Rocking the Roles: A Christ-Centered Household | Colossians 3:12-4:1
Brian Hedges | June 21, 2026
I want to invite you to turn in Scripture this morning to Colossians 3, the third chapter of Paul’s letter to the Colossians, as we continue our series called “Redeeming Marriage.” Today, the title of this message is “Rocking the Roles: A Christ-Centered Household.”
While you’re turning to Colossians 3, let me tell you a little story, a personal story from early in my and Holly’s marriage. This was very early in our marriage; I think we had only been married a week or so, maybe less than a week. We were still in Georgia, where we got married, and we were in Atlanta traffic one day. I was twenty-two years old; please hold that in mind as I tell this story.
I was emotionally immature and a fairly reckless driver, and we were in Atlanta traffic and Holly, twenty-one at the time, was sitting in the passenger seat watching me weave through the cars, and she was getting nervous. I don’t know how long she held it in, but eventually she said something. She was trying to correct my driving, and she spoke up in her nervousness; thought I was driving too aggressively.
Let me just say, I did not respond well. I got defensive instead of considering whether what she said was right. I pulled out what I thought was my trump card after a couple of moments of interaction, and I used the S word. I said, “You just need to submit.”
I know. It’s really bad!
There are so many things wrong with that picture, you know. One problem, of course, was that Holly was right. I wasn’t driving very well, and I was wrong. I was immature, angry, defensive—not a defensive driver, but defensive in other ways—and I was very clearly misusing the Bible in that moment.
Now, here’s a question. Was I wrong simply because I was immature, or had I fundamentally misunderstood the passages in Scripture that talk about submission? That’s what I want us to look at this morning, one of those passages in Scripture. Let me just say, Holly and I are now almost thirty years into marriage, and I honestly don’t really remember the last time I played the “submit” card. That’s not really how our marriage works anymore. We’ve changed a lot. I think both of us have grown, both of us have matured in many ways. We’re still growing, of course.
But one thing that has changed is the way I read and interpret what we call the household codes in the New Testament Scriptures. So these are found in four passages. They’re found in Colossians 3, Ephesians 5, Titus 2, and 1 Peter 3. It’s called a household code because it was a literary genre in the ancient world, as we’re going to see in a few moments. What I want to do is just focus on one of those passages, Colossians 3, and in doing so give us a template for interpreting and applying those passages to our lives today.
So we’re going to be in Colossians 3:12-4:1. Let me just say at the outset, this is going to be somewhat of a teaching sermon, so there’ll be a lot of notes on the slide. Don’t feel like you need to write all of that down. There will be a full transcript up by the end of the week. The slides will be available for download; you can have all that information. Just listen, write down what you think is helpful, but don’t try to get it all down on paper.
Okay, Colossians 3. Let’s read beginning in verse 12.
“Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
“Wives, submit 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 provoke your children, lest they become discouraged. Bondservants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality.
“Masters, treat your bondservants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven.”
This is God’s word.
I want to make three moves in the message this morning. I want us, first of all, to try to understand the household itself—understanding the household—the ancient form of literature that Paul is using.
Secondly, we’re going to discuss Christianizing the household, which is, I think, the radical thing Paul does in this passage.
Then thirdly—this will be the most practical part of the message—we’re going to talk about keeping Christ central in your household, in your marriage. How do you build a Christ-centered marriage?
1. Understanding the Household
So, number one, understanding the household. Before we can really apply this text, we need to understand the kind of household Paul is addressing, and there are several things to note here.
(1) The first is this, that the household code was a common literary form in the Greco-Roman world. Paul did not invent this template, this form of literature that you find in Paul’s letter several times and also in Peter’s letter—it’s slightly different in each one—addressing these common groups: husbands and wives, fathers and children, masters and slaves.
These household discussions predate the New Testament. You find this in Aristotle’s Politics. You also find some similar kinds of statements in the writers Philo and Josephus. They tend to discuss these basic household relationships: husband/wife, parent/child, master/slave. It was a common way of discussing social order in the world of that time, because the household was regarded as the most basic social unit of society. And the logic went like this: if the household is run well, then there will be order in society.
So if you actually look at Aristotle’s Politics, he starts with the household before he moves on to other levels of political order in society. He starts with the household. So we just need to know this was a common literary form in the ancient world.
(2) Secondly, ancient households were different than ours. There is some overlap, of course, but when we tend to think of a household today, we think of a nuclear family. We think of a mom, a dad, a handful of kids, a mortgage, and a dog, right? That’s what we think of today.
The ancient household tended to be larger and broader. So you might say it like this: the ancient household was more like Downton Abbey than like Leave it to Beaver.
