02.01.11 PM Sermon
Christ and Christian Relationships # 1 In the family (Col 3:18-20) Paul’s Perspective & Distinctives
As a church on Sundays we shall be looking at Paul’s letter to the Colossians.
Now as we go through this letter we see that it can be divided roughly into three parts.
1. deals with the nature of the Christian gospel (1:1-2:5)
2. deals with the nature of the Christian experience (2:6-3:17)
3. deals with the nature of Christian relationships (3:18-4:1)
In the morning services I shall be dealing with the first two sections of Colossians, but in our evening services we will be dealing with the third section – looking at Christ and Christian relationships.
This third section begins with some practical guidelines for the household or family life (3:18-4:1), goes on to talk of the relationship Christians have with the wider community (4:2-6) and finishes with some personal notes that give us an insight into relationships in the church (4:7-18).
So, this evening we are beginning to think about Christ and relationships within the household or the family.
Family is important.
The Bible makes it clear that God works within and through families – it is part of his design for creation, and much of scripture is devoted to instruction and teaching about family matters – this is because family matters!
Paul writes to the church at Colosse and wants to help those Christians to live out their faith within the context of their relationships.
Now, up to this point Colossians has been saturated with teaching about Jesus Christ.
Now Paul offers some more practical advice and jots down some personal notes, yet his comments are still full of Jesus.
Christ isn’t left behind in the doctrinal sections of the letter; he infuses everything Paul has to say in the practical and personal sections also.
This Christ is not only a reality himself – he is concerned with the reality of daily living.
Paul’s Perspective
Paul addresses some questions:
- How does the fullness of the life of Christ work itself out in the life of a Christian?
- What evidence can we expect to find which demonstrates that Christ is our life?
- How will Christ show himself in the way we live?
Time and again, the New Testament tells us that the answer to these and similar questions will be two-fold.
1. Christ will show himself in our character.
2. Christ will show himself in our relationships.
If Jesus is Lord of our lives then he will impact both who we are and how we relate to others.
Paul has already explained the impact Christ will have on our character (3:5-17).
Now he deals with the impact Christ will have on our relationships (3:18-4:1)
We need to understand that what Paul and the rest of the New Testament writers have to say about relationships is profoundly counter-cultural.
It runs into conflict with our society’s culture – one which is based upon individualism, where the primary social unit is the person - Our society revolves around “I”, “Me”, “Myself”, “Mine”.
This can lead to all manner of problems within relationships, within marriage, parenthood, in the work-place, in church – because my priorities, my needs, my desires may come in conflict with others – and when they do – I want my way! Even if this means that we have to renege on promises we have made and obligations that we have previously entered into.
Many marriages are breaking down because the husband or the wife think individualistically and not biblically.
Parents are becoming estranged from their children because the Bible bedrock is not there and values are built instead upon the latest fad or fashion.
The New Testament teaches that the worth of an individual comes not from being an island, but from being within relationship.
We are to perceive ourselves within the context of relationships and their associated social obligations.
God has made us to be social beings, not isolated, individualistic beings.
God declared everything in his creation to be good until the point when he observed Adam’s loneliness. This was the first thing he judged as ‘not good’ (v18 “It is not good for the man to be alone.”).
So he provided a companion for him – we were designed for relationships.
Indeed, the ability to relate reflects something of the very image of the Triune God who made us.
We are in relationship as God is in relationship – or God is relationship – God is love.
Yes, each of us is distinctive! Yet were are made to be in community.
Part of our make-up is the need to relate, to connect, to compliment, to cooperate, to communicate.
Sadly the fall affected relationships – and here enters alienation, jealousy, suspicion, blame, power struggles.
And we are affected to this day.
Thankfully Christ comes to redeem and renew – to reverse the effects of the fall.
And it is clear that one of the aspects of that redemptive work in our lives is the restoration of relationships.
Paul is teaching the Colossians that their relationships with each other come under the remit of the Lordship of Christ.
If we are declaring and desiring Jesus as Lord, then he will put his finger on, turn his spotlight on, our relationships with others, and call us to cooperate with his Spirit in seeing them sorted out.
A mark of true conversion is that we live no longer for ourselves.
And this is a challenge to all of us who do church.
You see, a key way to test the quality of our spirituality is by examining the quality of the relationships we have.
The quality of our spirituality does not lie in the intensity of our supernatural experiences, the esteem in which others regard us, the frequency of our attendance at meetings, the vigour of our evangelical activism, or the depth of our evangelistic fervour.
