Category: Thoughts

At Home with a Life of Love

Continuing our Colossians chapter 3 theme of a life of love, we come now to what love looks like in family relationships.  “Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.  Husbands, love your wives, and do not be embittered against them.  Children, be obedient to your parents in all things, for this is well-pleasing to the Lord.  Fathers, do not exasperated your children, that they may not lose heart” (Col 3:18-21).

These instructions are not a random list of one-off ideas assigned to four groups of people.  They are designed to work together, to work in unison to provide balance in a healthy family.  For example, a focus on “wives be subject to…” without the balance of “husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church” (Eph 5:25) leads to a distorted view of headship.  It leads to using the Bible to support an ugly, domineering, version of male authority.  Male headship without unconditional love has no support in Scripture.

Wives practice a life of love when they show, in tangible ways, respect toward their husbands.  When they encourage their husband.  When they speak highly of their husband.  When they honor their husband.

Likewise, husbands practice a life of love when they love, lead, and protect just as Christ does with His bride, the church.  It is a love that is unlimited and unconditional.  Husbands, there is no competition between loving your wife and loving God.  We show in a very practical way that we love God by how we love our wives.  Loving God and loving our wives are not two separate circles that we are always having to figure out how to prioritize.  Loving our wives lies in the big circle of loving God.

Moving to children and parents, our goal in child-training is to motivate our children to obey us out of a love relationship and see our kids transfer that into obeying God out of a love relationship as they mature.  When our kids are young, we teach them to obey the rules because that is what is required.  We enforce the rules with threats of punishment for bad behavior and the promise of rewards for good conduct.

But as our children grow up, our interaction over the rules becomes more influenced by our love relationship with them.  When we see that developing a relationship with our child is just as important as rules of control,  we set the stage for a healthy transition to obedience out of love.  After all, this is the eventual goal for the adult believer.  Jesus said, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments” (Jn 14:15).

Our proper obedience to our Lord is based on a love relationship, not rules of control.  God did not say, “If you know all the rules, you will obey.  If the rules are clear, you will obey.  If you work harder, you will obey.  If the threat of punishment is strong enough, you will obey.”  No, He said, “If you love me, you will obey.”  And this obedience on our part, just like the child obedience described in our Colossians 3 passage, “is well-pleasing to the Lord.”

Well, we have run out of time with one verse to go.  Since fathers and exasperation is a connection that needs some explanation and understanding, we will try to give it the time and space it is due next post.

New eBook from Jay … “Is Jesus the Only Way?”

OK, another interruption on our travels though the book of Colossians.  But I wanted to let you know about a short book that I just published, Is Jesus the Only Way?, available here in the Kindle store at amazon.com.  (It is also available here as a pdf file.)  My goal is to not only answer that exact question, but to draw us back to the heart of the gospel message.  In my opinion, we have added a lot of baggage to the gospel over the years in connecting Christianity with legalism, political activism, creationism, capitalism, materialism, and a host of isms.

Now with a new generation coming into church leadership, many are quick to throw these connections over the side of the ship.  And I agree wholeheartedly that this baggage needs to be tossed and that we need to listen to a greater variety of voices in the church on issues such as social justice, creation care, faith and science, worship styles, politics, styles of evangelism, and asking honest questions.  But could we be lightening the load too much?  That is, in our efforts to throw off the trappings of the past, are we abandoning the core message of the gospel?

As the church goes through this transformative time, I believe there is one place we need to draw a line in the sand.  And it is at the divine identity of Jesus Christ.  My goal in this book is to let Jesus speak for himself in answering the question in the title.  To do that I have essentially taken a verse-by-verse approach in explaining what Jesus said about himself in the gospel of John chapters 5, 6, and 7.

I believe in this age of universalism and salad bar religion, we need to keep the central message of the identity of Jesus Christ in front of our family and friends as the core issue of what makes Christianity CHRISTianity.  While we can have honest questions about the biblical position on these ancillary issues, the heart of the gospel remains the answer to this question, “Is Jesus the Only Way?”

Please share this message with your high school or college student.  Please help your kids understand as they head into or back to college that there is plenty of room in the Scripture and the church for asking honest questions.  Help them navigate as well as teach them to explore for themselves how their faith intersects with the new world they are stepping into.  Help them understand, accept, and celebrate the diversity in the church.  But teach them that there in a core message to the gospel that makes us who we are as believers.  And it all has to do with the identity of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

The Sacred and the Profane

So is this 24/7 connection to God automatic?  If there is no sacred/secular distinction for the believer is it all smooth sailing on the sin front?  Are our actions always godly by virtue of our identity in Christ?  The short answer is No, No, and No.  There is one distinction that still haunts us, even in our new identity as God’s children.  And it is the distinction between the sacred and the profane.

Profane was a more common word in the days of King James.  Its Greek form bebēlos (βεβηλóς) means, “primarily, permitted to be trodden; hence, unhallowed, profane, opposite of sacred.”  According to Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, “it is that which lacks all relationship or affinity to God.”  It is more commonly translated “worldliness” in today’s versions of the New Testament.

