Jesus at Home
If Jesus Is Lord of Your Heart, Let Him Be Lord of Your Home
There is a well-known story about a celebrated preacher and writer from the early 20th century whose published works on the pursuit of God and the knowledge of the Holy have shaped the spiritual lives of countless believers. By every public measure, he was a giant of the faith. Yet when his wife was asked to compare her first marriage to her second, she did not hesitate. She said her first husband loved Jesus Christ, but her second husband loved her.
That contrast cuts deep. It forces a question that is uncomfortable precisely because it is so personal: Is the faith we display in public actually taking root where it matters most, behind closed doors, in the ordinary and often messy terrain of family life?
The passage found in Colossians 3:18 through 4:1 addresses this question head-on. Paul writes to a community of believers who have embraced the good news of Jesus Christ and are learning what it means to walk in him. And rather than confining his instructions to the sanctuary or the public square, he takes the gospel straight into the household. He speaks to wives and husbands, to children and fathers, to slaves and masters. He does not skip the hard relationships or the complicated dynamics. He walks right into the middle of them.
The principle that emerges from his instructions is straightforward, even if living it out is anything but: if Jesus is the Lord of your heart, let him be the Lord of your home.
Everyone Answers to the Same Lord
One of the most striking features of this passage is how many times Paul points his readers upward. In just nine verses, he references the Lord seven times. He tells wives to submit as is fitting in the Lord (Colossians 3:18). He tells children to obey because it pleases the Lord (Colossians 3:20). He tells slaves to work wholeheartedly, fearing the Lord, and reminds them that they serve the Lord Christ (Colossians 3:22-24). He reminds masters that they too have a Master in heaven (Colossians 4:1).
The effect is cumulative and powerful. No matter where a person stood in the household hierarchy of the ancient world, Paul was insisting that every member of a Christian home answers to the same authority. The Roman legal system of Paul's day granted the head of the household nearly unlimited power over his wife, his children, and his slaves. Paul does not simply echo that arrangement. He reframes it entirely. In a Christian home, there is a different Lord, and everyone is accountable to him.
This is not a small thing. It means that what happens in the privacy of your home is not hidden from the one who matters most. The Lord Jesus sees it all. The patience you extend or withhold. The tone of voice you use when no one from church is watching. The way you speak to your spouse after a hard day. The way you respond when your children push every button you have. All of it is seen, and all of it matters.
Authority Transformed by Love
Paul's instructions to those in positions of authority within the household are where the passage becomes genuinely countercultural. Yes, wives are called to submit. Yes, children are called to obey. Yes, slaves are called to work faithfully. But the instructions directed at husbands, fathers, and masters are where the gospel most visibly disrupts the assumptions of the ancient world.
Of all the household codes that have survived from antiquity, from Aristotle to the Stoic philosophers of Paul's day, not one instructs a husband to love his wife. Paul does. He tells husbands to love their wives and not to be bitter toward them (Colossians 3:19). The love he has in mind is not the love of convenience or romance that rises and falls with circumstances. It is the selfless, sacrificial love that Christ demonstrated for his church, the love described in Philippians 2 where Paul writes that Christ did not grasp at his equality with God but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant.
Fathers are told not to exasperate their children, lest they become discouraged (Colossians 3:21). There is a parenting vision embedded in this instruction that goes far beyond rule enforcement. It is the vision of a father whose authority is exercised in such a way that his children find obedience natural rather than crushing. N.T. Wright has observed that fathers bear the responsibility of demonstrating the truth of the gospel to their children, communicating through their love and grace that acceptance is not earned by performance.
Masters are told to deal with their slaves justly and fairly, with the reminder that they themselves have a Master in heaven (Colossians 4:1). The seeds planted in this instruction eventually grew into the abolitionist movements that dismantled slavery in the Western world entirely.
When People Fall Short
Family life is not lived in ideal conditions. The Bible makes no attempt to pretend otherwise. From the very first family in the garden to the households of Abraham, Jacob, David, and Samuel, the scriptural record is full of dysfunction, failure, and heartbreak. The people closest to us will let us down. We will let them down.
Paul's instructions do not pretend this will not happen. Instead, they point us back to the same source of grace that saved us in the first place. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us, as Paul writes in Romans 5:8. He did not wait for us to get our lives together. He loved us in our unloveliness. If that love now lives in us through his Spirit, we are equipped to extend something of that same grace to the people who share our homes.
This does not excuse harshness, cruelty, or abuse. But it does mean that when the ordinary frustrations of family life rise to the surface, we have somewhere to turn. We can look to Jesus and trust him with the imperfect people he has placed in our lives, and with the imperfect person we ourselves are.
The family was the first institution God created. Before the church, before the state, he made a home. And he has not stopped caring about what happens inside of it. The question worth sitting with today is a simple one: does the Lord who has your heart also have your home?
