In this sermon, Pastor Joe Babij investigates Colossians 3:18-19 and Paul’s first explanation of how life as the new person in Christ should transform household relationships. The first relationship Paul considers is the marriage relationship, and Paul gives commands to both wives and husbands.
1. The Imperatives for a Transformed Wife (v. 18)
2. The Imperatives for a Transformed Husband (v. 19)
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Summary
We are reminded that the Christian life is not self-improvement but comprehensive transformation — putting off sin and putting on the new self patterned after Christ. This passage from Colossians 3 calls husbands and wives to live out that transformation within marriage, under the lordship of Christ.
Key Lessons:
- The new self is not a refined version of the old — salvation brings comprehensive transformation, replacing sinful patterns with Christlike character.
- A transformed wife willingly submits to her husband not because of cultural pressure, but because she loves Christ and recognizes God’s design — a voluntary, joyful submission rooted in faith.
- A transformed husband is commanded to love his wife with the same unconditional, sacrificial, purposeful love that Christ shows the church — a high and humbling standard.
- Bitterness in a husband toward his wife is a serious sin — it quenches the Spirit, hinders prayer, and opens the door to destructive patterns that unravel the marriage.
Application: Husbands and wives are called to evaluate their marriages against God’s imperatives — not cultural norms. If progressing, continue. If not, repent, lay aside old sinful garments, and press forward in obedience, trusting that the Word of God and the Spirit of God provide everything needed for a joyful, stable, Christ-honoring marriage.
Discussion Questions:
- In what ways does our culture’s definition of love or marriage make it harder to accept God’s design for husbands and wives? How does Scripture reframe those tensions?
- What does it look like practically for a husband to love his wife with unconditional, sacrificial, and purposeful love — especially in ordinary daily life?
- Where might bitterness — silence, absence, fault-finding — be taking root in your closest relationships, and what steps can you take to address it before it grows?
Scripture Focus: Colossians 3:18–19 forms the heart of the message, with Colossians 3:5–17 providing the foundation. Ephesians 4:31, 1 Peter 3:7, Galatians 5:17, and Romans 8 are drawn upon to illuminate the nature of love, submission, bitterness, and the ongoing war between flesh and spirit.
Outline
- Introduction
- Reviewing the Three Lists
- The War Between Flesh and Spirit
- Three Priorities for Spiritual Progress
- God’s Divine Order of Submission
- The Imperative for a Transformed Wife
- The Imperative for a Transformed Husband
- The Negative Command: Do Not Be Embittered
- Pressing On in Transformed Marriage
Let’s pray. Lord, this morning we thank you for bringing us together. We thank you, Lord, for the liberty that we have in Christ. We thank you, Lord, for the word of God that gives us clarity on how to live.
So Lord, move out of our hearts and minds the things that are the old part of our life and move in the new. And I pray, Lord, the old would never get back in there, so we can live out what you’re working in us.
That we may hope, obey you, Holy Spirit, as you bring the word to bear upon our mind and heart. We would be listening, really hearing, and then taking what we heard and thinking about it, considering it, evaluating our own life by it, and then making the needed changes that we know we have the power to do by the spirit of God in our life.
So Lord, we can maintain that atmosphere of joy and peace that you give us, and the Bible says no one’s supposed to take away. And so I pray you bless us especially in this area that is so important in the church and in society and in the world itself, that of marriage. And I pray in Christ’s name, amen.
Introduction
Let me just bring you up to speed. So far we have been learning that the new self is the born-again self. It is the new creature in Christ.
Only the Christian has the capacity to consider themselves dead to sin and alive to God, with the ability and really the will to serve and please God. Loving God’s word and loving God’s son includes hating sin with the desire to pursue righteousness.
Therefore, salvation is not a matter of improvement or perfection of what had previously existed. It is a matter of comprehensive transformation. When you put on the new clothes that we have been talking about in Colossians, you won’t want to take them off again, because you will begin to experience the fullness of the Christian life.
And what is that? To be like Christ. In Colossians, the Apostle Paul presents us with three lists: lists that expose sins of attitude, sins of behavior, and sins of speech. By these lists we can actually evaluate our progress in spiritual maturity and Christ’s likeness.
