This morning we finish our study of Colossians.  We could spend an entire class on each of the two areas we are going to study so it will feel a little like skipping a rock on a pond.  Fortunately, we have covered some of the material before in Ephesians.

Three relationships:  husbands and wives/children/slaves

  1. Paul, as far as we know, was not married. However, he probably had looked around at the marriages he had observed and saw some principles. The Bible does not idealize marriage. There are good marriages and there are not so good marriages and Scripture does not attempt to hide this. Paul probably didn’t derive these principles from his study of Scripture. Rather, he derived them from a marriage he knew. Since these same principles are in Ephesians, I am guessing he looked to the marriage of Priscilla and Aquila for his model as they had followed him to Ephesus. He knew them well and had seen how they treated each other. They had great respect for each other, worked together, were flexible and spiritually mature. Again, I don’t think he is describing an idealized relationship but one he knew well. These principles work.
  2. He also knew that the principles for marriage begin before marriage. They begin in how we manage other relationships. In fact, if we wait until marriage to learn how to have healthy relationships, we will probably fail or at least struggle. As we know, marriage is hard work. What are those principles that we learn (or should learn) early in our lives. It’s in Ephesians 4:21. “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” The word “submit” has a bad connotation for us. It sounds like “give up” or “give in” and carries a sense of passive acquiescence. That’s not the meaning. It means to adapt to another person. It does not mean lose yourself and your own identity but to adapt yourself to them as they adapt themselves to you. Unless we learn to adapt before we get married we are going to have a very hard time in marriage!
  3. How do we do that? Paul asks women to adapt to their husbands and I take that to mean they are to adapt not to his whims but to his calling. For us, that has meant Carol helping to keep me on course and not distracted by everything that comes along. It means helping me stick with something and not lose focus. It means sometimes following me where she does not particularly want to go but she recognizes it is part of my calling. She adapts but she does not lose herself. She is my partner – just as Priscilla was. She is flexible, mature and a genuine partner. The temptation for many women is to remake the man or at least remodel him. That is not the relationship Paul describes.

How do men submit?  They adapt by loving their wives and making a sacrificial commitment to them.  Marriage is permanent and they are to provide protection, love and loyalty.  They honor their wives and do not tear them down.  They are like gardeners who bring out the particular beauty in their wives.  We adapt by being mature in spite of the temptation to stay little boys.  We adapt by accepting responsibility.  Too many of us have the “Peter Pan Syndrome”.  We do not want to grow up.  A speaker for a recent TED conference, Philip Zimbardo, made a talk titled “The Demise of Guys”.  He noted that easy access to the web for young people has resulted in a staggering statistic. Teenage boys now view an average of 50 porno clips per week.  He feels that between gaming – which promotes violence – and porno viewing, the brains of young men are literally altering and making them less capable of appropriate loving relationships with actual females. It also renders them less capable of performing activities that lead to development of leadership of others.  “Guy-bonding” in which adult men are portrayed as adolescent, immature and more interested in bonding activities with others like them than in more serious pursuits, is defining what it means to be an adult male. Girls now outperform guys at all levels of school from elementary to grad school and for the first time have better employment opportunities. Young men are engaged in an extended adolescence that will be devastating to culture and society.  Nearly 50% of men between 25 and 29 have never been married, the highest in history. This lack of willingness to grow up and be responsible is due primarily to stimulation from media; the glorification in film of slacker anti-conformists and the stimulation of video games and pornography. These boys see themselves as actors in a movie or characters in a game, unwilling to accept the monotony and boredom of being “the man.”  This is further promoting the rise of women as a lack of respect for males grows resulting in an increase in single mothers and lesbianism. How does a young man like this ever hope to love a real wife and commit to her?

  1. I only want to mention a couple of things about Paul’s admonition to fathers to not goad their children. How do we do this? There are two ways to kill a child’s spirit in my experience. One, we use sarcasm. Sarcasm is like a hollow point bullet. It does not make much of a mark when it enters a body but the explosive power once inside is enormous. It doesn’t simply pass through cleanly. It expands and mushrooms. Sarcasm does that. Two, we use comparison – either to an impossible standard or to a sibling or friend. This is what we mean by “A-“ effect. The child is always less than someone or something else in our eyes – no matter how well they do. We may not criticize but they know they have never done enough. Scripture says we should “train up a child in the way they should go” and many believe that means “train” them in the way they are “bent” as you would a sapling. You find out how God has created them and you bring out the best in them without trying to conform them to a standard that is impossible for them to meet.
  2. Finally, we come to the relationship between slaves and masters. Paul does not address social justice issues here. That is not his intent. He is addressing issues of relationship and responsibility. While I am deeply encouraged by the number of committed and dedicated young people who are engaged in social justice issues all over the world, there is a danger in the church defining its primary work as fixing social inequities and the injustices of the world. Scripture addresses mutual responsibility far more than rights. It is thin ice when we say freedom is a biblical doctrine or the right to freedom is in Scripture. It is not. Yes, there are rights of property but they are limited. Clearly, the injunction against stealing the property of another person implies that person has ownership of that property. But, they do not have a right to it in the way we understand our having certain inalienable rights. Scripture is far more concerned that we take care of people in such a way that a good man is not forced to steal. It is about mutual responsibility. Natural rights the way we consider them today as normal and as part of our endowment from God is a 13th century concept and the result of a dispute between a Franciscan monk and the Pope. I’ve read the arguments three times and still do not understand the complexity of their reasoning. Basically, the Franciscans said they wanted to give up their rights to property and live like Christ and the early Christians. The Pope, perhaps a little defensive about the living standard of the Church, denied them the right to give up their rights – and they contested it and won. All that is to say, the question of natural rights for individuals was not in Paul’s mind. This is not his approach to the argument. He starts at the other end – relationships and responsibility to one another. It’s helpful to know that Onesimus who was with him in prison was one of the two people charged with delivering the letter to the Colossians because he was from there and Paul was sending him back. In fact, Onesimus carried a second letter with him – the letter to his master, Philemon. Does Paul argue with Philemon that slavery is wrong and he should free Onesimus? No. Here is what he says. “But I did not want to do anything without your consent, so that any favor you do will be spontaneous and not forced. Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back for good – no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother.” Paul was not demanding freedom but encouraging Philemon to see Onesimus as a brother and not a slave. If this is the same Onesimus who later became the Bishop of Ephesus then it would seem Philemon did just that. He gave him his freedom at Paul’s urging without Paul demanding it. Again, the goal is not rights but a new relationship. Appiah Kwame wrote a book titled “The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen” and makes the case that peer pressure and honor are more important agents of change in certain areas than laws. In fact, in the three moral revolutions he discusses – elimination of dueling in England, the slave trade in England and foot binding in China – he makes the case that peer pressure was far more effective in eradicating all three than making laws against them. In each case, the laws prohibiting them were either in place and ignored or came after the practice had ceased. Perhaps this is what Paul understood because he understood the negative power of laws and forced obedience. Influence is more effective in some areas of our life than legal solutions.

