It was a struggle; I was thinking that this week I would preach from Colossians 4:5–6 Live wisely among those who are not believers, and make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be gracious and attractive so that you will have the right response for everyone.
I thought that I would speak on, the importance of our speech. How we speak to others and how we speak to ourselves. It’s an important message, and one I was looking forward to. Then I checked the schedule and saw that instead, months ago, I had indicated that I would preach from Colossians 3:18 to 4:1, and that passage included the dreaded “S” word.
We are coming to an end of our series, Colossians: Christ Above All. And over the past 8 weeks, Rob, Deborah and I have worked our way through the letter of Colossians and dug down into some of the subjects that Paul had included in this letter.
His main topic was addressing what would become known as the Colossian Heresy, and that was the teaching that belief in Christ wasn’t enough for our salvation.
But Paul made sure those early believers understood that his condemnation of legalism was not excuse for them to do whatever they pleased. Instead, it was tempered with a call to represent Jesus well. Paul tells us in Colossians 3:12 Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.
And that brings us to the scripture that was read for us earlier. The problem for many people is the “S” word, and it’s found in Colossians 3:18 Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting for those who belong to the Lord.
And they just stop, and they don’t go any further than that. It seems so foreign to us in 2025, that we can’t even get our head around it.
Nobody wants to submit to anybody. To submit means to lose, to give in, to give up and to surrender our authority.
No sir, we aren’t going to submit to anyone. It’s elbows up all the way.
But and you all know, after the but comes the truth.
Two of the things we’ve learned about reading the bible. The first is never read just a verse.
So, verse 18 doesn’t stand alone, it is part of section that includes seven other verses, and those other verses, help us to understand the statement that makes so many people bristle.
The second thing we need to understand is that the bible was written for us, but it wasn’t written to us.
The book of Colossians, like all the other letters in the New Testament, was written to a specific people, in a specific place, at a specific time, dealing with specific issues and problems.
Now, through the grace and wisdom of God, twenty-one of those letters were preserved for us today. And we know that there were other letters that were written. Some are mentioned in 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians and further along in Colossians we read, Colossians 4:16 After you have read this letter, pass it on to the church at Laodicea so they can read it, too. And you should read the letter I wrote to them. But we don’t have the letter that Paul wrote to the church in Laodicea.
We can only speculate on what those letters contained. But the letter to the Colossians is available for us today, we know what it says, so, it was written for us. But it wasn’t written to us, in 2025 in our Canadian culture.
Let’s go back to Colossians 1:2 We are writing to God’s holy people in the city of Colosse, who are faithful brothers and sisters in Christ. May God our Father give you grace and peace.
The Then
The issues that Paul is addressing right then had arisen because the Colossians have taken to heart the entire concept of the new birth and all that entailed.
Earlier in this letter, Paul had told the Colossians, Colossians 3:11 In this new life, it doesn’t matter if you are a Jew or a Gentile, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbaric, uncivilized, slave, or free. Christ is all that matters, and he lives in all of us.
That was fleshed out a little more in Paul’s letter to the Galatians, when he wrote, Galatians 3:26–28 For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes. There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.
And Peter addresses the same issue in 1 Peter 3:7 In the same way, you husbands must give honour to your wives. Treat your wife with understanding as you live together. She may be weaker than you are, but she is your equal partner in God’s gift of new life. Treat her as you should so your prayers will not be hindered.
Do you see the common theme running through these comments? It doesn’t matter if you are a Jew or gentile. It doesn’t matter if you are male or female. It doesn’t matter if you are a slave or a master. And then Peter has the audacity to write to the men in the early church and tell them that their wives are equal partners in their new lives.
Bill Graham reminds us that, “The ground is level at the foot of the cross.”
We are told that the result of this, was that women, children and slaves, who were virtually powerless and without worth in the culture of the day, were now being told that they were the equals of their husbands, their parents and their masters.
I’ve mentioned before that when I was a teen, that we owned horses. My sister had a pinto that was charitable speaking a little spirited. And there were times that my father would comment and say that she was feeling her oats.
Well, it seems that women, children and slaves in the Colossian church, 2000 years ago were feeling their oats. After being subjugated and treated as second-class citizens, they were now being taught that they were equal under Christ to their husbands, parents and masters.
Which was a good thing, but as they pushed back against the old ways, it was causing problems for the church.