Reviewing the Three Lists
Well, list number one was found in Colossians 3:5. This is the list of sexual attitude and behavior: shameful desires, sexual sins, impurity, sins we think about that are impure, lust, idolatry.
We are to put these things to death. Why? Because these are destructive and they will destroy relationships and they will destroy churches.
We’re to put these off because they’re dirty and they are contaminated and they will contaminate us, even in our relationship with Christ.
The second list is found in Colossians 3:8-9. This is the list of the sins of speech: anger, malicious behavior, slander, dirty language, lying.
We are to rid ourselves of these things because they are relationship breakers, they are unity killers, and they are peace crushers.
The third list is found in Colossians 3:12-13. This is the list of the signs that you are making progress in your life. What are these particular signs of love? Mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forgiveness.
The Bible tells us to put these on. Why? Because these keep unity, they build relationships, they lead to progress in spiritual maturity and Christ’s likeness and spiritual fulfillment.
In other words, put off the old and put on the new. Put on clean clothes—the clothing I speak of is not physical clothing but spiritual clothing.
The clothing that you and I are to put on is the same clothing that Jesus wore while he walked on this earth. Jesus is the model upon which we are to fashion our daily lives.
“The clothing that is fashionable in the kingdom of God never go out of style.”
The mercy all the way to the forgiveness never go out of style. Believers can no longer operate on the basis of sinful desires and old passions. These are all past.
The Apostle Peter wrote: “I beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers,” and that’s what we really are in the world as we become Christians, “to abstain from fleshly lust which wage war against the soul.”
There is an assumption here in this passage that believers in Christ can carry out what scripture is urging us to do—that is, to abstain from fleshly lust. Christians are to avoid or keep themselves free from the impulses that belong to the flesh.
The craving of the sinful man is called the lust of the flesh. Anything in the world system can become a source of sinful desire. The fleshly body can be the source of sensual desires and lust.
These desires can extend to food and to drink and into sexual gratification and beyond—desires which reach out for an object in order to find some pleasure and some satisfaction in this life. The only thing is that the real satisfaction comes in Christ.
“The real satisfaction comes in Christ.”
The War Between Flesh and Spirit
That the spirit is the renewed power of the new man. Galatians tells us: “But I say walk in the spirit and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh.” As Christians we have a new nature, but we also have a remaining old one.
In other words, the new nature does not alienate the flesh. Christians have to struggle against the flesh until they enter glory, until God takes us out again.
Galatians 5:17 says: “For the flesh sets its desires against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, for these are in opposition to one another.”
There is a warfare. Have you experienced it yet? Between the new man, the spiritual, and the old man, the flesh.
However, the war is not a war between our souls and our bodies, because our physical body is not inherently evil. We are to have a counter warfare, really necessary, against the inner rebel in our heart.
Be sure of this: the inward sinful desires continually wage spiritual battle against the spiritual soul of the believer. The rebel voice needs to be turned down to a faint mutter, and the spirit’s voice speaking through the word of God needs to become consistently stronger and louder.
“The rebel voice needs to be turned down to a faint mutter, and the spirit’s voice needs to become consistently stronger and louder.”
The flesh must be weakened and the spirit must be strengthened. The Christian first undresses himself and herself of the old clothing and disposes of the stench-riddled, sin-contaminated clothing, in order to dress himself, herself suitably.
The Christian now is ready for their journey through this life. I believe that all that in Colossians comes before the passage of scriptures we’re going to look at this morning. You must be doing these things if these other things are going to take place.
Three Priorities for Spiritual Progress
The Christian is now ready. We’re ready to be introduced to the last week, the threefold need to plod along successfully, to make progress. And what were those?
In verse 15: “Let the peace of Christ rule in your heart.” The peace of Christ brings unity, and the peace of Christ also upholds thankfulness in the believer.
Remember, a believer who is thankful—because all these things are talking about living a transformed life in the life of other people, in the life of the church with other people—will extend to their fellow believers and people themselves the grace of love and forgiveness. A heart filled with gratitude to God, that knows that they’re called by God, will put aside petty issues that might inhibit any expression of peace within a community or in a family.
The Word of Christ Dwelling Within
So that’s the first thing. The second priority for progress is to let the word of God dwell. Verse 16: “Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you.”