As Paul, Peter, James, and John all make clear in the epistles, it is possible for believers – who have a “relationship or affinity to God” in their identity – to not always show it in their actions.  If fact, we can show in our actions a lack of relationship or affinity to God.  We can look like an unbeliever.  The Bible calls it “walking in the flesh”.  It is walking in a worldly manner.

Christians have a choice.  “Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.  For sin shall not be master over you” (Rom 6:12-14).  We can choose to serve sin or serve the Lord.  We can choose the sacred or the profane.  And, in an incredible infusion of Christ’s righteousness in us, we have the power to choose the sacred.  “Sin shall not be master over you.”

But the choice still must be made.  May I encourage you walk in the Spirit, to walk in the identity of the Spirit that indwells you, to walk in the Spirit’s power.  It is our one defense against the profane deeds of the flesh.

A Life of Love

Paul continues in Colossians chapter 3 to explain what a life of love looks like.  Remember, Paul has already identified the key to overcoming the flesh.  It is living into all that became new at our salvation.  It is laying aside the old self with its evil practices and putting on the new self with its holy attributes.  And the greatest of these is love.

“And beyond all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity.  And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body; and be thankful” (Col 3:14-15).  Two times in these two verses, Paul writes about the unity of the body.  One of the signs of a life of love is the peace that comes in our relationships with other believers.

The peace of Christ is the opposite of strife.  The peace of Christ is the opposite of dissension.  The peace of Christ is the opposite of jealousy.  The peace of Christ is the opposite of all these things that tear down the body of Christ.  Peace is synonymous with unity.  And it is God’s design that we live in peace.  And this peace leads to thanksgiving.

“Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thanksgiving in your hearts to God” (Col 3:16).  In this context, the “word of Christ” is not just referring to Scripture.  It applies to all the ways we hear the voice of Jesus.  We hear His voice in the Bible to be sure.  But we also hear His voice in our Spirit, the Spirit of Christ that indwells us.  In fact, we should expect to hear the voice of Jesus through His Spirit that is alive and active inside us.

In this particular verse, Paul highlights hearing the voice of Jesus in the community of believers that surrounds us.  We are literally the voice of Jesus when we teach and admonish one another; when we sing with and sing to our brothers and sisters in the Lord; when we express our admiration and thanksgiving to God.  Let the word of Christ, in all its different expressions, richly dwell in you.  A life of love is a life of listening to the voice of Jesus.

“And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father” (Col 3:17).  When we set up a rule-keeping system for pleasing God, we tend to separate our lives into the spiritual – following the rules, doing things to earn God’s favor, keeping spiritual disciplines – and the secular – our normal everyday responsibilities.  But when we walk in the Spirit, our connection to God is 24/7.  There is no separation between the sacred and the secular for the believer.

By virtue of who you are in Christ, all you do in word and deed is sacred.  Your homemaking, your 40-hour-a-week job, your visiting a neighbor are all sacred because you are indwelt by the sacred Spirit of Jesus.  Christ in us, living His life through us, sanctifies all of who we are and all of what we do.  This is “doing all in the name of the Lord Jesus” (vs 17).

The Journey to Love

Let’s dive back into our recent topic:  empty religion.  We were working our way through the book of Colossians, when we stopped at Paul’s warning regarding the “empty deception of empty religion.”  The apostle reminds us that setting up a self-abasing, overbearing, tedious, rule-keeping system for living the Christian life is not only inappropriate, but is “of no value against fleshly indulgence” (Col 2:23).  Said another way, “IT DOESN’T WORK!”  The very thing we are trying to defeat is not the least bit hindered by a law-keeping system.  Why?  Because in its empty deception, it lacks true power.

The power to live the Christian life lies instead in our connection to our new nature brought by God’s Spirit within.  Paul goes on in Colossians chapter 3 to explain that we defeat the flesh when we live into all that became new at our conversion.  Our recent posts,  Empty Religion, Indulging the Flesh, and Defeating the Flesh cover this in some detail.  To summarize, we are to put on the “clothes” of our new nature; a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, and forgiveness (Col 3:12-13).

These attributes, these qualities of the new nature, look a lot like Christ.  The new self we are to put on is essentially putting on Christ.  And putting on the new self, the life of Christ in us, is the answer to the flesh.

The final attribute of the new man that Paul commends here is love.  “Beyond all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity” (Col 3:14).  Love is the overarching quality – “beyond all these things” – that energizes all the others.  Love is the motivation for living into all that we are in Christ.  And this love dwells inside you right now.

Love is not waiting for some new level of spirituality.  It is not waiting for some new attainment or enlightenment.  It is in you by virtue of the Holy Spirit who has taken up residence inside you.  In Romans 5:5 we learn that the Holy Spirit is literally “pouring God’s love into our hearts.”

There is no law to follow for the New Testament believer, but there is a journey to take; the journey to love.  As we experience the deep deep love of God, it will begin to flow out of us as we learn to love as God loves.  It will empower and inform your relationships, activities, and thoughts.  It will become a unifying bond for your church and family.  Throw off the chains, throw off the sin that inhibits its fullest expression.  You are a saint, holy and beloved by our Lord (Col 3:12).  Because of who and whose you are, you can do it!