The Rooted Life Goes Public

Five weeks on the mountaintop. The image of the invisible God. The fullness of deity dwelling bodily. The debt canceled, the powers disarmed, your life hidden with Christ in God. A lesser letter would end on the summit. Paul walks it down the stairs and into the kitchen.

Watch the hinge. Chapter 3 verse 17 said whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then verse 18 tells you what whatever means. Your marriage. Your kids. Your Monday. Your mouth. Your friends.

Which means the test of this series was never whether you enjoyed it. The test is whether the Christ we have been preaching for six weeks shows up in the room where nobody claps.

There Is No Secular Hallway

Paul is writing what the ancient world called a household code. Aristotle wrote one. The Stoics wrote them. Every one of them addressed the same man, the free adult male who held near total legal power over his wife, his children, and his slaves.

Now watch what Paul does with the form. He addresses the wives first. He addresses the children directly. In a culture where those two were treated as property, Paul speaks to them as people with a Lord and a choice, and that alone was a scandal.

To the wife, submit, hypotasso, to arrange yourself in order under. It is middle voice, which means it is something she does, not something done to her. Nobody in this passage is handed authority to hypotasso somebody else. And Paul calls it aneko, what is fitting, what belongs in a house where Jesus is Lord. Not what was fitting in Rome. Fitting in the Lord.

Then hear the wall Paul builds in the very next breath. Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them. That is not a suggestion. That is a boundary with the Lord standing on it. Submission has never been a command to absorb cruelty, and a man who uses verse 18 to ignore verse 19 has torn the passage in half. If you are being harmed in your home, this text is not asking you to endure it quietly. It is condemning the one harming you. Come talk to me.

How does a husband know what that love looks like? Look at the Lord this letter has been preaching for six weeks. The One in whom the fullness of deity dwells bodily laid down every right He had and loved His bride to death on a cross. Authority in this house looks like a man with a towel and nail scars.

Then to fathers. Do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged. Athymeo. The only time this word appears in the New Testament, and it does not mean sad. Thymos is the spirit in a person, the drive, the fire. The alpha in front of it puts the fire out. Fathers, hear that. You can win every argument in your house and put out the fire in your kid. You can be right at a volume that makes a nine year old stop trying. God is watching the temperature of your voice.

You Are Serving the Lord Christ

Notice the phrase that governs every line of this passage. In the Lord. Fitting in the Lord. Pleases the Lord. Fearing the Lord. For the Lord. Serving the Lord Christ. You have a Master in heaven. Seven times in nine verses Paul anchors the whole household to Jesus. This is not a chain of command for its own sake. It is a house with one Lord in it, and every person in the house answers to Him directly.

Then he turns to the workday. Not by way of ophthalmodouleia. Eye service. It is a word we do not find in Greek anywhere before Paul, and it looks like he built it. Eye plus service. The work you do when the eye is on you. The man who is a different worker when the manager walks past.

Be honest about how far that goes. Some of us have an eye service marriage. An eye service faith. Six weeks of amen in that room and a different man in the truck on Monday. But there is no secular hallway. It is all His house, and He is in every room of it whether you are performing or not.

Then Paul says the thing that would have stopped the room cold. Knowing that from the Lord you will receive the kleronomia, the inheritance. That is the Old Testament word for the allotted portion, the land, the family share handed down.

Remember who is listening. A bondservant in Colossae owned nothing that was truly his own. By law he had no portion, no claim on anything he worked for, and nothing to leave behind. He is the one man in that room with no inheritance coming. And Paul looks straight at him and says, from the Lord you will receive the inheritance. Not a bonus. Not a reward for good behavior. The inheritance, the son's portion, handed to the one the law said could never hold it.

That is not a work ethic. That is the gospel wearing work clothes. And it stands on what Paul already said in 3:11, that in Christ there is not slave, free, but Christ is all, and in all. The Son who owned everything took the form of a servant so that servants could be handed the inheritance of sons.

Then the sober line nobody preaches. For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality. In a Roman court the master's word beat the slave's every time. Paul says there is a court where it will not. The man who runs a cruel house and a clean image is not getting away with it. God does not check your title before He rules.

Which is why he lands on the masters. Treat your bondservants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven. In Greek it is a pun with teeth. Masters, kyrioi, you have a Kyrios. Nobody in this house gets a throne. There is one Lord, and everyone in the room answers to Him.

He Prayed for a Door, Not a Key

The rooted life turns inward first, to prayer. Continue steadfastly. Proskartereo. To hold fast, to stay strong toward, to refuse to leave. Luke uses it of the first church in Acts 2, where they devoted themselves to the prayers. It is not a word about feeling. It is a word about staying.

Which means most of us did not decide to stop praying. We drifted, and we called it a season. Rooted people do not drift. When you do not feel it, you show up anyway.

