THE APOSTLE PAUL had never met the Colossians, but right from the beginning of his letter he addresses them as his brothers and sisters. In Christ, they were family. So what kind of family would they be? As described in chapter 3 of his letter, if they put on their new nature, they would be a community of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. They would be tolerant, forgiving, and loving. They would live with gratitude and let shalom direct their conduct.

It should go without saying that all of this also describes the kind of people they were expected to be at home.

But it needs to be said, especially in a world in which homes are private spaces and few outsiders know who we truly are there. What our spouses and children, our parents and siblings see may be quite different than what we allow others to see. Do we wear one face at home, and another at church? That may be a symptom of outside-in religion, of a lack of true inside-out transformation.

One of the most basic social units of ancient Roman society was the household, and something similar might be said today of the nuclear families of highly individualistic cultures like that of the United States. It makes sense that Paul would teach the Colossians not only about what it meant to be the family of God, but also how the faithful should live in their own homes. Here’s what he says about the relationships between spouses and between parents and children:

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. (Col 3:18-21, NIV)

That first instruction, given to wives, is quite similar to the more famous one in Ephesians 5:

Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. (Eph 5:22)

In both cases, Paul instructs wives to “submit” to their husbands, a verb that suggests taking a place under their husband’s authority. This, unfortunately, is the verse that abusive or authoritarian husbands sometimes use to coerce their Christian wives to obey their every command. Paul, it may seem, is reinforcing the patriarchy of the surrounding culture, albeit with an additional spiritual gloss.

But wait. The verb “submit” isn’t actually in the Ephesians verse. It’s been inserted because the New International Version has decided to make verse 22 a new sentence, even though it’s a continuation of the sentence that began the verse before. Thus, verses 21 and 22, taken together, should read, “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ, wives to your own husbands, as to the Lord.” The governing principle is mutual submission of believers to one another, and the submission of wives to their husbands is one application of that principle. Some have tried to separate the two, but the lack of a verb in verse 22 makes it dependent on verse 21 for its meaning.

Given the strongly hierarchical and patriarchal setting of the Roman household, the idea of mutual submission is strong stuff. Reading between the lines, this is why Paul’s instruction to husbands is that they are to love their wives and not be “harsh” with them. This is the only place where Paul uses the word translated here as “harsh”; its other three uses in the New Testament are all in the book of Revelation, where it’s translated as “bitter” or “sour.” That’s why the New American Standard renders Paul’s words as “Husbands, love your wives and do not be embittered against them.”

Why would they be? What would make the husbands bitter or make them want to treat their wives harshly?

Again, try to imagine the cultural setting into which Paul drops the theological bomb that in Christ, all the taken-for-granted social barriers have been broken down — Jews, Greeks, and barbarians; circumcised and uncircumcised; slave and free; male and female. In the church, the body of Christ, people who had no social status or even legal rights were to be treated with dignity, respect, and love.

Some women, no doubt, found this exhilarating, especially given what it implied in relationship to their husbands; the husbands, for their part, may have found it threatening and uncomfortable, a loss of the power they had previously taken for granted. Paul’s words were revolutionary. But Paul was not trying to start a social revolution, especially if it meant destabilizing households in a way that would bring the heavy hand of Rome down upon the infant church.

Rather, in a way consistent with the rest of the letter, Paul wants to change households from the inside out. I’ll make a similar point later, with reference to what Paul says about slaves and their masters. Paul doesn’t try to abolish slavery in a single stroke, as if he could; rather, he works to transform the master-slave relationship in light of the gospel.

Similarly, there was nothing new about writing codes of behavior for the good order of households, and anyone of that day and culture could have said, “Wives, submit to your husbands.” But that’s why it’s important for Paul to add “as is fitting in the Lord” in Colossians, and “as you do to the Lord” in Ephesians. This isn’t just a religious or spiritual gloss, but the principle that transforms everything. It is not only the church but every Christian household that is to be governed by faith in a crucified and risen Christ.

If a husband points to Ephesians 5:22, therefore, and self-righteously demands his wife’s submission, I point him to the rest of the passage instead, the much longer instructions given directly to husbands. There, Paul tells husbands to love their wives, as he does in Colossians. But in Ephesians, he adds that they are to love their wives “just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” He is to love his wife as he loves his own body, as he loves himself (vss. 28, 33). Learn to love your wife that way, in a way that makes her well-being equal to or even greater than your own, I’ll tell him. Then see what happens.