This is the message that proclaims Christ. In other words, put the message about Christ at the center of everything and let that message take permanent residence in your heart, so that it will issue in a transforming power not only in your own life but in the life of the community.
How does that happen? In verse 16, by teaching. As you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, psalms, hymns, and songs of the spirit.
“God always implants the truth in your mind first, to push out the wrong ways of thinking.”
Teaching, remember, is the positive presentation and proclamation of Christian truth. It’s implanting the truth in your mind. God always implants the truth in your mind first, right, to push out what’s in there, the wrong ways of thinking and deciding things, and he puts in your mind the truth.
It’s not your personal opinions; they must bow to Christ’s words. It’s not your personal feelings; we seem to live in a very feeling-driven society, but even your feelings must yield to what Christ says. It’s not even your personal ideas; they must also be adjusted by God’s word.
So that’s the teaching part of it. And then there’s the admonishing in verse 16. As you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, admonishing, remember, digs out the error.
It gives warning about the danger of straying from the truth, and it gives an instruction that’s put into the mind regarding belief and behavior. They go together. You can’t say one thing and do another, opposite of what you’re saying; they go together.
That’s what the spirit of God’s doing: he’s making your belief line up with your life. So when we in our gathered worship we need to be teaching and admonishing one another, so the word of Christ has central place in our life, in our worship, in everything we do.
That it would dwell richly within our hearts. The core of our being, our emotions, our intellect, our volition, would be drenched with the word of Christ until it takes residence in your heart and your mind, until it fills up every nook and cranny, every corner of your being, and controls your thinking, and then your actions come from that.
“Let the word of Christ fill every nook and cranny of your being and control your thinking.”
As our life becomes more like Christ, we find ourselves constantly repeating and rejoicing over the truths of scripture. The object and focus of a word-filled person is not themselves or their problems.
They are occupied with spiritual things, meditating upon and in the enjoyment of those things. They have a joy inside of them that is expressed outwardly in fellowship to family and to brethren.
When the focus of the believer’s heart is the Lord, then Christian joy will be present. It will be present in our hearts. This is the spirit of God producing it.
And it says there, by psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. This singing is to God first, and then it’s coupled with gratitude.
I’m so overly thankful about what God has done in my life, that he’s saved me, he opened up my eyes, he convicted me of sin and led me to himself, to know that I can’t do anything to save myself. He did it all, and by faith I trust in him.
When I and you realize that, that should only produce joy, because all of it is done by God. God is the initiator of our salvation, not us. But when we understand that, say, wow, God reached out to me, who am I? I’m nobody, right? And God did that.
And so that produces gratitude in your heart. When you’re filled with the message that proclaims Christ in that way, it shows up in your conduct in everyday living.
Do All in the Name of the Lord
Scripture concludes that these expectations will be the touchstone of Christian conduct and make the test of what is right and wrong very clear to the believer. We are to live so the name of Christ prevails.
That’s in verse 17, where we left off last time. It says: “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.”
To do all in the name of Jesus means that we act with his approval and show him to others in everything, including what we say and what we do. This shows what it means to bear the name of Jesus Christ.
“To do all in the name of Jesus means that we act with his approval and show him to others in everything.”
Remember, the name of the Lord stands for his person, it stands for his character, it stands for his will, what he wants for you. We Christians should act in concert with the nature and the character of God.
In other words, as scripture says, we’re being transformed into the image of Christ and we’re living that way. It’s not a perfect thing, but it’s a progress.
In this section of Colossians we’re going to look at this morning, it refers to living together with God’s people within the gathered community of Christ’s church under Christ’s lordship. The reality of our union with Christ and the transformation of the new self shows up in various kinds of relationships that we are going to experience or we’re going to live in.
We don’t have to look too far to find out what kind of spiritual progress we have in our spiritual maturity. That spiritual progress does have results to it.
God’s Divine Order of Submission
And one of the results of being word-filled and being controlled by the spirit of God is the word submitting. Where you all submit, we’re submitting to Christ. The supreme condition of the filling of the Holy Spirit is surrender; it is submission to Christ, the knowing and the doing of what the will of the Lord is.