Finally, I want to look at Paul’s final words to the Colossians. Many times we tend to skip these thinking they are simply a list of people who give their greetings almost as an afterthought. I believe this section is as important as anything else in the book because it illustrates how the gospel spread. Why did Paul say “they will tell you everything that is happening here”? Normally, we think of prison as a place where nothing is happening. It is routine and boring. Endless days of waiting and counting. Not so with Paul. Something was happening. What?

In his book “Where Good Ideas Come From” Steven Johnson writes about many important principles at work in the creation and spread of good ideas. One is proximity.  Creative people meet and decide to work with other creative people. That is why places like Silicon Valley generate so many good ideas. There is such a large concentration of creators bumping into each other. Proximity is illustrated by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. They both attended Lakeside Academy in Seattle at the same time and found they loved computers. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were introduced to each other by a friend because they lived in the same community and had a common interest. Another principle is consistent interaction. “The most productive tool for generating good ideas remains a circle of humans at a table, talking shop.” An independent creator working by himself is not the way it gets done. “The idea of a lone genius working in isolation is mostly a myth. Breakthroughs are social events.” People have to be in the same place and have time to talk together without interruption. What better description of Paul’s time in prison. In fact, the images of Paul sitting by himself writing the gospels in prison are probably not the way it happened. Paul was part of a group – perhaps one of the most extraordinary groups in history – and we should not pass them by quickly.

Who was at the table with Paul? First, Tychicus, one of the many couriers Paul used to create his own postal system for information exchange. Next was Mark, the young man whose life was changed by his exposure to Barnabas, Paul and Peter and the author of the Gospel of Mark. Luke, the historian, doctor and writer of the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. Timothy, Paul’s hand selected protégé.  Onesimus, the runaway slave of Philemon. It was like an idea lab more than a prison. What must those discussions have been like while they were together? These were unusual men and not simply prison visitors. The world around Paul was not static.  There were people coming and going all the time. Steve Johnson would easily predict that good ideas were likely to come from such a group…and they did.  The ideas they were working on together would change the world as well as their individual lives. In some ways, the basic creative innovations of the Church took place in this cell. It was here that the structure, theology and leadership were worked out. People were called in and sent out and far from working out the content of the letters he wrote all on his own Paul had a group of men who sharpened his thinking and helped him shape his final thoughts.

In “The Tipping Point” Malcolm Gladwell writes about “The Law of the Few”. “The success of any social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts.” These people break into three types:

Connectors are the people who link us up with the world…people with a special gift for bringing the world together. They are a handful of people with a truly extraordinary knack for making friends and acquaintances. He characterizes these individuals as having social networks of over one hundred people.

Mavens are information specialists or people we rely upon to connect us with new information. They accumulate knowledge and know how to share it with others. Mavens start word of mouth epidemics due to their knowledge, social skills, and ability to communicate. Mavens are information brokers, sharing and trading what they know.

Salesmen are persuaders, charismatic people with powerful negotiation skills. They tend to have an indefinable trait that goes beyond what they say, which makes others want to agree with them.

This describes exactly the men in the prison with Paul. Mark, the young man with relationships among the Christian elite in Jerusalem through his family as well as Barnabas (another connector) and Peter. A natural connector. Luke, the collector of information and historian of the earliest church was the maven. Paul, the salesman whose gifts at persuasion and influence without coercion were off the chart. What does this mean? It means all the elements for the spread of the gospel, the epidemic spread of an idea were all in that room – and the world was changed as a result. It was not a prison. It was a launching pad for a gospel that, as Paul said at the beginning of Colossians, “all over the world this gospel is producing fruit and growing.” It had a life of its own. It had gone viral. It reached the tipping point. So, as the book ends we have more than a list of people. We are given a glimpse into the heart of how the Gospel was shaped and spread in those earliest years.