In Acts 17:6, we see the account of some of the early believers being arrested in Thessalonica, and here is how it’s recorded in the New King James Version, Acts 17:6 NKJV... they dragged Jason and some brethren to the rulers of the city, crying out, “These who have turned the world upside down have come here too.”
Those who have turned the world upside down. It’s not quite as poetic in the New Internation Version, but it gets right down to the crux of the matter, Acts 17:6.. .they dragged Jason and some other brothers before the city officials, shouting: “These men who have caused trouble all over the world have now come here.”
It wasn’t the preaching about grace and forgiveness that they were objecting to. It was what that grace and forgiveness provided.
And it wasn’t just the instructions to the wives, that is problematic for us today. If we get past verse 18, we are jarred by Colossians 3:22 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.
And we want to know why Paul and the early church wasn’t condemning slavery. Without trying to justify slavery, it has been a reality in the world, since there were people to sell and people who were willing to buy them.
However, our view of slavery is defined by what happened in 17 and 18 hundreds, when 1000s of people from Africa were sold to westerners to work plantations. Movies and books like Roots, 12 years a Slave and Amistad have made us think that slavery was an isolated evil and involved people being kidnapped from their homelands and forced into labour, thousands of miles away.
African American scholar Thomas Sowell, wrote, “Over all that expanse of time and space, it is very unlikely that most slaves, or most slave owners, were either black or white. Slavery was common among the vast populations in Asia. Slavery was also common among the Polynesians, and the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere enslaved other indigenous peoples before anyone on this side of the Atlantic had ever seen a European. More whites were brought as slaves to North Africa than blacks brought as slaves to the United States or to the 13 colonies from which it was formed. White slaves were still being bought and sold in the Ottoman Empire, decades after blacks were freed in the United States.”
And that type of slavery was not only condemned in the bible, but was punishable by death, Exodus 21:16 “Anyone who kidnaps another and either sells him or still has him when he is caught must be put to death.”
And in the New Testament we read this list of sinful behaviors, 1 Timothy 1:9–11 . . . lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious; for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me.
The slavery mentioned in the New Testament, was more an indentured servanthood, you couldn’t pay your debts and so you were sold to satisfy them. But even with that, the laws of the Bible prevented permanent enslavement.
Scriptures such as Deuteronomy 15:12: "If any of your people—Hebrew men or women—sell themselves to you and serve you six years, in the seventh year you must let them go free."
And that is reiterated over and over again, throughout the Old Testament. The seventh year was the year of freedom.
And ultimately, it was the church that brought an end to the Transatlantic slave trade. Again, reading from Thomas Sowell, “Slavery is universal, but what stopped slavery it in the West? Undeniably, the Great Awakening: The preaching of men like John Wesley and the reforms of Christian statesman William Wilberforce.
Yes, Christians have been hypocritical with this down through history. But when they really reckoned with the gospel (as in the Great Awakening), it brought the entire system of slavery down on its head!”
This is in no way an attempt to negate or minimize the evil of the transatlantic slave trade, but understand that what Paul was writing about was a very different situation.
The other admonition that Paul had was for children, Colossians 3:20 Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. I was reading an article the other day, about adults who are estranged from their parents. And I was surprised in the findings, that in many cases it wasn’t because there had been physical or emotional abuse, which would be understandable. But in many cases, it was because parents, were being parents and were expecting their children to obey them and disciplined them when they didn’t.
And so, for some people this command for children to obey their parents seems, old fashioned, and even wrong.
But in each of these admonitions there is a caveat. For the wives they are told to submit as it fitting in the Lord. For the children they are told that this pleases the Lord, and for the slave they are told to obey their masters and do their work well with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord.
They weren’t being told to submit, obey or work in a situation that would cause them to sin or to do things that were contrary to scripture, instead they were being asked to be respectful in their new freedom. The word submit, is the very same word, used in the context when we are told in
While those in the early church saw the equality of all as something to be embraced, those outside the church saw it as something to be feared. The society and culture of the day viewed the church and this newfound freedom as a threat to their culture and society as a whole. And the temptation would be to eradicate the threat.
And so, women, slaves and children were asked not to militantly demand the rights and equality that was promised them in the scriptures.
Basically, they are being asked to take one for the team. The early church needed to make an impact on society. And that wasn’t going to happen all at once.