There is a divine order. There’s a divine order we are called to submit to. Christians who are controlled by the message that proclaims Christ are first to submit to the Lord, giving ourselves over to however the Lord arranged things, and this must come first because all authority is under Christ.
We already learned that in Colossians 1:16, where it says: “For by him all things were created, both in heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things have been created through him and for him.”
And then it says in verse 18: “He is the head of the body.” And then at the end of verse 18: “So that he himself will come to have first place in everything.”
That starts right now. That starts the moment you become a new believer. That starts right when you become a born-again Christian.
Submission to one another would imply that one is willing to submit to those who God says has the authority, whether it be in the home, whether it be in the church, whether it be in society. Scripture deals with this authority structure in three different ways: in marriage, wives to husbands; in the family, children to parents; and in the household, servants and masters, which bleed into society too.
All of us are called to positions of authority, but all of us are also called to positions of subordination, submission to authority that God sets up. God’s structure. No one, no one, is exempt from submission to authority. No one.
“No one is exempt from submission to authority. No one.”
In the passages before us this morning there are two groups. I’ll only deal with a small portion of that, but two groups: those in subordination, and who are they? The wives, the children, and the slaves. And those in authority, and who is that? Husbands, fathers, and masters.
Now this morning I’m going to look at verses 18 and 19, coming out of verse 17. Notice what it says, and I’ll read verses 18 and 19 of chapter 3 of Colossians.
“Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. And husbands, love your wives and do not be embittered against them.”
I’ll pick up the next time with children. But this morning, wives and husbands.
The Imperative for a Transformed Wife
The first thing I’m going to mention is the imperative for a transformed wife. Remember, everything that went before, those lists of things, people are putting off. The wife is putting off things, she’s putting on things. So she’s grown and progressed to the point where now Paul feels it’s important within the Colossian church, and for us, to give instruction, teaching to the wife about what is important.
In Ephesians and Colossians, he doesn’t start with the husbands, he starts with the wife. And this is what he says to the wife.
There are two things here. First, submit is God’s command for the wife. In verse 18, notice: “Wives, be subject to your husbands.” Some say, in Ephesians, your own husbands. This means to willingly put yourself under the authority of the husband, because that’s how God created it to be.
I was reading some material and I came across a story about a famous pianist named Paderewski. He’s the one that’s famous for the Minuet in G. In his day, he was known as a very important person, like a rock star, very well known. He became a politician also, a diplomat.
This story is from his life. It really had to do with this: he was playing at a college, playing the piano, and a woman named Mrs. Dwight Morrow was there.
Just after she celebrated her 20th anniversary, Mrs. Dwight Morrow sat at a dinner next to Paderewski and was reminded of a time when she heard the great pianist from the gallery seat at college. Asked if she often went back to her alma mater, she said, “Yes, I like to go back and sit in my old chapel seat, thinking how much happier I am now than I ever thought I would be.”
Becoming interested, Paderewski stopped eating. “You don’t mean to tell me,” he said, “that you are happier now than you thought at 18 you would ever be?” She said, “Yes, indeed.” Paderewski bowed deeply and said to Mrs. Morrow, “I have to meet your husband.”
The story says a lot about the character of the husband because of the happiness and the joy of the wife. But it also says that the wife must have understood submission in order to have such a joyful marriage. It looks like both the husband and the wife learned their God-given roles well to produce a story like that.
The biblical roles of husband and wife have been designed by God to produce unity and order in the home and in the church. Men and women are both to be fulfilled and honored through proper role relationships in the marriage.
If both the wife and the husband are dressing the part—that is, putting off sin and relationship killers, actually ridding themselves of those very things and replacing them with righteousness by putting on the new self—they will be standing on the foundation of gospel grace in which the commands of God will be their pleasure.
Why? Because they know they’re chosen, they know they have been made holy by God, and they know they are loved by God. So if the wife understands her role that God has designed her for, she will gladly submit to her husband.
“If the wife understands her role that God has designed her for, she will gladly submit to her husband.”
The term submit is used in a military sense of soldiers submitting to their superior. Technically it refers to willfully putting oneself under a leader. So the wife is willingly putting herself under the husband.
It’s the picture of soldiers in a regiment, soldiers in line under an officer. The soldier is no longer an individual. Anybody who’s been in the military knows that you’re no longer your own—you’re owned by the government and they tell you what to do.
