Back in the book of Colossians this morning. We're starting at Colossians 3:18 and through Colossians 4:6. Again, reading Colossians 3:18. Wives, submit to your husbands as is fitting to 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 provoke your children lest they become discouraged. Bondservants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye service as people pleasers, but with sincerity of heart fearing the Lord. Whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ, for the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality.
Masters, treat your bondservants justly and fairly knowing that you also have a master in heaven. Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. At the same time, pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ on account of which I am in prison, that I may make it clear which is how I ought to speak. Walk in wisdom towards outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.
There's a temptation in Christianity to divorce the spiritual from the earthly, to treat immaterial spiritual things like intellect, prayer, visions, and so on as superior to earthly realities like family, work, marriage, and parenting. And the reason Christianity, or maybe I should more accurately say Christianity in the West, has struggled with keeping these things together is probably because of the influence of philosophers like Plato. He's a Greek philosopher, and he believed that the immaterial was superior to the material, that the spiritual was superior to the earthly, that this is the substance of which this is just a shadow, my body, and that my life in this world is inferior to this immaterial realm. And the reason it's affected Christianity is because remember, the gospel spread in the Roman Empire in the first century in a Greco-Roman context, deeply influenced by philosophers like Plato.
And so Christianity, especially in the first few centuries, but even now, we still have this bit of a hangover from Plato who keeps sometimes making us think that it's more spiritual to be up here, and it's not as good to be down here. Now Paul said last week, or two thousand years ago, but last week we looked at how Paul said in 3:2, set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. That sounds a little bit like Plato, doesn't it? I mean, set your mind on things above, these heavenly things, it could be so easy to interpret it in a Plato kind of way, as if the spiritual is superior and the earthly is inferior. But Paul has been at pains throughout the letter to show that that's not the case.
Last week, he applied this lordship of Jesus Christ, setting our minds on Him, he showed us how that transforms the way that we relate to one another as a church. And now this week, Paul continues to push the heavenly lordship of Christ into our earthly realities, like marriage and family and parenting and work and so on. This is why the sermon today is called Relationships in Christ, because Paul shows how the heavenly reign of Jesus affects every part of our existence, including the way we approach relationships within our homes. Now we are in the seventh week of a series called The All Sufficient Christ, called The All Sufficient Christ, why Jesus is all you need. We've been taking eight weeks to look through this letter to Colossians.
It's a first century letter that the apostle Paul wrote to a church he'd never actually met, but he'd heard about from a believer called Epaphras coming to visit him while he was under house arrest in Rome. And so he wrote this letter to deal with the false teaching that was happening there. These false teachers were troubling them. They were saying, Jesus is great. We're not denying Jesus, but you need Jesus plus these other things.
You need more. You need Jesus plus heavenly experiences if you're gonna be a full Christian. You need Jesus plus these old Jewish practices if you're gonna be the real deal. You need Jesus plus severe discipline if you're gonna overcome sin. And Paul says, no, Jesus is all sufficient.
He is everything you need. And now today, we look at how the all sufficient Christ affects relationships in the home especially, but also outside the home. Now we'll be looking at Colossians 3:18 to 4:6, and I won't be putting many of the verses on the screen. So if you've got your Bible app or your Bible, please open up to Colossians 3:18 so you can open up and you can follow along. Now if you're a Christian, we need passages like this because like I said, Christians in the West, we have this platonic tendency to drift towards thinking that spiritual kind of things, immaterial kind of things are more important than earthly matters.
And so we need passages like this to help us keep living in our earthly context with the heavenly Lord Jesus reigning over it. Now if you're not a Christian here, first of all, welcome. It's great to have you. We're glad that you are here, and if you've got questions, we'd love to chat to you about them. You're going to see why Christians don't believe that faith is meant to be a purely private and personal thing.
Jesus' lordship is too big and expansive for us to privatise that. And I'm sorry if Christians have been obnoxious sometimes by being too, like, being so public about their faith that they're in your face, but I want you to see why Jesus' lordship requires us to think about life as all of it as belonging to Him. And it even makes us want to go out and to share with you about Jesus, not in obnoxious ways, in gentle respectful ways, but yet we want to do that out of our love for Jesus and our love for you and your soul. So with that being said, let's get into the passage together and be looking at Colossians 3:18 to 4:6, and I'm gonna show you how Paul's words in the passage we're looking at actually elaborate on the final verse from last week. So the final verse last week, Paul finished on verse 17, and whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus.
