Colossians chapter 3, just this one verse this morning, verse 18, Colossians 3, 18. Wives, submit to your husbands as is fitting in the LORD. Wives, submit to your husbands as is fitting in the LORD. We're beginning a new section in the letter that Paul wrote to the church at Colossae, and the Apostle's instructions here, as in the rest of this chapter, are for walking worthy of the Lord, and here specifically, walking worthy of the Lord in the family institution. Paul does not give us man-made ideas, but rather he is giving us the revealed will of Christ through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Back when Tychicus read this letter to the church that was gathered in the home of Philemon, the character of a godly family versus an ungodly family would have been as stark a picture then as it is today. To be believers profoundly alters family relationships, because the Lord Jesus is the central concern in every relationship of life. And in this verse about wives, the focus is in the Lord. All things, as Paul will say in this chapter, all things are to be done in the name of the Lord Jesus, that's verse 17, and throughout these regulations for living, the Lord is the one that matters, it is the Lord Christ whom you serve. One girl was asked by her peers at school, and I'm given to understand that sometimes this happens in girl talk, they might make lists of what they would like their man to be. And so she was asked, what kind of man would you like to marry when you grow up? And perhaps her friends were expecting her to name a career like, I want to marry a fireman, or to say, I want to marry a man who's rich. or to talk about his looks. I want a tall man, dark and handsome. This girl's answer was, I would like to marry a man I can submit to in the Lord. Do you think that's a righteous view? Not everyone has seen it that way. Laura Ingalls Wilder is famous for her record of growing up in the American West. And when she became a young lady, Almanzo proposed marriage to her, and as they talked about their plans for marriage, Laura said, Almanzo, I must ask you something. Do you want me to promise to obey you? He answered, of course not. I know it's in the wedding ceremony, but it's only something women say. I never knew one that did it, nor any decent man that wanted her to. Well, I'm not going to say that I will obey you, said Laura. I cannot make a promise that I will not keep. And even if I tried, I do not think that I could obey someone against my better judgment. To their relief, they found a Reverend Brown, who not only never used the word obey in his ceremonies, but he could go on for hours quoting the Bible against St. Paul on the subject of obedience of wives to their husbands. That's history. But we have questions. Is submission something that is said and not done? Does God really mean this? Does a decent man want his wife submissive? And is this calling for wives to be doormats? Should a wife ever obey her husband against her better judgment? And of course, will wives even be happier if they obey? These are questions we have. will study this statute in God's Word to see that in the Lord the subjection of wives to their husbands is proper. The first and inescapable truth about the Christian family is that subjection is proper. Look at the part of verse 18 that says, fitting, wives submit to your husbands as is fitting In the Lord, to be fitting means that it is proper, that it belongs essentially to the natural structure of the marriage relationship as God made it and intended it. To be proper implies things like duty and responsibility, but it's so much more than that. It shows what naturally turns to the benefit of the creatures called mankind in the God-ordained relationship called marriage. For all people, not just wives, subjection before God is fitting to the human species. And when I say species, I'm not saying or implying that man is an animal. I am pointing out our creatureliness and the givenness with which we receive good things from God. We are born human, not animal, and that is a wonderful gift to be made in God's image and likeness. A structure of God-ordained authority is given to our species, and it's for our flourishing. Happiness is found where things proper to humanity have their course. In fact, you can see the importance of human subjection to rightful authority if you look at this outline on this half sheet of slightly yellowish paper that I gave you. The supreme example of subjection is God the son to his father. The Lord Jesus was subject to his earthly parents, Joseph and Mary. Believers are subject to God in that the church is subject to Christ. Israel was subject to the righteousness of God. The mind must be subject to God's law. And believers must be subject to one another, including wives to husbands and servants to masters. And believers must be subject to civil government. skimmed this outline. The subjection of our Lord Jesus to His Heavenly Father and to His earthly parents shows you how fitting subjection is to humanity. It's so fitting that it's necessary. Christ could not have been a good man, nor could He have performed a God-pleasing work to save us if He had not been subject to authority. And in all Paul's instructions to believers, he always addresses commandments