Now look at what a man in chains asks people to pray for. Not release. A door for the word. Paul is in prison for preaching, and he asks them to pray that God would open a door so he can preach more. He did not pray for a key. He prayed for a door.

We pray for exits. Get me out of this job, out of this diagnosis, out of this hard season. Paul looks at the same walls and prays, Lord, use it. What if the season you keep begging God to end is the door He opened?

And what comes through that door is the musterion, the mystery of Christ. Do not hear mystery as a puzzle. In Paul it means what was hidden and has now been announced out loud, and he has used this word all through the letter. In 1:26 to 27 the mystery hidden for ages is revealed, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. In 2:2 God's mystery is Christ Himself.

So when Paul asks for a door for the mystery, he is asking for one thing. A chance to say the name of Jesus to somebody who has not heard it. Christ in you. That is the mystery, and that is what all six weeks have been for.

Buy Up the Time, Season the Words

Then he sends you outside. Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Exagorazo, a marketplace word, to buy up, to purchase out. The moments with the people outside that room are for sale, and Paul says buy every one.

That neighbor is not an interruption in your day. That coworker is not scenery. They are a door, and doors close.

And then your mouth. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt. Artuo, to season, the word for what salt does to food. Hear the whole Bible in that grain. In Leviticus 2:13 every offering was seasoned with salt, the sign of the covenant. Jesus said you are the salt of the earth.

So Christian speech is neither bland nor caustic. Not the tasteless religion that never says anything true, and not the harsh tongue that wins the argument and loses the person. Salt, not sugar. Salt, not acid.

Some of us have been critical and called it standing for truth. Some of us have been silent and called it grace. Both of us are disobeying this verse.

And notice why Paul says it. So that you may know how you ought to answer each person. Each person. Not a script you unload on everybody. The gospel does not change, but you have to know who is in front of you.

Prayer is the root going down. Witness is the fruit coming up. He prayed for a door, not a key.

Two Men Named Useful

The greatest letter on the supremacy of Christ ever written ends with a list of names. Do not skim it. These names preach.

Start with Onesimus, and understand what Paul just did. Onesimus was a runaway slave. He belonged to Philemon, a man sitting in that very congregation. He had run, and under Roman law his life was forfeit to whatever his master decided. Paul is sending him back down that road, into that room, carrying this letter. And Paul introduces him as our faithful and beloved brother, who is one of you.

Now hear the name. Onesimus means Useful. It was a common slave name, the way you would name a tool. And in the letter to Philemon that travels alongside this one, Paul makes a pun he clearly could not resist. Formerly he was achrestos to you, useless, but now he is euchrestos, useful.

Hold that word. Euchrestos.

Now go down the list to Mark. Years earlier Mark had quit. He abandoned Paul and Barnabas in the middle of the work, and when Barnabas wanted to bring him again Paul flatly refused, and the two of them split over it. Acts 15 does not soften it. A hard, public falling out over a man who bailed. And here is Mark, in the greeting list, welcome. And at the very end of Paul's life, in the last letter he ever wrote, get Mark and bring him with you, for he is euchrestos to me for ministry. Very useful.

Church, do you see it? The same word. The runaway slave and the man who quit, and Paul reaches for the identical word for both. Two men the world had written off, and the gospel handed them back the same name.

So write your name in that list. If you ran, you are standing with Onesimus. If you quit, you are standing with Mark. And the verdict over both is the same, and neither one earned it. Jesus took the useless and made them useful by dying for them. He does not restore you because you turned out to be worth it. He restores you because He is worth it.

Then Epaphras, the man who planted that church, still on his knees. Always agonizomai on your behalf in his prayers. The athletic word, the wrestler straining in the ring, and we get our word agony from it. Some of you are the answer to a prayer somebody bled for and never told you about.

And then one quiet name that should scare us. Demas. Just a greeting here, standing shoulder to shoulder with Luke. But at the end Paul writes, Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me. He was in the room. He was on the list. And he still walked away, not driven off by persecution but pulled away by loving this world more. Sitting in a good room with good people is not the same as holding to Christ. You can be in the greeting and not be in the end.

Then Paul aims a sentence at one man by name. Say to Archippus, see that you fulfill the ministry that you have received in the Lord. Fulfill it. Fill it full. Finish what God handed you. Somebody reading this knows exactly what God has put in your hands and you have been carrying it half filled.

Then Paul takes the pen from the scribe. I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. Remember my chains. Grace be with you. The man who lifted us to the image of the invisible God signs off in his own shaky handwriting, from a cell, and asks us to remember he is in irons for this gospel.

That is how the letter that gave us Colossians 1 ends. Not with a platform. With a shackle, a list of ordinary names, and grace.

The gospel does not travel on the shoulders of the famous. It travels on the backs of named, ordinary, faithful people.