Now Paul elaborates on doing everything in the name of the Lord Jesus by showing its implications for the home, life in the home with Christ as Lord, showing its implications for prayer in verses 2 to 4, and then showing its implications for life in the world in verses 5 to 6 in chapter 4. So first, we're going to look at the home, the home with Christ as Lord. Now as we look at this initial passage, Colossians 3:18 to 4:1, it's what we call a household code. In the ancient Greco-Roman world, there were these household codes floating around that taught them how to order their homes. And in that ancient context, nearly all the codes, maybe all of them, I'm not a 100% sure, I've done my research, but it's not a 100%, but 95% of them, addressed the man of the house.
He was called the pater familias in Latin. He was the man of the house. It was a very patriarchal society and the man of the house at one stage had life and death power over every member of their household. They could just put them to death if they weren't doing what they asked. So a lot of power for the pater familias, and in the ancient codes that floated around, only the man of the house, the pater familias would be addressed, and the codes focused on how he was meant to keep his wife and children and slaves, yes, they had slaves in the Greco-Roman world, submissive and obedient.
That was what the ancient codes did, and we need that context to see how beautifully subversive and countercultural it is when Paul gives instructions for Christian households. First of all, Paul addresses wives. Now that's countercultural in and of itself. The fact that he even speaks to the wives, dignifies them, gives them a role, and he says this in verse 18. Paul says, wives, submit to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord.
First of all, he addresses wives. Second of all, that word submit in the original Greek, it's in what we call the middle voice. So Paul is saying, wives, submit yourselves to your husbands. In other words, he's talking about a voluntary decision on behalf of the wife. Christian submission, so while Jesus is not against submission, He transforms it through the gospel, and this gospel shaped Christian submission is not something that can be coerced or taken, it's a voluntary decision.
In Roman culture, husbands were taught how to make their wives obey. In the Christian household code here, wives are asked to voluntarily submit themselves. Why? Paul says it is fitting in the Lord. So we need to remember that all this submission and all the stuff that's going on in this household code here is done because of our collective submission to Jesus Christ as Lord.
This is why this whole section is called the home with Christ as Lord, because the word Lord saturates these verses. Let me just show you a graph on the screen. So in this passage, the Greek word for lord is kurios, and it comes up again and again and again in this passage. So the big green graph on the there on the left, that's Colossians chapter 3, and then the smaller one is Colossians chapter 4. So these are all of the chapters from Paul's letters showing how much the word kurios comes up.
Now, Colossians 3 looks like it's, you know, fourth place or something, but if you add on the references because that passage goes into chapter 4, doesn't it? So if you add on the references from chapter 4, it becomes the most concentrated passage of the word kurios in Paul's letters. Okay. So I'm just saying that all of this stuff that Paul's commanding here, he's saying, we're all doing this in the Lord. We're all doing this because we're submitting to the Lord.
The other reason the word kurios is coming up so much is because there's an interesting wordplay that goes on when it comes to the master and slave relationship. Because when you see the word master in your English translation, it's the same Greek word. It's still kurios. So whether it's master or lord in the ESV, it's all kurios. So anyway, I'll explain a little bit more about that wordplay later.
But the point is this is all about Jesus being Lord. We're doing everything in submission to Jesus. We do relationships this way because of our shared love for Jesus. Now I know this can be difficult. Submit is not a positive word in our culture.
Submission maybe brings up thoughts of, like, slavish obedience, but that's not what Paul is talking about here. Actually, normally, the ancient household codes told women to obey. Paul doesn't use that word, which is countercultural. Tells them to voluntarily submit, to revere, to respect their husband as is fitting in the Lord. Dr. Douglas Moo, he makes a good point here.
He says, to submit is to recognise a relationship of order established by God. But submission to any human is always conditioned by the ultimate submission that each believer owes to God. In any hierarchy we can imagine, God stands at the top of the chart. This means then that a wife will sometimes have to disobey her husband, even a Christian one, if that husband commands her to do something contrary to God's will. Even as she disobeys, however, she can continue to submit, in a sense by recognising that her husband remains her head, just not her ultimate head.
Now I know it's a bit of a thorny one, but that's what Paul is trying to get across here. And I hope as I show you what husbands are meant to do next, this is meant to be a beautiful, mutual, loving dynamic in the marriage. So let's just take a look at what Paul says to the husbands. So next, Paul says in verse 19, husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them. First of all, that was utterly unique that Paul would command them to love their wives.