both to the person who is in subjection and to the person in authority. And his first address is always to those who are subject. For example, servants are addressed first, then masters. So it's not that women are being, I say, wives. It's not that wives are being singled out. It's that subjection is so critical to God's ordering of things that even Christ, who was God, submitted Himself to His Father. The subjection that God orders in our relationships is to be voluntary. There's not a sense of being forced, but there is a sense of a willingness to do it. And the first reason for that willingness is that God said it. The second reason is agreement with God, that authority is part of His world that He created. You can understand how unbelievers who don't know God, who might be atheists, maybe they believe in evolution or something like that, don't recognize God's ordering. But to be a believer means to believe all the word of God, including how God made the world, And the inescapable conclusion is that God made the world to function under rightful exercise of authority. Another way of saying this is that God is orderly. He made an orderly world for our good. To be a believer is a voluntary act of subordination. Just think about that word order with me for a moment. In God's authority structure there's order, yes. Sometimes there is subordination and sometimes supra-ordination. There's the above and the below. The church is subordinate to Christ. Christ is supra-ordinate over the church. Not only the church, but Christ is supra-ordinate above all government, both civil, church government, above all human society, above angels, above animals, above all material things that He Himself made. Salvation is subordination to Christ. It's coming under His rule. Psalm 18, People I had not known served Me. Foreigners came trembling out of their fortresses. As the Mediatorial King, Christ exercises kingship by subduing us to Himself and ruling us. The Gospel Good News that Christ died for sinners, a sacrifice to save them from the wrath of God is a command. Repent, which means at its core, come back under the authority of God, repent and believe the gospel. That's Mark 1 15. Believers fit somewhere in the order of the universe and willingly subordinate themselves to Christ. Now I have a little bit more of this to unpack because I think it's really important to understanding what this means for us. Redemption is by restoring order. Here are a couple imperfect examples. If you have to drink out of a creek or a pond and you dip up some water in a glass and you notice that it's full of sand, you can get relatively clean water if you let the cup sit and the sediment settle agitation stirred up the sand gravity restores order that's a very rude example but the point I'm trying to make is that order is restored after agitation here's another one some cities in Ukraine are uninhabitable piles of rubble to make them pleasant for people to live in again order needs to be restored they need to be rebuilt now humanity And all human institutions need to be rebuilt. The fall into sin has agitated everything. There's no human heart. There's no human society where redemption is not needed. Sometimes people have rose-colored glasses. That is to say, glasses that make everything look better than they really are, have rose-colored glasses when they think of the Church. But the Church is a society of sinners. Saved sinners, yes, but sinners who have the potential to bring disorder and agitation and corruption and misery into the Church. But for the rule of Christ the King, every congregation would dissolve and ruin. Likewise, the family. Sometimes people believe this. Marriage and kids will solve their problems. Sometimes they have an idealized view that being married to a man or woman is going to restore happiness or an unrealistic view of how much happiness children will bring. Beloved, our sin is not skin deep. We are born into disorder and ever after even after we are saved, the sin in our hearts is capable of working great misery for others. And so we need the constant work of God in us, restoring order, or we will sinfully ruin everything. So one way to think about sanctification is that it is God's work of restoring order in me, a sin disordered sinner. The Holy Spirit is subordinating me to the rule of God. Not one sinner can win the war against the world, the flesh or the devil without the rightful exercise of authority in his or her life. You can't be saved without that rightful exercise. You can't be joyful without it. You'll never see heaven without it. For heaven is orderly, it's the place where God's will is always done by every creature willingly in its proper place. Those that don't know the Lord may assume that people are innocent and not disordered. They may assume that we can make progress on our own terms without submission to Christ. In other words, one of the things that marks out true believers from the unsaved is this return to God's authority. And all that is to say that salvation brings order from chaos. It implies, and hear me carefully now, that insubordination is sin. Insubordination is an abomination to God. So that is the first matter that Paul asserts here, that subjection is proper in all of life and specifically in