There is a well-known story about a celebrated preacher and writer from the early 20th century whose published works on the pursuit of God and the knowledge of the Holy have shaped the spiritual lives of countless believers. By every public measure, he was a giant of the faith. Yet when his wife was asked to compare her first marriage to her second, she did not hesitate. She said her first husband loved Jesus Christ, but her second husband loved her.
That contrast cuts deep. It forces a question that is uncomfortable precisely because it is so personal: Is the faith we display in public actually taking root where it matters most, behind closed doors, in the ordinary and often messy terrain of family life?
The passage found in Colossians 3:18 through 4:1 addresses this question head-on. Paul writes to a community of believers who have embraced the good news of Jesus Christ and are learning what it means to walk in him. And rather than confining his instructions to the sanctuary or the public square, he takes the gospel straight into the household. He speaks to wives and husbands, to children and fathers, to slaves and masters. He does not skip the hard relationships or the complicated dynamics. He walks right into the middle of them.
The principle that emerges from his instructions is straightforward, even if living it out is anything but: if Jesus is the Lord of your heart, let him be the Lord of your home.
Everyone Answers to the Same Lord
One of the most striking features of this passage is how many times Paul points his readers upward. In just nine verses, he references the Lord seven times. He tells wives to submit as is fitting in the Lord (Colossians 3:18). He tells children to obey because it pleases the Lord (Colossians 3:20). He tells slaves to work wholeheartedly, fearing the Lord, and reminds them that they serve the Lord Christ (Colossians 3:22-24). He reminds masters that they too have a Master in heaven (Colossians 4:1).
The effect is cumulative and powerful. No matter where a person stood in the household hierarchy of the ancient world, Paul was insisting that every member of a Christian home answers to the same authority. The Roman legal system of Paul's day granted the head of the household nearly unlimited power over his wife, his children, and his slaves. Paul does not simply echo that arrangement. He reframes it entirely. In a Christian home, there is a different Lord, and everyone is accountable to him.
This is not a small thing. It means that what happens in the privacy of your home is not hidden from the one who matters most. The Lord Jesus sees it all. The patience you extend or withhold. The tone of voice you use when no one from church is watching. The way you speak to your spouse after a hard day. The way you respond when your children push every button you have. All of it is seen, and all of it matters.
Authority Transformed by Love
Paul's instructions to those in positions of authority within the household are where the passage becomes genuinely countercultural. Yes, wives are called to submit. Yes, children are called to obey. Yes, slaves are called to work faithfully. But the instructions directed at husbands, fathers, and masters are where the gospel most visibly disrupts the assumptions of the ancient world.
Of all the household codes that have survived from antiquity, from Aristotle to the Stoic philosophers of Paul's day, not one instructs a husband to love his wife. Paul does. He tells husbands to love their wives and not to be bitter toward them (Colossians 3:19). The love he has in mind is not the love of convenience or romance that rises and falls with circumstances. It is the selfless, sacrificial love that Christ demonstrated for his church, the love described in Philippians 2 where Paul writes that Christ did not grasp at his equality with God but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant.
Fathers are told not to exasperate their children, lest they become discouraged (Colossians 3:21). There is a parenting vision embedded in this instruction that goes far beyond rule enforcement. It is the vision of a father whose authority is exercised in such a way that his children find obedience natural rather than crushing. N.T. Wright has observed that fathers bear the responsibility of demonstrating the truth of the gospel to their children, communicating through their love and grace that acceptance is not earned by performance.
Masters are told to deal with their slaves justly and fairly, with the reminder that they themselves have a Master in heaven (Colossians 4:1). The seeds planted in this instruction eventually grew into the abolitionist movements that dismantled slavery in the Western world entirely.
When People Fall Short
Family life is not lived in ideal conditions. The Bible makes no attempt to pretend otherwise. From the very first family in the garden to the households of Abraham, Jacob, David, and Samuel, the scriptural record is full of dysfunction, failure, and heartbreak. The people closest to us will let us down. We will let them down.
Paul's instructions do not pretend this will not happen. Instead, they point us back to the same source of grace that saved us in the first place. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us, as Paul writes in Romans 5:8. He did not wait for us to get our lives together. He loved us in our unloveliness. If that love now lives in us through his Spirit, we are equipped to extend something of that same grace to the people who share our homes.
This does not excuse harshness, cruelty, or abuse. But it does mean that when the ordinary frustrations of family life rise to the surface, we have somewhere to turn. We can look to Jesus and trust him with the imperfect people he has placed in our lives, and with the imperfect person we ourselves are.
The family was the first institution God created. Before the church, before the state, he made a home. And he has not stopped caring about what happens inside of it. The question worth sitting with today is a simple one: does the Lord who has your heart also have your home?
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