Dr. Doug Moo again, he says, indeed, no other code we have discovered from the ancient world requires husbands to love their wives. Okay? So this is the Christian transformation of the Greco-Roman household. He's telling them, don't just make everyone obey you, that was the Roman way. Paul's saying, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.
This is absolutely revolutionary for the time. To my married brothers, love your wives. That's what Paul is telling us to do. Cherish them, serve them, have deep affection for them, have deep concern for their souls. You've been given a position of leadership in your marriage, but it's not leadership in the way the world thinks.
Jesus actually flips it upside down with a model, Jesus' leadership. Jesus explained how He exercises His authority in Luke 22, where it says, a dispute also arose among them, that's Jesus and His disciples, as to which of them was to be regarded as the greatest. And He said to them, the kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, but not so with you. Rather, let the greatest among you become as the youngest and the leader as one who serves. For who is the greater, one who reclines at table or one who serves?
Is it not the one who reclines at table? But Jesus said, but I am among you as the one who serves. This applies to all Christian leadership, whether it's elders like myself in the church. It's kind of like you flip the hierarchy down and we're at the bottom, we're like the chief servants trying to serve you all in your growth. Same thing with Christian headship in marriage with husbands.
They're meant to be laying down their lives for the sake of their wives. That's what Paul says in Ephesians, it's another household code, which fleshes this out a bit more. So if you're really interested in a marriage relationship, head over to Ephesians chapter 5 or 6, and you can find it there. But he says in that one, lay down your lives as Christ laid down His life for the church and gave Himself up for her. So this is not an abusive form of headship.
Jesus is the head who actually chose to die for the sake of the body. That's the church. And Christian husbands are meant to follow Jesus' example, actually meant to lay down our lives and die to ourselves for the sake of our wives. That's the kind of husband that a Christian woman is being asked to voluntarily submit to under Jesus, and the husbands are being asked because of their submission to Jesus to love their wives and to lay down their lives to serve them. And just want to apply this to the men for a moment and try and help how can we make this real in our marriages.
I love what one pastor, Matt Chandler, says about, he used to come home from doing work and he used to stop in the driveway and he called it the driveway prayer, and he'd park in the driveway and he'd say, Father, now my most important ministry is beginning. Help me to love and serve my wife, and if you have kids, my kids well. And that's a practice that you could put in place. If you go off to work and you're coming back, you can drive and come into your driveway and say, I'm exhausted, Father. I'm tired, but I'm not clocking off now.
I'm not going in now to sit down and rest. I'm actually going in to do my most important work for the day, how I'm serving my wife and my kids. Help me to do that well for Your glory. Or if you work from home and you're signing off for the day, help me, Father. I'm about to do my most important work.
I think that's a kind of prayer that could transform the way that you view your work at home. And I think the Bible would say our work at home and our families is more important than our careers. That's why someone like myself, 1 Timothy 3 says, I need to manage my own household well if I'm gonna be an elder. I actually am disqualified from doing ministry if my household isn't going well. But that's just something for all of us as men to think about.
We want to love and serve our wife and kids well. Alright. So that's what Paul says to husbands. Next, Paul addresses children and says in 3:20, children, obey your parents in everything for this pleases the Lord. Now some of the parents are like, let's stop, open house kids, get them back in right now.
We want them to hear that verse. Right? Obey your parents in everything for this pleases the Lord. Now this is, again, it's different to the wives. So the wives are told voluntarily submit.
There's no voluntary idea with this one. It's just command for the children to obey. It's unqualified. Who are these children? They're probably young children that are still in their parents' household that are being raised by their parents.
So if you're like me, you're an adult child now, and I've got parents. I don't think it applies to me that I need to obey my parents in everything and do what they say, but I am to honour my father and mother. And I think that also means caring for them in their old age, but enough on that anyway for now. That was something that they meant in the ancient context. Now these children that the parents are still raising, they are called to obey their parents in everything.
Why? Kids, if any kids that are here this morning, is it because you understand what your parents are telling you to do, you think it makes sense, that it's logical? No. It's because it pleases Jesus. And Jesus knows what it is to be in your position, where you are in complete submission to someone.
Jesus was actually asked by His Father to do something so difficult. He sweat blood. He was that stressed, and yet He said, not as I will, but as You will. Jesus, out of respect for His Father, but also love for you, went to the cross to die in your place, to give you a place in God's family. So obeying your parents if you're a young child, it's Christ like and it pleases Jesus.
