect their lives together.
That means that the leadership of the family is the Husbands responsibility, not the wives.
Gods model for all of our lives is authority and submission, without this approach there will be no leadership and chaos will result.
Children
The command here is quite simple 'Obey'. In Ephesians it is slightly more complex. Eph 6:2-3 "Honor your father and mother"—which is the first commandment with a promise— "that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.
How this command is interpreted really depends on the age of the Children. You would not expect older children to have to be given simple commands that young children are given. The message to Children though is 'obey', because that's what God wants from all His children.
Children cannot see the point of view of their parents, as Mark Twain noted “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”
Slaves
Largely due to Christianity there are no legally owned slaves in the world today. As Paul was writing though, the entire society was built on the use of Slaves. I have already noted that about half of the people in the Roman Empire were slaves. There are some other instructions to Slaves that are worth a look:
* 1 Peter 2:18 – Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, the good and considerate, and also to the harsh.
* 1 Tim 6:2 – Serve believing masters better than non-believing ones.
* Titus 2:9-10 try to please them; don't talk back; don't steal from them, show you can be fully trusted, so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Saviour attractive.
The nearest we can get to understanding the meaning of this is to look at how what is said might affect our employment.
Work is worship we heard last week. We work for Christ first, and the boss second. We do the job that the boss has given us to do, but we do it for Christ. We do not have to turn our workplace into our own personal mission field, our responsibility is to get the job done and done well. In doing that we demonstrate our faith in Christ – whatever sort of boss we have.
Many years ago I had an interview with a mainframe support company as one of their operating system experts, if I had been offered the job I would have been working for this company at various other companies. I was asked what I would do if I was given trivial work to do. I don't remember my answer. What they were looking for was that I would do as I was asked, but would tell them and my management that the work they were giving me was not the work they were supposed to be giving me. The key thing here for today is that I should do as I was asked by the people asking. Whatever work you are asked to do – do it and do it to the best of your ability. That way you can bring glory to God.
Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote: "Smiting an anvil, sawing a beam, white-washing a wall, driving horses, sweeping, scouring, everything gives God some glory if being in his grace you do it as your duty."
William McDonald has written that Christian slaves brought a higher price in the slave market in the first century. The same is said of Christians in Soviet Russia. Christians were known for their honesty and their hard work. As a result many employers protected them and kept quiet about their employees activities.
Even today we can have an effect on the workplace by being honest and hard working, and may well have gained the respect of people there for our efforts.
Husbands
Most of the instructions in this passage relate to the men who are Husbands, Fathers and Slave Masters (or Managers in out case).
The story is told of a father of 5 who came home with a toy, he summoned his children and asked which one should be given the present. "Who is the most obedient, never talks back to mum and does every thing he or she is told to do?" He inquired. There was silence as the children looked around at each other, and then a chorus of voices rang out: "you play with it daddy!"
Paul recognised God's intention that the man should be the Leader in the household. Many of the problems that we have in our society today are the result of men not understanding the role of leader, or not being permitted to perform it. There are few, if any, good public role models of the Husband / Father leader.
The word that is translated love originally meant 'love of a spouse or family, or love of an activity'. It is not romantic or sexual love. Roman marriages were arranged marriages, and did not involve the couple choosing each other. It was used by early
Christians to describe God's sacrificial love in Christ for His human family.
The word Husband replaced the old English word wer which means married man, husband means head householder. Husbandry comes from husband, and relates to peasant farmers providing for their families.
In Hebrews 12 in a section about discipline it says in verse 15 “See to it that no-one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.”
This I think, sums up the challenge for Husbands and Fathers, as they seek to model Christ to their families.
Fathers
A little girl once said to her mother, “Mummy, if Father Christmas brings our presents, and God gives us our daily bread, and the Prime Minister gives us Social Security, why do we keep
daddy around?”
Its a good question. When we listen to our politicians trying to describe a family in the recent debate on supporting marriage, we hear all the old messages about not disadvantaging people who live in one parent families. No-one seems able to say that God's
design is the best. That a man should be a husband of one wife for life and should be the leader of his family. Even though there is some evidence to suggest that children do better in this model.
Men, if you're doing the job properly and to the best of your ability a lot is asked of you. You must find time for God, your wife, your children, your work and your self.
A father had three very active boys. One summer evening, he was playing cops and robbers in the back garden after dinner. One of the boys "shot" his father and yelled, "Bang! You’re dead!" He slumped to the ground and when he didn’t get up straight away, a neighbour ran over to see if he had been hurt in the fall. When the neighbour bent over, the overworked father opened one eye and said, "Shhh! Don’t give me away. It’s the only chance I’ve had to rest all day."
Fathers, you have to be ready to be the ultimate place of appeal for your children. There used to be a saying “Wait 'till you father gets home!” Then maybe a request would have to be denied, or some punishment given.
A little girl was being punished by eating alone in the corner of the dining room. The family paid no attention to her until they heard her pray: “I thank You, Lord, for preparing a table before me in the presence of my enemies.”
You have to be ready to deal with the consequences of any punishments you might apply too.
Through all this you must remain a Dad, and not become a Dictator.
There's more at stake than just your family:
Confucius said, “the
strength of a nation is derived from the integrity of its homes.”
Masters (Slave Owners)
To follow these instructions in the Roman world would have been difficult. Being fair to slaves was not considered. Nothing was considered about slaves except that they do their work. They were the equivalent of our machines, and disposed of as easily as a
broken washing machine. Being fair would be seen as laughable, and a threat to your credibility.
Nevertheless many Christians did treat their slaves reasonably and even better than that. As a result the practice of owning slaves in a Christian Roman Empire reduced to such an extent that the trade was undermined.
Managers must strive for fairness in the workplace. That means fair pay for all, but more than that it means that employees should be treated with respect, they are after all making money for the company in one way or another.
It does not mean that standards can be allowed to slip, once again we as managers are to do our job well, and expect the same from those we manage.
Conclusion
All that I have been talking about today can be summed up in the Love of Christ or the Grace of God. It requires us to act in the same way.
That requires us being ready to forgive.
At a conference with their wives, two businessmen who had been room mates at university crossed paths. They sat in the bar all night talking. They knew they would be in trouble with their wives. The next day they happened to see each other. "What did your wife
think?"
"I walked in the door and my wife got
historical."
"Don’t you mean hysterical?"
"No, historical. She told me everything I ever did wrong."
Whether our role is as Father, Husband, Child, Mother or Wife none of us will fill it perfectly, neither will we ever meet anyone who will fill the other matching half perfectly.
We must be ready to forgive each other and ourselves for our failings, just as God has forgiven us.
Christianity has had an amazing effect on society over the last 20 centuries. Each small change has been caused by people - individuals like us - determining to follow God's way of living their lives, and slowly others have followed, until we have moved from seeing women as possessions to seeing women as partners, from seeing children
as objects to seeing children as our future, from seeing slaves as non-human to seeing everyone as equal.
But we are not perfect yet...