But there would come a time, that the church would not just be in the forefront in the battle against slavery, but would become the champions for the rights of children and women.
And while they were asked to step back, their husbands, parents and masters were commanded to step up.
While wives were told to submit, husbands weren’t told to demand compliance. Instead, we read in Colossians 3:19 Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.
And while children are told to obey their parents, parents are told in Colossians 3:21 Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged.
And again, while slaves are told to obey their masters, masters are told in Colossians 4:1 Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a Master in heaven.
And those were radical teachings 2000 years ago. Eventually those teachings would change the world.
So that was the then, but what about The Now
The challenge today, is what happens when we lift those commands out of context and insist, they be applied the same way today as they were 2000 years ago.
Today, these verses have been misused by some to justify abuse, inequality, and oppression. That’s not biblical submission. That’s sin.
Let me show you what happens when scripture is misapplied in today's world.
When I was pastoring in Turo, there was a family court judge by the name of Ray Barlett, and he was famous. He wasn’t always famous, but he became not only famous but reviled and hated as well, right across Canada. Not bad for a small-town lawyer.
It was when Bartlett became a judge that he put the town of Truro on the map. All across the country people were talking about him, and their opinions ranged from having him tarred and feathered and then shot, right through to people who really disliked him.
Judge Bartlett gave Truro a name as being a narrow, provincial backward little town. But it gets worse than that, Ray Bartlett professed to being a born-again Christian, came from a very conservative evangelical church. And the reason he was hated by all the women, and a good majority of men was his interpretation of the scriptures. It was well within the mark to say that Judge Bartlett had given evangelical Christianity in Canada a great big black eye.
How could a family court judge in a little town in Nova Scotia cause a national uproar? Easy! A woman who appeared in Bartlett’s court appealed her case to the Nova Scotia Attorney General. it would appear that the woman was seeking a legal separation from her husband because he was beating her. Instead of issuing a bench warrant keeping her husband away or granting the separation that she had asked the Judge pulled his battered old King James Bible from under the bench and read Ephesians chapter five verse twenty-two Wives submit yourselves unto your own husband, and then he sent her home.
Needless to say, the appeal court wasn’t all that impressed with the Judge’s interpretation of the law or the scripture. But the worst was yet to come because upon further investigation it was discovered that Bartlett was regularly sending women back into potentially explosive situations with the admonition to submit to their husbands. Let us say that the courts were not amused.
And he didn’t just harm the women he sent back into harm’s way, he harmed the church and peoples view of the scriptures.
So, what does submission look like in 2025?
Does this scripture mean that there is a hierarchy in the home where the husband and father is boss and the little woman and kids do what he says? When he says “jump”, they are in the air asking, “How high?”
My grandfather Guptill, was fond of saying, “Be careful of the man who says he’s the boss at home, if he’ll lie about that, he’ll lie about anything.”
Today those biblical admonitions look like mutual honour. They look like husbands and wives loving with gentleness and respect, with parents leading with compassion and children respecting their parents, with employers treating workers with fairness, and employees doing their best, and giving an hour’s work for an hour’s pay.
Paul writes more extensively about these issues in Ephesians 5:21-6:9, and he starts that passage with these words: Ephesians 5:21 And further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Who is supposed to submit to who? Submit to one another. Why? Out of reverence for Christ.
It's not about who gets the final say. It's about who gets to show the heart of Jesus first.
It’s like dancing. I am not a dancer, I was a teen during the disco era, so even when I was dancing it was pretty sad.
But when Angela and I cruise, there are always those who dance. And for those who dance really well, there is always someone who leads, but the point is the harmony, the rhythm, the grace of moving together.
If someone’s dragging the other around the floor and that’s not a dance—it’s a disaster.
The world may get all prickly over these words and concepts at these words, but when lived out rightly, they paint a picture of Christ-like love, where submission isn't weakness—it’s strength under control. And love? It leads.”
And so let’s go back to where I wanted to start, Colossians 4:5–6 Live wisely among those who are not believers, and make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be gracious and attractive so that you will have the right response for everyone.
What if, as Christians. As Christian husbands and wives. As Christian children and parents, and as Christian employers and employees, we took those words to heart.
What if we treated each other with respect and mutual submission? And that is the challenge today for each of us, before we speak, before we act, that we ask ourselves, is this fitting in the Lord?