marriage. Subjection is proper in the Lord. Subjection is proper in the Lord. And the emphasis I'm pointing out to you here is the very last words of this statute, in the Lord. In the Lord means three things. It means first, subordination according to the Word of God. A wife is not required to disobey God in order to obey her husband. Just think for a moment about the complicity of the wife and children when Achan had stolen gold, silver, and a Chaldean robe from Jericho and had hidden them under his tent. His wife knew and consented and the whole family suffered the consequences. A wife is within her rights to openly, gently, and clearly reprove her husband for his sinful breaches of God's law. And just in case he gets rough, and incorrigible with her if she speaks to him, then she has other gentler means at her disposal to persuade him to obedience. She can, for example, put a book in his hand by an author that he respects. That might be one way. She may and must continue, whatever she chooses, to have a humble, winning way of living, which is often the best reproof to sin when a husband won't hear reason. So she has options. And what if a husband has broken the law of the land? A wife's subordination in the Lord does not mean that she goes along with it. That means she must make efforts to get him to right his wrongs. I suppose that means to get him to stop his crimes in order to spare other people from his malignance, and then also to ensure justice. In our country, overall, justice is still being done. And a wife who knows that her husband embezzles money who can't get him to make restitution may call the FBI. A wife who knows her husband is a child abuser or a predator can and must turn him into the authorities if he won't turn himself in. Now, someone might say, well, family first. Her loyalty is to family. And if she accuses him, they're going to enter a time of financial difficulty. They're going to be disgraced. They might end up with a column written about them in the paper. And so they might conclude, well, it's better to cover it up. But isn't the honor of God more important than the life of one offender? So are the lives of many neighbors. If a husband sins, robs or wrongs many people or puts many children in danger, then better for one person to suffer the consequences than for many to suffer from his crimes. This is true even if the offender is family. In the Lord means that the security of the nation, the welfare of our neighbors, and the good of the children are the wife's duty to preserve even against the sins of the husband. Under the civil laws given to Israel, parents were to turn in their own son who would not obey them, they were to turn him in to the authorities. In the ordering of God's world, God's honor and love of neighbors are more important than husband loyalty. Submission accords with God's word. So secondly, in the Lord means done in order to please the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, ask yourselves, wives and even men, Why do you do anything? Is it done to please the Lord Jesus Christ? The Lord Jesus is everything to the redeemed sinner. When we're saved, our ultimate focus is not on people anymore. Difficult people, backward people, sinful people, they're not our focus. We start treating them better than they deserve, not for any good in them, but because of the good that is in the Lord, our Lord. I want to show you The extent to which in all the relationships of life the Lord Jesus is the new focal point. And I'm going to show you right here in Colossians. Verse 17 says, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus. Verse 18 says, wives be subject in the Lord. Verse 20 says, children obey your parents because it pleases the Lord. Verse 22 says, bond servants are to obey earthly masters fearing the Lord. Everyone who works should work as unto the Lord. Verse 23. Verse 24, the reward we expect is from the Lord. You serve the Lord Christ. Masters you have, a master in heaven. Chapter 4, verse 1. So, believing wives, in the proper place and measure, your husband matters. But in the ultimate sense, the Lord Jesus matters and matters more. If you want to Destroy your husband, your children, and yourself. Make your husband the one who matters most. If you adore him, if you live ultimately for him, if you've set your hopes upon him, ruin will follow. But counterintuitively, at least counterintuitive to culture, Make Christ the Lord your first concern, and you will love your husband and help him. You will heal rifts. You will bless your children and bring blessing on yourself. Submission means please the Lord Jesus. Thirdly, in the Lord means counter-culturally. I did just use the word counter-intuitively, and maybe I even meant it in a way that's like counter-culturally, but here I just wanna hit on counter-cultural for a moment. Somewhere in the world, someone might be saying, yeah, but isn't this a culturally conditioned Bible verse? Isn't this so typically Bible because it doesn't address inequalities in our world? Isn't Paul just adapting Christianity to the cultural patriarchalism of his day? Patriarchy means something like government by men or fathers. And people might therefore reason, well, isn't Christianity adaptable to our day? Women are equal, so why can't