of friendship depends on active participation of all members of the community in mutual correction of one another—in love, of course. Are you up for it?
Prayer: Let me instruct others gently and let me receive admonishing thankfully. Amen.
25 – What about Those Family Values?
Colossians 3:18–21 — (18) Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. (19) Husbands, love your wives and never treat them harshly. (20) Children, obey your parents in everything, for this is your acceptable duty in the Lord. (21) Fathers, do not provoke your children, or they may lose heart.
You have a “job description” to follow. It is in your course syllabi and school catalogue. These “position descriptions” govern your place and are used to evaluate you and are always derived from secular (worldly) sources.
Paul’s inclusion of what biblical scholars call “household orders” is instructive since it acknowledges that Christians have the same mutual relationships and obligations everyone else has. Christian freedom doesn’t cancel worldly relationships and obligations. On the contrary, it gives you opportunity to let God transform your secular job description into one serviceable for a servant of Christ, applicable at work, study, and play.
The relationships given the most attention in Paul’s list are the up-to-down ones—husband, father, master. These are the ones that require the most caution because they are the most powerful and therefore most likely to abuse. The lists of household arrangements incorporated into the New Testament (also found in 1 Peter and Ephesians) are taken from pagan and Jewish sources and are given a Christian “spin”; for example, Jesus Christ is to be present in every relationship. Even though Christians now see themselves in new, fictive families, the social and biological family is still a reality for them. Paul wanted you to know that despite the revolutionary character of the new faith, Christians were not primarily here to tear things down.
The practice of Christians loving one another while they find themselves on the bottom end of an unequal relationship is the issue here. Is it possible to live according to Christ at the down end of an up-down relationship as well as at the up end? Paul pushed the envelope in mentioning women first. And even children! They were almost never mentioned in the pagan lists. Paul, however, addresses children as moral agents in their own right. Each person in any relationship deserves an appropriate response from the other; each stands in need of God in Christ.
Prayer: Help me to see Jesus in every relationship and to do each task in Christ. Amen.
26 – Living on the Margin
Colossians 3:22—4:1 — (22) Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything, not only while being watched and in order to please them, but wholeheartedly, fearing the Lord. (23) Whatever your task, put yourselves into it, as done for the Lord and not for your masters, (24) since you know that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward; you serve the Lord Christ. (25) For the wrongdoer will be paid back for whatever wrong has been done, and there is no partiality. (4:1) Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, for you know that you also have a Master in Heaven.
It is easy to get annoyed at Christianity in general and the Bible in particular for not having more of a social conscience and a clearer program of social reform. That annoyance is particularly present when you read this passage about slaves. But the goal of Christians in the New Testament was forgiveness and love, not social change. Paul recognized that regardless of one’s legal status as slave or free, everyone answered to someone in more authority. We are all “slaves,” serving and answering to one or more masters.
The question this passage raises for you is: how do you live in a setting defined by hierarchies and up/down responsibilities. You live “in” but not “by” or “of” the world. Your relationship to Jesus and your existence in a new kingdom may trump but does not eliminate your life in this world.
As a college student you are definitely in the “down” end of most of your defining relationships: subject to college rules and regulations and responsible to your professors to do your school work.
But the body of Christ (the church) is truly a new kind of community. While members may still live in their biological/legal families, your Christian commitment, your transfer to the fictive family of Christians (a newly invented and established family in Christ), and your “re-citizenization” into the kingdom of light combine to provide a powerful framework in which you will be able to meet the challenges of both those relationships in which you have responsibilities of obedience (the “slave” ones) and those in which you are in charge (the “master” ones).
Prayer: May I serve you in all things whether I’m the boss or the grunt worker. Amen.
27 – Alert!
Colossians 4:2 — (2) Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with thanksgiving.
When boarding an airplane do you ever glance into the cockpit and hope that the captain knows about each dial and lever and will be alert to each during the flight? Even those of us who live in less technically demanding environments need to be alert: Are there batteries in the smoke detector? Money in the checking account? What chapters were assigned for the test? Why is there need to be alert as a Christian? Shouldn’t you be able to relax in the knowledge that Christ has redeemed you and is taking care of everything?
There are a number of similarities between the Christians in Colossae in 65 CE and Christians today that makes “keeping alert” important. First, the Colossian Christians were expecting the impending return of Christ and the final moment of existence on earth. I remember Claudio, a dear teacher who took his faith very seriously. He expected Christ to return “on the clouds” (1 Thess 4:17). On clear days, he would move freely around the classroom, but on cloudy ones he hung out near the window, frequently glancing out, just in case Christ should come in on one of those clouds. Today, many Christians expect the imminent return of Christ; others, processing that expectation differently, see the existential arrival of Christ in one’s life to be right now, this very moment. “Now” is always the moment to be alert (and prayerfully thankful). Second, now as then you need to be alert to false teaching. After all, that is what this letter is about (and you are in college where you are constantly exposed to teaching—some of which could be false). Third, now as then, you need to be ready for the opportunity to grow in the faith and to be kind to others. Fourth, you need to be alert to the kinds of danger that put Paul in jail. Granted, in Colossians there does not seem to be the critical peril for Christians spoken of in 1 Peter or the book of Revelation, but Paul wasn’t in jail for failing to pay a parking ticket. There was much in the Christian message that was considered unpatriotic, antisocial, and irreligious. (Do you ever wonder whether Christianity shouldn’t still be illegal?) Fifth, you need to be alert in walking the difficult line between life in Christ and life in the world. There’s a lot going on. No wonder you need to be alert. Prayer can help you calm down and focus.
Prayer: I feel surrounded by threats and opportunities; keep me alert to which is which. Amen.
28 – When Opportunity Knocks
Colossians 4:3–4 — (3) At the same time pray for us as well that God will open to us a door for the word, that we may declare the mystery of Christ, for which I am in prison, (4) so that I may reveal it clearly, as I should.
Opportunity knocks? What an interesting image. It pictures you behind a closed door, waiting. Like sitting in jail with an indeterminate sentence. There is no suggestion that you can do anything to bring about the arrival of the one who will knock. The implication is that you have the choice to be prepared to respond or not. If you are prepared, are you on the same page as Paul—prepared for some specific opportunity, some already-chosen commitment