Listen to your parents and do what they say. Now parents, some of you might be thinking, preach, come on, amen. I can't wait to get home while we're driving the way home. I'll ask my kids, what did you learn from the service today? Like, that was an interesting one, wasn't it?
Well, before we get too carried away, let's just take a look at what Paul says to parents next. Paul next says, fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged. Colossians 3:21. Now the Greek word for fathers there, the Greek dictionary that I've got actually says it should be translated as parents in this verse. Whether it does apply to whether Paul is talking directly to parents or to fathers, it applies to parents either way.
What Paul is telling parents to do here is not to so exasperate our kids that we crush their hearts, that they find it so difficult to please us that they become discouraged and they lose heart. He's also talking about provoking your children, almost confronting them because you're the one that has the power. Kinda like, alright. Try that again. Like, try it.
See what happens, mate. And then you use your power to overcome them. If Julian's laughing. I don't actually talk about that, but that's what Paul's saying. Don't use that because remember the Roman world, they had so much power.
It was so fine and normal and accepted for the pater familias to just tell people they could tell someone to go, like put someone to death legally in that culture. But for us today, it still applies that we should gently, lovingly help our kids follow Christ and do what is right. I actually think though in our culture, especially for my generation of parents, we don't struggle too much on this side generally. We're probably more about being friends with our kids and where there's like no there's no raising them up to obey the Lord at all. And so if you're a younger parent like myself, I'll encourage you to remember, before we're friends, we're actually parents and that the kids are told in this passage to obey you, and that there is a sense of this loving authority that's there that you want to help them obey you, but more importantly, obey the Lord and to grow to know Him.
Now I'm not sharing this because I'm a perfect parent. I'm still repenting regularly of my frustration with my kids. I'm preaching this because it's God's word for you and for me. And I realise I'm also not a parent of teenagers yet. I've not been through those dynamics.
I don't understand quite how those dynamics change just yet, but if you are a parent with teenagers or you're looking for more resources, let me encourage you to check out Paul Tripp's book, books on parenting. He also has good books on marriage as well. Wonderful biblical teaching helps us to apply that. But also, there's a course online called Triple P Parenting. It was developed by the University of Queensland.
It's a secular course, research based. It's helpful. You're not gonna get your Christian worldview from that course. You're not gonna learn how to parent Christianly, but if you want some tools and strategies that can help, then that might be another resource you can look at as well. The government funds it, so it's free to access online.
So Paul Tripp for your Christian worldview, and then for some other tools and strategies, Triple P Parenting might be helpful as well. Now I'm losing my place in my notes again. Alright. So in the home with Christ as Lord, wives submit themselves, husbands love and lay down their lives, children obey, parents aren't to be harsh. And next, Paul deals with the elephant in the room, the master slave relationship in verses 22 to 25.
Now what is going on here? Shouldn't Paul just be saying abolish slavery immediately? Like, why is he trying to help them work through this? Well, we actually need to try and put ourselves in the ancient context in the Greco-Roman world. Slavery was so common that it's estimated that a third of all people were slaves in the Roman world.
It was absolutely essential to their economy. Slavery was not the same as the vile form that we saw with African American slavery, whereas against one particular ethnic group, slavery, any ethnic group could be a slave in the Roman world, and people became slaves in all sorts of different ways. There was terrible harsh forms of slavery, like if you were conquered in war, you could be taken as a slave, you could be made to work in the Roman salt mines, which is basically a death sentence, or there was a more kind of almost voluntary slavery where if you were getting into debt, you could sell yourself into slavery, work for a period of time as with a master until you regained your freedom. So that's another form of slavery. Some slaves even had so much status and were so skilled and professional in their work that they had more status than the free person or the average free person in the Roman Empire.
So there's a lot of nuance here before we try and understand it. And if Paul said abolish slavery straight away, that actually might not have been good for the slave in that household. If they didn't have an income to get straight away and to start to be able to feed themselves, that could also be a death sentence. So we need to actually try and put ourselves in that historical moment. Now to think that Paul endorses slavery is a really bad reading of Paul.
Paul doesn't endorse it, but he's speaking into an institution that existed in that time, and he's subverting it quietly with the gospel. And we're gonna see that. That's where we're gonna see all this wordplay with this kurios word that I've been talking about. We're gonna see how that wordplay comes into play here. So starting from verse 22, we're just gonna run through the verses.