He’s a member of a regiment, and all of them who are members of the regiment are listening to the commands and instructions which the officer is issuing. The soldier signed away his rights to order his own life, so he’s a person under authority. If he begins to act on his own, he is guilty of insubordination, which has severe penalties in the military.
The vast difference between military subordination and biblical submission is one is forced and the other is voluntary. The wife is to voluntarily do what the soldier is forced to do. And under the lordship of Christ, she follows God’s commands with joy and with thankfulness.
Submission: Voluntary and Fitting in the Lord
A next thing in this passage, in verse 18, it says she is to submit, submitting to God’s arrangement for her life. It says: “Wives, be subject to your husbands, as,” notice, “is fitting in the Lord.” Verse 18.
Fitting means what is right, what is proper, what is one’s duty, what should or should not take place in that relationship. So what should take place in the home that is fitting and proper is the voluntary submission of the wife to her own husband, based on her recognition of God’s order.
The motivation for that is God, not her husband. She’s to do it to her husband. The term fitting is also used in Ephesians 5:4, which gives some sense to the term. Let me just read it to you.
It says: “There must be no filthiness or silly talk or coarse jesting, which is not fitting, but rather the giving of thanks.”
For a believer, there are certain things that just don’t fit anymore. If a child of God is to be an imitator of God, as Ephesians 5:1 says, which we read this morning, certain things are no longer proper among saints. Only those things that are fitting in the Lord.
Willful submission of the wife is fitting and proper. In other words, it looks right when you’re a Christian. That’s the way it ought to be. That’s the way God designed it.
What is fitting and proper for believers is not determined by the culture or by government or by the latest fads blowing through the wind of the world system, but by Christ. Our vertical relationship with Christ rules our horizontal relationships in this life. Christ defines what is proper and fitting.
“Our vertical relationship with Christ rules our horizontal relationships in this life.”
Christians must reject the societal insanity that is going on today. Submission is the piece of clothing the wife is to wear to do her part in duty to her Lord, because she loves Christ.
Wives peacefully get along with their husbands because they are not insistent on their own way. For a spirit-filled believer, unity is essential in dealing with their spouse.
Spirit-filled and word-filled believers are subject to others, as it says in Ephesians, in the fear of Christ. The reason why they strive for a harmonious relationship in their home is because they genuinely fear God and they want to do what he says.
In fact, they reverence God to the point that they care deeply about what he says in the word of God and desire deeply to submit to his authority, because his authority always comes first. Their godly fear encompasses both terror and reverence, submission and awe; they go all together.
The inner motivation of a word-filled and a spirit-filled person, and in this case a wife, is to give herself willingly under the submission of her husband.
What the Fall Revealed About Role Relationships
Now, theologically, if she’s been growing in the knowledge of the word of God and she knows the scripture, especially that of the fall of mankind into sin, then she knows that the fall with all its consequences, harmful to women, did not arise from Eve being subject to the man. The exact opposite happened.
When Eve abandoned her role of submission to Adam and decided to take matters into her own hands, the fall came. Eve determined to lead man rather than follow, and what happened? Disaster ensued. We’re still experiencing that disaster today.
In the fall, the relational principles were compromised by sin. When sin entered into the world, the roles of husbands and wives were corrupted.
It ruined the harmony and unity of marriage. It twisted man’s humble, loving headship into aggressive dominance for some men, and for others, lazy indifference. It twisted also woman’s intellect, willingly and joyfully expressing submission, into manipulation, scheming, vying for control, and even unashamed defiance of the husband’s headship.
“Sin twisted man’s humble, loving headship into aggressive dominance — and woman’s joyful submission into manipulation and defiance.”
Culture, society, and the sinful heart all fueled that. It does not make for a good atmosphere within marriage.
But now that the woman is being transformed, a transformed wife living under the lordship of Christ is willingly submitting to God’s command and to his arrangement for her life. It is her continuing desire to make progress in her spiritual transformation.
In other words, this wife’s goal is to progress in this continuing thing. It’s easy to start something; it’s much harder to continue something. We want to be continuing this, and that’s what a wife is doing: she’s continuing in what God designed for her.