we have husbands subordinate to wives, or have mutual submission? Surely this is a bit of the Bible that has to accommodate the times we live in. I think you know that you can find plenty of churches and preachers who will say just that. but God the Holy Spirit breathed out this word in this letter to the Colossians and he has recharacterized the whole matter. It's not a cultural adaptation. We don't live as Christians for convenience or for tradition or to be political activists, none of those things. Our lives are in Christ. What we do, we do for the sake of Christ our Lord. It's his will for us. Submission is in the Lord. And naturally, that's going to make Christian family and the Christian marriage really counter-cultural. Women will gather sometimes to gripe about their husbands. Others study to try to find ways to throw off all authority. But Christian wives will be committed to the truth that their Lord, who died to redeem them, has come to repair the harm that sin has done. Sin has done irreparable harm to marriage, irreparable without the Lord Jesus, that is. Christ has come to reclaim marriage and family for blessing. But he will only do it if believing wives recognize and submit themselves to his authority. And their submission to the Lord in heaven is going to be proved genuine by outward and noticeable submission to their husbands who are on earth, how different their marriages will look." So what I have been saying is that subjection is proper in the Lord and focusing there on what it means that it's in the Lord. Now all this leads us more closely to the how and why of subjection within marriage. It leads us particularly to the duties of wives. So thirdly, subjection of wives to their husbands is proper in the Lord. Subjection of wives to their husbands is proper in the Lord. Verse 18, wives, submit to your husbands. It might just be helpful at the outset to note that God's command to be subject does not arise from the inferiority of the woman. Every person has to be subject to authority, husbands included. God has taught us that in Christ, women are equal to men, Galatians 3.28, and yet the institution of marriage and family requires this subjection. The fifth commandment that says, honor your father and mother, summarizes the respect that God requires to every right authority. The commandment has a promise. that it may go well with you, and that you may enjoy long life in the earth." In other words, God's command is for human flourishing. To foster human flourishing, God made marriage a covenant. It's not a contract. It's not adherence to a rule sheet. It's not a spelled out division of ultimatums and expectations. It's a covenant, an unreserved pledge of oneself to another person to be partners and mates for life. God is witness to covenants. Malachi 2.14, the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth. The adulteress is a woman who forsakes the companion of her youth, who forgets the covenant of her God. That's Proverbs. Paul is saying that a wife's Faithfulness to God's covenant will be reflected in unreserved faithfulness in the marriage covenant to her husband, including submission in the Lord. So does submission mean obedience to that husband? I'm going to state the standard and then deal with the irregularities that sin causes. In Ephesians 5, in a parallel passage, Paul there commands wives to be subject to their own husbands and he says, as the Church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. The Church is not to submit sometimes, but always. Not in some things, but everything. Submission cannot just be said and then not done. Submission is part of the message of the Gospel. Here is what sinful insubordination looks like. I'm indebted to a book by a woman named Martha Peace for these biblical insights. Insubordination could come in one or more of these forms. A wife who purposefully does things that annoy or vex her husband. That means she irritates him. She causes confusion or she debates with him incessantly to wear him down. Or a wife who does not discipline the children as she should, even if her husband asks her to, for example, while he's at work. Another insubordinated act is being more loyal to others, like extended family or co-workers or a Facebook following, than to her husband. Wives, do you do those things? Do you pout and give your husband the silent treatment when you don't get your way? If these ring true for you, or if you can think of some other kind of insubordination that you have perfected, the righteous thing to do in the Lord is to humble yourself before God the Father and repent of these sins. And I think that naturally means repenting to your husband also. You may have friends who think insubordination is no big deal, but in reality, it is unchristlike behavior that maligns the cause of him who rides forth for the cause of truth, meekness, and righteousness. Women, if you're insubordinate, you malign Christ by your refusal to be neither meek nor righteous. And if you're a big spender, who frequently spend beyond your household budget, or a big talker who corrects your husband or talks over him or tries to speak for him, or if you're manipulative in complaining, anger, intimidation, or threatening to leave, or if you make important decisions without