“Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony.” Col.3:14 NLT 

Footsteps #397. From Colossians 3:18 to 4:1 Paul gets really practical and shows the Colossians what their new humanity might look like in a first-century Roman household, which was a highly authoritarian institution where the male patriarch held the power of life and death over his wife, children, and slaves. Not so in the Christian household, Paul asserts. Here, the risen Jesus is the true Lord of the house. The wife allows her husband to become responsible for her and the husband is subject to Jesus, by loving his wife and placing her well-being above his own. In a home where Jesus is Lord, children are not objects but are called to maturity and respect. Parents are to raise their children with patience and understanding. Christians who are slaves are to honour their human masters, precisely because they are not the real master, but Jesus is. Christians who have slaves are to understand that they are not their property, but rather a fellow member of Jesus’ body, to be honoured and embraced in love. 

Paul is walking a very fine line here. He is reshaping the most basic Roman institution, the Roman household, around Jesus who rules by His self-giving love. So while he doesn’t abolish the household structure outright, the exalted Messiah demands that it be transformed almost beyond the point of recognition for any Roman living in Colossae. You can see this most clearly in the conclusion of the letter (4:2-18). After a request for prayer, Paul applies these instructions about Christian slaves and masters. We discover that Tychicus is the one carrying and reading this letter to the Colossians and he is accompanied by a certain Onesimus, who was a former slave to a Colossian Christian named Philemon. 

We discover from another short letter addressed to Philemon, that Onesimus had escaped from his master. This was a crime worthy of imprisonment, but Paul asks the whole church to greet Onesimus as a faithful and beloved brother (v16). Talk about ending the letter with a cultural punch! 

So in the letter to the Colossians, Paul is inviting us to see that no part of human existence remains untouched by the loving and liberating rule of the risen Jesus. Our suffering, our temptations to compromise, our moral character, the power dynamics in our homes – all of it must be re-examined and transformed. We are invited to live in the present as if the new creation really arrived when Jesus rose from the dead.