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Household Codes and Living in Christ Within Our Context
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We begin with a powerful illustration. In Pixar's Ratatouille, the motto is simple: "Anyone can cook." This big idea is confirmed throughout the film as Remy the rat discovers he can indeed cook. Yet something else emerges—some ideas cannot fit the structures of the world. The world often has the wrong structures for the right big ideas. Even when Anton Ego, the hardened food critic, is convinced that anyone can cook, the restaurant closes due to "rat infestation." The idea was true, but the context wasn't ready.
Another example: "All people are created equal and have inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Despite this declaration, the structures of society were not ready. Sixty-three years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called for the structures to change to accommodate this idea—to rework the systems to fit the big idea. Dr. King was drawing on Paul's vision from Colossians: "In Christ there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, or free." The gospel's big idea is that God is making a new humanity in Christ, no longer divided by status, ethnicity, or gender. But the structures of the world were not ready.
I must begin by saying: I'm sorry. To those of you who have grown up in homes or churches where these texts—the household codes we're studying today—have been used in painful ways. I'm sorry if you felt second-class because of gender or age. These passages have been misused to justify mistreatment, not just of women, but of children as well. That acknowledgment matters before we dive deeper.
Paul's big idea, repeated around 130 times throughout his letters in one form or another, is simple: "In Christ." This phrase is shorthand for the redemptive transformation of human beings into new creations through Jesus.
Throughout Colossians, we see this exploding with meaning: we are delivered from the domain of darkness, transferred into the kingdom of Jesus' beloved Son. Our trespasses are forgiven. We have put off the old self and put on the new self—a new identity in Christ. We are embracing the ethics of the kingdom: patience, kindness, humility, thankfulness, and love—love that binds everything together.
But here's the tension: we must work out who we are in Christ within our specific context. We're called to set our hearts on things above, yes—but we still have to live out life down here on earth. We cannot escape the earthly structures we inhabit.
Paul writes to the Colossians within the horizon of the possible—within the social imagination and structures available to him. The ancient Mediterranean household was the core unit of Roman society, held together by a network of hierarchies. Everyone knew their place.
Life in the Roman Empire was fragile—threatened by famine, earthquakes, droughts, invaders, and pirates. Rome maintained the Pax Romana, the peace of Rome, through an empire-wide hierarchy. The household was critical to this stability: if hierarchies in the home broke down, the empire broke down. The empire was only as strong as its households, and each household was headed by a man.
Women in Paul's day were often married as young teenagers to men significantly older and better educated, reinforcing assumptions about male superiority in leadership. Slavery was widespread—one in four people in the Roman Empire were slaves, with male heads of households having legal power over wives, children, and slaves.
Paul could not have imagined the American and French ideas of liberty for all, or the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s—even though leaders of these movements based their ideas on his vision.
When Paul writes, "Wives, be subject to your husbands," the Greek word hypotasso (beneath + order) suggests choosing to place oneself within the established order. But notice the qualifier: "as is fitting in the Lord."
What does this mean? One reading calls for permanent gendered hierarchy as part of Christian identity—what some call soft complementarianism. Many godly people read it this way, and I respect this interpretation.
But another reading is: be subject to your husbands in a way that aligns with your commitment in the Lord. Either way, the Lord is the primary authority—the true north of the Christian household. A wife is not expected to submit to behavior or demands except those legitimate in the Lord. Whatever is fitting in the Lord is shaped by cultural context, and that context can change.
Paul then addresses parents and children: "Children, obey your parents, for this is your acceptable duty in the Lord." Again, notice: in the Lord. Obedience is qualified by allegiance to Christ. And in the Lord, Paul makes clear, there is no room for harsh treatment or abuse.
The most striking relationship concerns masters and slaves. In all three relationships Paul addresses—wives, children, slaves—he first gives direct address to those in the subordinate position, dignifying them. Then he issues commands to those in power:
In each case, we're reminded that this structure must now be lived out in the Lord, with reference to Jesus.
Many readers wish Paul had exploded the household hierarchy entirely. But in the ancient context, such an explosion would have left children, wives, and slaves exposed and vulnerable. Paul offers a revision instead. He places the ancient household structure in the Lord, setting it within the framework of reality defined by Christ and the ethics of his kingdom.
This would have been subversive. By commanding men to love their wives, not provoke their children, and treat slaves with equity, Paul was challenging Greco-Roman household expectations of power.
We may dismiss Roman hierarchies as outdated, but we have our own. Perhaps two thousand years from now, people will look back at 2026 and marvel: "Those people had line managers. They let multi-billionaires build AI frameworks and let them run the world!" We have our own context and hierarchies, perhaps more subtle, but they are there.
The question is: How do we exercise and respond to power and authority in our structures?
The phrase "in the Lord" holds both challenge and comfort.
For those with power and authority (and we all have some, to varying degrees): the challenge is to exercise power and authority the way Christ does—through sacrificial love, by giving himself up for us, by embracing weakness on our behalf.
For those under the power and authority of others: the comfort is that the Lord ultimately holds power and authority. Not your line manager, parent, or teacher—not ultimately. You can serve Christ regardless of age gaps, education gaps, or worldly distinctions of gender, class, or ethnicity. The Lord makes no such distinctions. He holds no partiality.
Finally, there's one more challenge: let's look for ways to take Paul's big idea and allow it to press against the structures of our day. Paul was doing this in his own time. How are the ways that we can bring the big idea of a new humanity created in Christ to bear against structures that limit how that can be lived out and expressed?
It may not always work well. But I think that's part of the command. Paul's big idea doesn't stop with him. It passes to us. How do we run with this big idea—in Christ, in context?
