Instructions for a Christian Household
How do I have a better marriage? How can I love my spouse more? How do I become a better parent? These are the Instructions for Christian Households.
Many families are struggling today. Our culture has undermined and undervalued the idea of a traditional family. As a result, they're struggling to find their way in our world and their identity as a family. In the face of these adversities, how will we be a family? God has given us a blueprint for how families are to live together.
Part of living with a heart for God means learning to treat our families with love and respect. This is how most of us learn about God's principles and discover our inner selves. Families are God's gift, and we should thank Him for this.
Every family has some rules or guidelines that they live by, whether written or unwritten. To give you some examples, in the Carter house, we never give up. We say I'm sorry. We say please and thank you. We get hugs. We do forgiveness in our house, and oh boy, do we make mistakes in our home. It starts right at the top with my bride and me. We give second chances at our house, too. We're a family who doesn't just believe in grace but shows grace because we all need it. We say I love you and, more importantly, show I love you. Sometimes, saying I love you can come out like a routine, obligatory and perfunctory.
Regardless of our role, whether a husband, a wife, a child, or a parent, we are imperfect, broken people. There's no such thing as a perfect child, parent, husband, or wife. To help our families pursue holiness, Colossians 3:18-21 lays out rules for Christian households.
Instructions for Christian Households
“Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as is fitting in 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 embitter your children, or they will become discouraged.” Colossians 3:18-21
Let’s break down the different parts of those verses.
1) Wives
"Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord."
I like that word: fitting. What does that mean? To understand, you have to look at Ephesians 5, the parallel passage for Colossians 3. Paul says to submit to one another in reverence for God. Wives, submit to your husband out of reverence for Christ.
And you say, well, what does reverence mean? When you offer your life to your husband, you do it as unto God, with Him in your mind and heart. With His example of submission in mind, remember that there's never been a more submissive person than Jesus Christ. The Bible says in Philippians 2:6-8, "that though He was equal with God, He made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant."
The Greek word for submitting is hupotassō, meaning to come under; in this context, it relates to marriage. This isn't a popular line of thought in modern culture because everyone wants to be on top.
This is not an equality issue. Men should view their wives as equals and nothing less. Every person is equal and valuable in Christ. Nor is it a forced submission issue. That is not biblical submission.
Instead, we're talking about a voluntary, loving submission based on one's recognition of God's design. If we learn to do these things, then our house will be a miniature Kingdom of God on the earth—not a perfect kingdom, but a place where God shows up regularly to minister to a family and meet their needs.
2) Husbands
“Husbands, love your wives…”
That's a command, not a suggestion. The verb form for that is agape, which is the word for sacrificial and unconditional love. It means to love your wives sacrificially and unconditionally, just like Christ demonstrated.
Agape describes a tender love that desires God's best for your wife. This is far more than a romantic love. This love wants God to fill the cracks, voids, and gaps in my wife's life, and because of her relationship with God, she is fully alive in you.
We are not God; we're just a servant. As a husband, you want your wife to thrive in her experience of God's love. Part of that journey is treating her respectfully, kindly, and lovingly. As a husband, when you're not walking with God, you hinder her spiritual walk.
"…love your wives, but do not be harsh with them."
I love this phrase. The word 'harsh' means embarrassing your spouse by frustrating them with impatience, irritation, and unreasonable demands. God is commanding husbands not to allow harshness to be a pattern in their lives.
Yes, we all get our feelings hurt occasionally. We lash out and treat each other with a sharp tongue. Not to excuse this behavior, but we're human. However, when we behave this way, we're out of bounds and out of God's Will. So, scripture says that if you slip into that pattern, move out immediately and ask for forgiveness. Otherwise, harshness will submit a duty for your wife rather than a delight.
To delight in your wife is more important than a fancy job with a big paycheck. More important than how high you climb the corporate ladder. Love is at the heart of true fruitfulness and Godly success.
3) Children
"Children obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord."
Considering we are all the children of God, how are we to approach God? First, we should constantly look up and listen for God to speak to us.
With this in mind, how do you think our children learn to hear the voice of God? God put them in our home, and He made them their parents. They are to listen to God by learning to listen to you as a parent. As a parent, that's an enormous pressure. As we've addressed, we're all humans with flaws. You will not always be correct, but God still put you in that place and will care for you when you're not right.
For some, your parents may not have done it right, but God still protects you. Even if it hurts, God will deal with them. But if you don't have the heart to obey God, then He will deal with you.
“Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged.”
Paul uses the word discouraged to mean that without courage or spirit, one becomes spiritless.
Some children have been treated so poorly. Their parents, who failed to understand their role, did not show the love of Christ. These kids go through life's motions but have lost their spirit. They have lost their heart.
Children are excellent recorders of what you say, but they are terrible interpreters. Think about that. They record everything that happens in their conscious and unconscious mind. But they are awful interpreters.