“A transformed wife living under the lordship of Christ willingly submits to God’s command and his arrangement for her life.”
She knows when she does that she’s pleasing the Lord. When she pleases the Lord, she knows the Lord is going to do something within her home that she cannot do herself. He’s going to transform even others.
The Imperative for a Transformed Husband
Now that leads to the next imperative: the imperative for a transformed husband. Look at verse 19 of chapter 3. It says: “Husbands, love your wives.”
Let’s start right there. That’s a positive command: husbands, love your wives. These are commands; these are not suggestions.
Husbands, put on the garment that binds everything together: love your wives. The husband is to love his wife continually, in the present tense, coupled with the positive expressions of that love, love on a regular basis.
Remember, it’s a uniquely Christian love that is based on Christ’s love. This is not any kind of love. The world doesn’t even know how to define love, but the Bible does.
Love is first a commitment: that I’m going to commit to this relationship, I’m going to give it all that I have. Who of us really can fully understand the love that Christ has for the church?
The Standard: Christ’s Love for the Church
Scripture speaks of the breadth and the length and the height and the depth of the love of Christ, which surpasses knowledge. Only from scripture can we know about the love of Christ for his people.
If I were to pick out some characteristics of that love from scripture, it would be something like this: his love is unconditional. God demonstrated his own love toward us in that while we’re yet sinners Christ died for us. He’s the one who demonstrated the love by dying in the place of sinners.
Also, his love is volitional; he chooses to love us. I like what it says in the Old Testament concerning the nation of Israel: “The Lord did not set his love on you nor chose you because you were more in number than any other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples.” Why did God choose Israel? Because he decided to do it. Why does he choose us? Because he decided to do it.
Also, his love is an intense love. It says in scripture: “Now before the feast of the Passover, Jesus, knowing that his hour had come, departed out of this world to his father. Before he departed out of this world to his father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” It was an intense love.
Also, it was an unending love. From Romans 8: “What shall separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus?” Nothing will separate us.
It’s an unselfish love. It says in the Philippians passage: “He emptied himself, taking on the form of a bond servant and being made in the likeness of men,” leaving glory so he can die on the cross for you and me.
Also, it is a purposeful love. When God loves us it works for our improvement, for our development, for our happiness, for our welfare, for a goal.
And then it’s a sacrificial love, which is most common in our understanding of scripture: he loved us and gave himself for us. In love he bore the guilt and the penalty of sin and the wrath of God in the place of his people. In love he personally bore our sins in his own body on the cross, so that the penalty and the power and the devastating effects of sin in our lives might be broken forever.
Colossians 3:19: “In love he bore the guilt and penalty of sin in the place of his people, so the power of sin might be broken forever.”
Also, it’s a manifested love. Christ manifested his love in words and in deeds. He loves us, the Bible says. He shows us he loves us: he protects us, he prays for us, he guards us, he strengthens us, he helps us, he defends us, he teaches us, he comforts us, he chastens us, he equips us, he empathizes with us, and provides all our needs.
This is then the standard by which a husband is to judge his relationship with his wife. But I say this: that no husband has ever fully loved his wife that way, and not to that degree, not to that extent. But it is the goal toward which every husband is pressed; that’s the model which he is to follow.
“No husband has ever fully loved his wife the way Christ loves — but it is the goal toward which every husband is pressed.”
The husband submits himself to his wife by lovingly and selflessly taking the initiative in putting her needs before his own. The husband and wife submit to one another according to the wise order established by God.
This hierarchical order reflected in marriage, established from creation, and the concept of an equal submitting to an equal, at least spiritually, a wife to her husband, is based on the relationship between the father and the son within the Trinity. That’s a theological thing that’s happening within the marriage relationship.
Well, even in Corinthians, where it sets up for us this particular point, where it says: “But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ.”
Surely every husband ought to spend much time thinking about what this means in terms of his marital relationship. And certainly every husband should frequently examine himself to see where he is failing to love his wife as God commands him to love her.
Are you really loving your wife as you love yourself? Are you really pressing toward the goal of loving your wife as Christ loved the church? Is the love that you have for your wife unconditional, volitional, intensive, unending, unselfish, purposeful, and sacrificial? Is your love being manifest in numerous and continuous ways throughout the different phases of your marriage?