Paul says bondservants. So the ESV has chosen to translate the Greek word doulos as bondservants because they think that in this context, it's not the salt mine slave that's having a death sentence, it's someone who's possibly sold themselves to pay off a debt and maybe they belong to a good master or a bad master, we don't know. Either way, Paul's speaking to bondservants, and he says in verse 22, obey in everything those who are your earthly kurios, your earthly masters. Not by way of eye service as people pleasers, but with sincerity of heart fearing the kurios. See the wordplay there?
Paul is saying, obey. Do the work to the best of your ability for your master. If you're in this status, your status in the Roman world is that you're a slave, do the best work you can, not for him, but for the real Lord, for Jesus. Again, quietly subverting the real ultimate universal Lord is Jesus. I actually think some of these verses can be applied to the employer employee relationship today, although it's not exactly the same.
Obviously, employees, we have our own voluntary decisions and things like that. But if you're a worker, you've got a boss or a manager, work heartily at it. Like Paul says here, work heartily, not as a people pleaser or by way of eye service, you know, when they walk around the corner, start doing your work a bit more. Work heartily at all times for the Lord. I think Christians should be known as some of the best workers in the economy in Australia because we should give ourselves to our work as if working for the Lord, not just for our manager or employer.
Paul goes on. He says, but not by way of eye service as people pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the kurios. Whatever you do, work heartily as for the kurios, the Lord, and not for men, knowing that from the kurios, Jesus, you will receive the inheritance as your reward. Now it's amazing that in the Greco-Roman world, the slaves are actually being spoken to, and they were fellow Christians within the church. And Paul is saying to them, you along with the church family, your future is Christ's resurrection, the new creation.
That's your ultimate future. And this is what I mean by Paul subtly undermining slavery. Like if slaves and masters are in the room and they're sitting listening to this, and slaves are actually their brother in Christ, as they reflect, it's like you can't have this institution of slavery any longer. It actually becomes unrecognisable in the Roman world as you apply these values to it. I continue on.
Paul says, you are serving the kurios, Christ. Again, he keeps pointing them to the ultimate Lord. Verse 25, for the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality. I actually think that's an encouragement to the slaves there, saying, if your master's a wicked master, he will be paid back. There is no partiality in God.
He will receive back what he has done. Again, the masters and the slaves are sitting in the same church, and they're hearing this letter. Now after this, Paul speaks to masters and says, masters, treat your bondservants justly and fairly knowing that you also have a kurios in heaven. So Paul also says to the masters, you've got a greater kurios. You might be a kurios in an earthly sense, but you are actually a slave to the heavenly master.
It's undermining the institution of slavery. Anyway, we're gonna look at it a bit more deeply in two weeks' time because the other reason Paul spends so much time speaking about the master slave, notice he devoted several verses to it, whereas just one verse for the wife, one verse for the husband and so on. He devoted several verses to it, I think because contextually speaking, there was another slave from the Colossian church who had run away. His name was Onesimus, and he is now returning to his master Philemon in the Colossian church. Philemon might ring a bell, that's a letter in the New Testament. And he's actually coming back awkwardly with Tychicus, who's holding the letter for Colossians.
So Paul's written a letter from Rome in prison. Tychicus is carrying it. Onesimus is with him. He's a runaway slave from Colossae. He's coming back, and they're handing the letters to the church, and they're gonna read them out to the Colossian church, and they're also holding the letter of Philemon, which is gonna be given to Philemon, and Onesimus and Philemon need to reconcile.
So actually, it's most likely those two letters were taken at the same time, and we see Onesimus come up in the next chapter and Philemon and so on. So after we finish this series next week, we're gonna spend one week in the letter of Philemon just to see how the theology of Colossians that we've been looking at applies to the master slave relationship in Colossae. Alright. So this is what we learn about the home with Christ as Lord. Jesus is Lord of everything, and He transforms the way families relate to one another.
But He also transforms our priorities and the way we spend our time. Next, we're gonna look at prayer with Christ as Lord. And I promise the next two points are gonna be very short. First point, very big. Second two, very short.
Alright. Paul says, continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. Being watchful, Kostenberger, a wonderful New Testament scholar, says, refers to the mental attitude of expectancy and watchfulness. So Paul's saying continue steadfastly in prayer. Turn everything into prayer.
Have an attitude of expectancy as you pray. Expect that the Lord is hearing you and that He will work. He may not answer according to our will. We still pray Thy will be done, but we should expect that the Lord is listening and He wants to use our prayers in His work in this world. We're to be watchful in it.