When they're not appropriately loved, most kids immediately begin to think it's about them. They think if they fall short, they're not good enough. They'll never be good enough to be loved; many kids grow into adulthood like that. It sets the stage for this to be manifested through generations of repetition.
Parents, there are three ways to relate to your kids. Think about which way you want to relate.
Yawning: What does yawning look like as a parent? Disinterested and unengaged. It means that you ignore the presence of your kids and their needs. Unfortunately, some kids grow up in households where they are treated as invisible.
Yelling: A forced perspective. This manifests as constantly being on your kid's case. Nothing is ever good enough, and you're trying to bring them into conformity. You say: "Well, they're just strong-willed kids." Yelling won't get them to where you want them to be.
Yearning: Love your kids wholeheartedly, even when they don't conform. Your heart burns and desires a relationship with them, not just because you want them to conform to the right things. Instead, you want them to experience God's love. When they experience that, they experience things like selflessness, obedience, thanksgiving, and cooperation.
A Household Built on God’s Heart
When God fills up our heart and transforms it, the entire family will be the recipient of that good gift. Therefore, living with a heart for God involves loving our families from our hearts and with our hearts. God desires his love to be the center of every Christian home.
What a vow. What a commitment we're making when we have families. That is not a commitment possible without God's love in our lives.
We don't have the desire, motivation, or power to love others when we don't know who we are. To love like this, according to the Instructions for Christian Households, we must learn to take off our old grave clothes if we learn to love as God loves us. We must take those grave clothes right off the old habits, behaviors, patterns, and practices of sin that are destructive to self and family.
Our positions are not important if our dispositions are on Christ. What God is reading is not the labels that we wear. He's looking at our hearts.
And when we take those old clothes off, there should be an overwhelming desire within us to put on the grace clothes. Have you put on your grace clothes? Those practices will build up the family and own lives when we're willing to put these things on.
"Therefore is God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved. Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Bear with each other. And forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you." Colossians 3:12-14
I could stop right there: "Forgive as God forgave you." Are you tired of forgiving others? Do you think God is tired of forgiving us? I don't believe He does.
How many of you have grave clothes that you need to take off after reading that list? How many of you are excited about your new wardrobe? Grace clothes don’t cost anything. Jesus already died for them. All we have to do is live into them.
If God did more than forgive you, He changed your heart. He said that we're a new creation in Christ. The old things have passed away, and all items are becoming new.
Are you a blessing to live with? For those of you who live with somebody? Do you smell like grace? Do you give grace? Do you show the love of Christ? Or does your misery make other people miserable?
Dr. John Gottman, a marriage expert, says marriage contempt is the most corrosive behavior. Contempt, what is that? It's an attitude of disrespect and disregard. It shows no value or consideration for your partner as special or worthy of being loved as a gift from God.
Contemptive attitudes manifest themselves through negative patterns of communication. In many marriages, the water of love is not flowing because one or both partners have decided to cut one another off. Their hearts are so frozen towards one another that no living water is flowing anymore.
Families must learn to kick contempt to the curb, not each other. Contempt is not only in marriages but in relationships between parents and children. Some parents despise their children and vice versa. We've forgotten the worth of one another, and we've got old grave clothes to take off and new grace clothes to put on.
Three tips to plan a healthy future for your marriage:
1) The future of our marriage depends on how we look at our spouse.
Gary Thomas reminds Christians that God is your spiritual father-in-law if you're married. He writes: "When I realized that I was married to God's daughter, everything changed in how I viewed marriage. And ladies, you're married to one of God's sons. It is no longer about just me and someone else. It is about a relationship with a passionately interested third partner, God."
Most of us fail to grasp how much God loves the person we're married to. God is fully aware of our limitations. He's also aware of your spouse's limitations. And by looking at our spouse in God's eyes, we invite God into our marriage.
2) The future of our marriages depends on how we look at ourselves.
We must recognize not only our spouse's weaknesses and limitations but also our weaknesses. In The Meaning of Marriage, Tim Keller suggests that marriage introduces us to ourselves. You realize you're not as noble and easy to live with as you thought when you were alone.
David Brooks says, “You identify your selfishness as the fundamental problem in a good marriage. You treat it more seriously than your spouse's selfishness, and the gift of marriage allows you to create a more selfless love.” That's what marriage is, isn't it?
3) The future of our marriages depends on how we speak to each other.
We need to speak and show the gospel to our spouses. That means reminding our spouse and others of God's total and complete acceptance and affirmation.
Many people are their own worst enemy every single day. They're so hard on themselves that they essentially become enemies of their happiness and wholeness. They struggle to embrace grace, and no one criticizes them more than they do. They don't need somebody else to point out their deficiencies. We're called to counterbalance all the guilt-ridden stuff in people's lives. People need to be reminded of God's undeserved love repeatedly.
There are no vows that matter more than our vows to family. Living with a heart for God is about our daily commitments to our family, how we regard them, how we consider them, and how we treat them, even when they're a thorn in our side. Because we're helping one another grow up in the image of Christ.