These are the questions that every husband should be asking himself, and perhaps his wife about himself. Are you loving me the way you should? Am I loving you the way I should?
Headship Is Not Tyranny
But the husband, I tell you what, theologically must not forget, and I think this is where we forget, men, that the wife has been given to us as a gift, as a gift. She was made by God to be a helper. She was created from man, for man, and led to man. That this serving role is a noble and valuable role, not a demeaning one.
And men, I think we need to model male headship in the home and in the church. God always puts somebody on the point. No organization ever will thrive for long with nobody in charge, including the home.
But management by consultation is a different matter. If my wife is a helper to make actually my leadership better, then here’s where our wives are helpers and valuable to us husbands.
Her wisdom, her common sense, her cool level-headedness, her strength of character, her love for people, and even sometimes her steel-trap logic constantly helps us. Partners like our wives, we would be dumber than a post if we fail to consult with her.
Not only does she bring the benefit of a female perspective, but she balances us, improves us in our leadership, and restrains some of our excesses as wannabe macho men. That’s what she does.
See, we can’t forget that, man. We can’t leave her out of the equation. How this headship principle is applied, that is the spirit behind it, it makes all the difference.
I have personally never encountered a godly female who in principle had any problem with considerate, sensible male leadership. In fact, Christian women cry out for spiritual leadership from their husbands.
But headship and dictatorship are two different things. Male headship is not male tyranny. It has everything to do with responsibility for others, especially his wife, and accountability to God.
“Male headship is not male tyranny. It has everything to do with responsibility for his wife and accountability to God.”
That’s what leadership God’s given men. We can’t opt out of that. Something that was given to us, we must take it and use it. And then as we use it, we love our wives, and then we find a very joyful, happy marriage and home life.
The Negative Command: Do Not Be Embittered
But there’s a negative command. I want you to look at it. Colossians 3:19. There’s a positive command, and here’s a negative command: “Husbands, do not be embittered against them.”
You got that? This is a command in our passage given to the husband. If he violates this imperative, he will put a kibosh on any unity and peace that he has gained and enjoyed in his home.
He will be in disobedience to God’s clear command to love his wife, because he is not loving his wife as a prized vessel. As it tells us in 1 Peter 3:7: “You husbands, in the same way live with your wives in an understanding way, as with someone weaker, since she is a woman, and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life.” Why? “So that your prayers will not be hindered.”
If you don’t treat your wife right, forget praying. God doesn’t even want to hear you. He wants to hear repentance towards not treating your wife right.
What is the command the husband is not to do? “Husbands, do not be embittered against them.” The verb means friction caused by impatience or perpetual irritation or fault-finding.
Actually, it is a word used in other places, like in Revelation, to say that the waters were bitter and became undrinkable. It also has a sense of hostile feelings towards your wife.
It could be that his bitterness will be like bitter water that goes into the stomach and causes a violent reaction. As bitter water becomes undrinkable, his life will become sour and unbearable.
He has walked off the path of transformation and has quenched the spirit of God. He is now in the flesh; he has put on the old dirty garments again.
“He has walked off the path of transformation and quenched the spirit of God. He has put on the old dirty garments again.”
Bitterness and Its Destructive Forms
See, bitterness really reflects the general sense in scripture of wickedness and a refusal to obey and worship God. In Ephesians, bitterness tops the list that symbolizes every form of malice. Where it says in Ephesians 4:31: “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.”
Bitterness can show up in many ways in the home. It can show up in the man being silent, doesn’t talk to his wife anymore. It could show up in a man being absent: I’m going to just work longer hours, I don’t want to go home to that.
It could be abuse: verbal, mental, emotional, physical. Sometimes it could be the man manipulating, withholding money from her. All kinds of things come out when somebody’s bitter.
The Bible warns us: don’t let a root of bitterness get in any relationship, in Hebrews. Bitterness is a wicked thing; it’s a demonic thing.
Men, you notice why God, why did Paul pick this one out? Because this one has so much stuff going on with it. It’s connected to so many different things.
The habitual attitude of bitterness that some may show their wives will reflect in the rejection of that love Christ has for his people. The husband has put back on the old, stinky, sin-filled, stained garment.