consulting him or defy his wishes, second-guess his decisions, and take matters into your own hands, you are injuring the cause of Christ. You have been putting an obstruction before Christ's upright cause. And if you're asking the question, why? Why should I submit to this man? The answer is that your submission is ultimately to the Lord Jesus Christ, a perfect man. But now we have a few irregularities that arise because of sin. In the time remaining, I want to talk about those and some of the questions that we have. whether this verse is teaching that wives have to be passive doormats to be stepped on and abused by tyrant husbands. We have to admit that there are corrupt ways of submitting, even as there are corrupt ways of ruling, and it has to be stated that the Word of God is not commanding a corruption. A wife is not a child and not a slave. who has no idea what the master is doing. She's not to be dictated to by a husband who asserts, I said so, that's why. If a husband, and I think I'm calling up an extreme case here, if a husband only allows her to go to the bathroom with his permission, or if he only lets her take bites of food on his command, or makes her stand or sit on command, this is abusive. Does the Bible teach that a woman is more spiritual if she takes a beating, endures threats, endures her husband's drunken, drug-filled rampages and verbal humiliations? Is she more spiritual? Is she a martyr by suffering more? The answer is actually right here in Colossians chapter 2, in which Paul condemns asceticism, which is religion through strict self-denial. And he calls it self-made religion. And if a wife supports her husband in being abusive to her, then her submission is also perverted. The Bible commends suffering for doing good, not suffering for a fake religion. Another question we have is, should a wife ever obey her husband against her better judgment? That was Laura's issue. The Biblical answer is that she is to submit unless her husband asks her to sin. I touched on this when I talked about what to do if your husband's breaking the law, but there are sins that the state cares nothing about. A husband may try to soothe his own guilty conscience by drawing his wife into sin, maybe something like theft or sexual sin, but I think you know that the rule applies. Christ has ultimate authority. Therefore, if a husband commands sin, you wives obey God rather than men. Now you may have already thought of this, does a believing wife have to be subject to an unbelieving husband? The answer is the same, yes, except for sin. 1 Peter 3, wives be submissive to your own husbands, so that if any are disobedient to the word, notice that being unsaved is the equivalent of being disobedient to the word. they may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives, as they observe your chaste and respectful behavior." That says, respectful to them, the sinful, unbelieving husband. And what if a husband forbids his wife from worshiping on the Sabbath day? Or what if an unbelieving husband demands that the wife not pray or teach the children God's ways in the home and the like? What if he is too lazy and distracted to give God the attention that God deserves? Well, basically, since this is God's law, and it's the ultimate law, she must obey God while giving as little offense to her husband as possible. I think one of the ways that might work out is while the husband's at work, a believing wife might teach the children the Word of God. This feels like such a simple command. It's only a few words, isn't it? It's a single sentence, yet it raises countless questions. I believe there's one last issue to address. Women desire security. I don't say that's the only thing they desire, but they do desire security, and a man who gets angry, who threatens to divorce or who commits their family wealth to wild ventures that threaten the future, that man deprives his wife of security. So does a man who publicly mars their reputation. Those are frightening times in a woman's life. And those insecurities may tempt a woman to mistrust God and to fall sinfully into anxiety and fear and frustration. Wives, God calls you to something higher and better, even faith in Him. He calls you to trust the Lord Jesus for grace to help you at the time you feel frightened. He does not call you to preemptively and insubordinately take matters into your own hands. He calls you to trust Him for grace to help you when things go wrong. Do you remember what God said to his own apostle? He said, my grace is sufficient for you. Do you believe that? Do you believe that God's grace will be sufficient when the person you're married to makes trouble? Trust that God will help you, wives, even in case your husband fails you. And can I encourage you with this? God has given you wives and all of us the example of holy women who hoped in God. See the difference? Worry about self leads to insubordination. Hope in God leads to loving submission. In fact, you daughters of Sarah and daughters of God, you're her children if you do not fear anything frightening. Holy women who hoped in God, submitted to their own husbands as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord. Therefore, wives, submit to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord. Let's pray.