The real test lies in the realm of the ordinary, day-to-day, the mundane areas of family, the work place, the community.
It cautions us not to engage in ‘evangelical escapism’ – where we run away from the ordinary world and fail to really engage with it because we are busy doing ‘churchy things’.
We can hide Christ away in church and not allow him to escape through our ordinary lives.
What did Jesus tell the man from whom he cast a legion of demons to go and do?
To found a mission organisation? To build up a following? To write a book, to write a blog, to make a film?
No, he told him to go home and tell his family what the Lord had done for him. (Mark 5:19)
It may have been less exciting, but may have been more testing.
His family relationships needed to be healed and restored – he needed to take his place in his local community once more.
It was Satan who had destroyed all of that, and Jesus was going to heal it.
This healing was not only of a possessed spirit and deranged mind, but also of a ruptured family and community.
Here is a challenge to all of us – for the demonstration of “Christ is our life” (Col 3:4) in the ongoing relationships that we are a part of.
We are to measure our spirituality with the measurements that the Scriptures give us.
What state are our relationships with others in?
So what does the apostle Paul teach about relationships?
Paul’s Distinctives
The passage from 3:18-4:1 addresses various members of the household and tells them how they are to behave.
The household was the basic unit in the social structure of Paul’s time.
It was a large extended family; a much more inclusive family unit that the family structure we’re used to today.
Here Paul writes a household code with two underlying principles :
a. The principle of Christ’s lordship
Seven times within the space of a nine short verses, Paul mentions the lordship of Jesus Christ.
He speaks about what it means to live in community under the authority of Jesus as Lord.
He reminds his readers that they cannot separate their human relationships from the one they have with their Lord.
Their human relationships are to be conducted within the context of their relationship with Jesus as Lord.
We cannot separate our family, work and community life from our spiritual life.
To live out our relationships with members of our family, with work colleagues, with neighbours remembering and acknowledging Jesus as Lord means that we shall be living out our life in him through those relationships.
It means that we will conduct ourselves in a way which is consistent with him - his teachings, his life, his sacrifice.
It means that we shall treat people, whatever their position or status, as human beings made in the image of God and so having dignity and worth.
It means we will not be able to treat people how we like and that there will be no justification for any abuse of power.
It means that we shall imitate Jesus who came among us ‘not to be served, but to serve and give his life.’
It means that within Christian fellowship we refer to one another as brothers and sisters and that we’re all on the same level, standing on the ground of grace at the foot of the cross.
It means that we wont use people to satisfy our own greed or lust, but we’ll love people and put their interests first.
It means we will live our lives in the realisation that what we do has eternal benefits or consequences.
It means that we forgive, that we show mercy, that we lavish grace, that we are generous hearted and handed.
This principle – living with Jesus as Lord in and through all our human relationships - is such a transformative principle for our lives and for the whole of society.
Paul wrote to a people within a society where women, children and slaves were regarded of lower worth.
Yet through application of this principle and teaching, over the course of time, slaves, children and women were afforded rights and attitudes were changed, though there is still far to go in our wider world.
Where Christ is regarded as Lord, then relationships are transformed for the better, unjust systems are corrected and inequality is undermined.
b. The principle of mutual relationships
Paul’s household code here in his letter differed from the usual ones of his day in another respect – that of mutuality.
The household codes of the day uniformly stressed the power of the father and are written from the perspective of the one who was dominant in the hierarchy.
Thus they write about the duties of the wife but the superiority of the husband, the obligations of the children but the rights of the father, the responsibilities of the slave but the authority of the master. For the wife, the child, the slave it’s all about responsibilities, and for the husband, the father, the master it is about privileges.
It is very one-sided.
However Paul here, and in elsewhere in the New Testament, points out the responsibilities, obligations, duties on both sides – there is a mutual obligation to one another.
Here is the principle of the Lordship of Christ being outworked in human relationships.
Because all are equal in Christ, then whatever the gender, age or social status, there is no room in any set of Christian relationships, whether in the church or the home, for a hierarchical system where some have all the rights and others have all the responsibilities. Every member is called to be a servant and all are called to serve one another, as Christ did and still does through his people.
Being ‘in the Lord’ means that we exercise mutual, not one-sided, relationships.
As we enter into a new year and as we allow the word of Christ to dwell in us richly, may we allow Jesus as Lord to bring about transformation in and through our relationships with others – within our families, our community our church.
May Christ be clearly seen and demonstrated in our character, in our relationships – that others may come to know him as Lord for themselves in Wollaston and beyond. Amen.