Remember, sin will always take you further than you intend to go, it will keep you longer than you ever wanted to stay, and it will make you pay more than you ever imagined it would cost. He is not loving his wife like God loves him. He is not being a leader and an example he was created by God to be.
“Sin will always take you further than you intend to go, keep you longer than you wanted to stay, and cost more than you imagined.”
I remember when Jane and I were visiting in Israel, and we were visiting the site that most historians, archaeologists, and Bible scholars believed the actual place that John the Baptist was baptized. It was a historical site that was inaccessible for many years because of the wars and conflicts and border disputes between Israel and other nations.
We could only go to this baptismal site of Jesus by walking on this very narrow wooden path. Our tour guide warned us that it was forbidden for anyone to step off the wooden path, because he said the path has been cleared of landmines, but the area on either side of the path was not cleared of explosive devices.
Well, rest assured, nobody walked off that path, including me and Jane.
Actually, the Greek construction of our text, when the present imperative is coupled with the negative, it points to a habitual action. The habitual action of the husband is to be continually: do not be embittered against his wife.
If he does, he would be like stepping off the wooden path I just mentioned into a spiritual minefield, in which he gives advantage to the devil. The scripture warns us over and over again: do not give Satan the advantage, because if you do he will take it, and especially when it comes to the marriage or the relationship between a man and woman in marriage.
As husbands submit themselves to the Lord as their head, they will take the attitude towards their wives that is honoring to God. If a man is living under the lordship of Christ, since the lordship of Christ is the focus of this section and should be the focus of all of our lives, the emphasis on submission to the Lord Jesus is best captured by Colossians 3:17: “Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father.”
The husband is to submit in a manner that is appropriate for those who are in the Lord. In other words, the husband is forbidden by God to become bitter towards his wife. He is forbidden by him; that’s a command.
Don’t even go there. Don’t even get close to going there. If you even get feelings in your mind and your heart towards your wife that are ill feelings, go right to God and confess them to him, and ask the Lord to help you to put on those things that are going to be beneficial to keep that marriage strong and peaceful and full of joy, and without this tug of war between the husband and the wife.
That’s what God wants. That’s what a spiritual marriage is. That’s what a transformed marriage is. That’s what a marriage that is progressing is.
Pressing On in Transformed Marriage
And I would say that after 43 years, we’re going to be married, that’s a long time. I think we’ve been through the mountains, the valleys, a lot of the valleys, and we’ve gone through it. And I would say that the only thing that is beneficial to me getting where I’m at is the word of God and the spirit of God and what the Bible teaches.
Because men, we can all go off, and women, we could all go off. All you have to do is listen to the world just a few days on the radio from morning to evening and you’re gone already.
You gotta fill your mind with the word of God. Keep going back to the word of God. Keep preaching it to yourself when you’re driving in the car. You keep preaching it to yourself until you get it, but until you do it, until you continually do it.
Husbands and wives, are you progressing in your spiritual maturity that is in line with the imperatives today? If you are, continue. If you’re not, repent and put off these old sinful garments, and do it for good. Lay them aside for good.
Press on. Put one foot in front of the other, breathing in and out, and do the next thing that honors God. And believe me, that will produce a joyful life, a progressive life, a stable life, a life that you can go into the world and be a testimony for Christ. Amen.
“Press on. Put one foot in front of the other and do the next thing that honors God.”
Let’s pray. Lord, thank you again. The word of God is powerful, and Holy Spirit, thank you so much for convicting us of sin.
When we are struggling sometimes in our marriage and things aren’t always going the way we want them to, I just pray, Lord, that when that happens we would come back to the word of God, to the Epistles of Ephesians and Colossians, to how God designed everything in Genesis, and begin to think on the very principles you laid out and the imperatives you have given us.
When we obey them, you give us everything we need to carry our relationship with our wives, our family, our church, and our children. You give us what we could never have gotten if we did it our own way.
Lord, I pray that you would bless marriages, give wisdom to the husbands, give wisdom to the wives, that they would have humble, moldable hearts, and that they would want to put these things into practice even today.
Every day forward they would do this, including myself. I prayed this, Lord, in your holy and precious name, in Christ I ask it. Amen.