In the Old Testament, they would talk about these watches of the night. So it may even refer to when you wake up in the middle of the night during a watch of the night, just spend some time praying. Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving, include lots of gratitude, lots of thanks to Jesus as you pray. We're meant to be a prayerful people. Then in verses 3 to 4, while under house arrest in Rome, the apostle Paul asks for prayer for himself that God might open a door.
What he's saying is that God might grant him opportunities to keep declaring the gospel. So he's in house arrest, but he's still saying, ask for another door. Like, I believe God can set me free, and I can continue preaching the gospel, or there's gonna be prison guards he's gonna bring to me that I can share the gospel with them. So Paul asks for us to be praying constantly, but also to be praying for gospel opportunities and open doors for the work of the gospel to advance. He then tells the Colossians about how to use the opportunities God opens up for them to share the gospel.
So we've looked at the home with Christ as Lord, we've looked at the prayer with Christ as Lord, and now we're gonna look at the world with Christ as Lord. So Paul says in verses 5 to 6, walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. So people outside of church, we wanna make the best use of the time with them. Don't just go to the grocery store or the petrol station, just think it's a practical moment to get what you need. Have your eyes open prayerfully to people around you.
Be praying for the people that you see around you quietly, and ask the Lord for opportunities. You know, you never know what God might do. I find when I often ask God for opportunities like that, they come. And Paul says, verse 6, let your speech always be gracious. The Greek word for speech is logos.
It was just translated a couple of verses earlier as the message, the message of the gospel, and I think Paul still is talking about the gospel. Let your message always be gracious, seasoned with salt. That was also an ancient way of saying be winsome, maybe even witty, in some ancient ways, it was used to have salted speech was to be winsome and maybe even witty. But here's my translation of that verse. I think Paul's saying, let your message as Christians with outsiders, when you're making the best use of your time, let your message, that is the gospel, always be gracious and winsome, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.
The other day, we were at a party for one of our kids, and I was speaking to some of the other parents from the school, and they asked what I did, so I said, I'm a pastor of the church and they asked, oh, okay, so, you know, have you always been a Christian? And I was able to share with them my story, but also the gospel within that story. I was able to share with them, oh, I haven't been actually, like it was, I actually used to think that following Jesus was about being a good person, being good enough. Then I actually heard the gospel when I was in high school and realised that Jesus actually died for me so that I could be made good enough before God. I could be righteous and accepted before God.
And I was just a man. I just shared the gospel within my story. That's one way that you can share the gospel with people that you encounter. You can just share your story, but talk about Jesus in your story. Let your message always be gracious and winsome so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.
We should be known as warm, gracious, gentle, and winsome with outsiders around us, not as cold, critical, harsh, and judgemental. You can hold to the truth of God's word and the necessity of the gospel while being as warm and winsome as possible. This doesn't mean people always like it. Some people will still hate you for it. But I think the New Testament wants us to act in such a way that even if they do hate us, they begin to question even their own hate because of our love and our good deeds.
Whether it's in the home or in the world, Christ is Lord of everything. Our faith is not merely private. Our Lord is not just interested in our religious affiliation. Jesus is the cosmic ruler of all reality, and He wants to shape the way you and I treat our family members, the things we value and pray for, and the way that we interact with people outside of church. Our culture views authority with suspicion.
Authority is a negative thing in our culture. We'd rather talk about individual freedom in Australia. But Jesus' lordship is a beautiful authority. It's good for us to submit to, not only because He is the centre of the story, but look at what He did for you and for me. The king of heaven, the ruler of heaven and earth chose not to sit back on His riches and wipe His hands of us.
He chose to enter into our story. Philippians 2, He took on human, He became like a slave, became a human person, and He lived in our story doing what we haven't done, dying to death that we should have died to set us free, to give us what He has, to give us His riches. That's what the head of the church did. That's what the husband of the church did. He laid down His life to serve you and me.
So whether it's in the home or in the world, we submit to Christ in everything. Let's pray. Jesus, we thank You for Your great love and the great example that You've set for us. Jesus, we just ask that You would help us, to live in ways that please You. Help us to submit to You.
Help us to find beauty in the way that You call us to live. Help us to love and serve and respect one another in homes, in the workplace. Lord, please work among us. Let Your wonderful heavenly rule so affect us that it transforms the way that we live in this world. We ask this in Your name, Jesus. Amen.