So Downton Abbey, if you’ve ever seen that BBC show, it’s this family, the Crawley family, Lord and Lady Grantham, and they live in this huge mansion. And, you know, Lord Grantham is kind of the head of the household, with Lady Grantham and their four daughters—or five daughters, however many there were—and the grandmother lives in the house or nearby. But then there’s also the butler and the cook and the maids and the footman and the chauffeurs. There are all these servants, upstairs and downstairs. And Lord Grantham is kind of over the whole thing. It’s a whole unit. There’s a whole business that runs out of that household, a household that is much broader and deeper than anything today.
Much different, of course, than Ward and June and the Beaver. We tend to think of a 1950s nuclear family. That’s not what the ancient household was often like.
(3) Another thing that was different was the structure. So the head of the household, the person who kind of held the supreme position of authority, was called the paterfamilias, the father of the family. But this person would be not only the husband, he would be the head of the entire family that still lived, even if there were multiple generations within that household. He would also be the master of the slaves.
Of course, the slaves had few legal rights, if any. Aristotle actually said that the slaves were “human tools.” They didn’t really have rights. Women had fewer legal rights. The marriages were often arranged, and so the whole structure and the way people came into these households was different.
(4) Then here’s the final difference. In this Greco-Roman literature, the household codes were generally addressed to the people with power. So when you read Aristotle, he’s speaking most directly to the leader, to the husband or to the master. They weren’t really addressing the subordinates directly.
Now, just understanding this is important. We’ve got to understand the world of the Bible before we can apply the teaching of Scripture to our world today. So this raises a question: how do we read biblical texts written to a social structure that no longer exists in quite the same form? Our households today are different. None of our households include masters and slaves, and I think all of us would say that’s a good thing. This is a good development in Western civilization, largely due to the influence of Christianity, that the institution of slavery is largely abolished in the Western world. That’s a good thing. Slavery was a great evil, and we no longer have slaves. That’s good. So the households are different in that way.
More than that, households today are smaller, with marriages functioning more like equal partnerships. At least when two people get married, it’s not an arranged marriage. They both voluntarily enter into this relationship, usually about the same age, whereas in the ancient world, you would often have a husband who had married someone much, much younger in an arranged marriage. Or maybe he’s marrying a teenage girl, even though he’s ten, fifteen, twenty years older; and women with very few legal rights.
How do we translate what Paul said then to our world today, our homes, our households today, which are much different?
I think what’s helpful is what New Testament scholar John Stott calls “cultural transposition.” We have to do this with the Bible. All of us do this with the Bible intuitively all the time. You and I do not greet one another with a holy kiss, even though the Bible commands us to do that; we greet with our own cultural form of greeting, usually a handshake. The women in our congregation do not generally wear head coverings. We understand that was a cultural form that does not translate to our worship today. So we’re already doing this.
What we have to do, Stott says, is not ignore the text because the culture is different—we don’t write it off as if nothing applies—but neither do we try to reproduce every aspect of the ancient social structure. Instead, we have to understand and apply the enduring principles that transcend cultural forms.
That principle becomes especially important when we see what Paul does with the household code. And what’s really striking are the things that Paul says that nobody else would have said. It’s how he Christianizes the code. He takes the code, he takes the genre of literature, and he infuses it with new content. That’s what we’re going to see in point number two, Christianizing the household.
2. Christianizing the Household
We see Paul do this in four ways. Four things he does that make the New Testament household codes very different from what you would see in, say, Aristotle.
(1) Number one, Paul dignifies every member of the household. In the ancient world—in Aristotle and others—I don’t know of any examples where the subordinate members of the household are directly addressed. But Paul does that. He addresses the wives, he addresses the children, he addresses the slaves. That’s remarkable. He treats every member of the household as a morally responsible disciple of Jesus Christ.
It’s most remarkable with the slaves, which is actually the longest section in this passage of Scripture, where he addresses the slaves, and he reminds them that even though they’re slaves, they are to do their work under the Lord. And he says, “You have an inheritance. You have a reward. You have an inheritance, and God judges without partiality. You serve him, serve Christ.” He’s lifting them up. He’s dignifying them and showing that they are equal members of the body of Christ, of the kingdom of God. So he dignifies every member of the household by addressing them directly.
(2) Secondly, he subjects every member of the household to Christ. The most remarkable thing about this whole passage is how often “Jesus Christ as Lord” appears in the passage. There are just a few examples on the screen. “Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.” He’s lifting this up to the context of relationship with Christ. He tells the slaves, “You are serving the Lord Christ.” And maybe most remarkable of all, he tells the masters, “You also have a master. You have a master in heaven.”
In other words, the center of gravity has shifted. The center of gravity is not the paterfamilias; it’s not the person who has authority. The center of gravity is Christ, the Lord, and the household is to revolve around Christ as Lord. Everything here is spoken within the context of the lordship of Jesus Christ.
(3) That means, number three, that Paul relativizes the human authority under Christ’s lordship.
Now, note this: he does not abolish the structure, but what he does do is he places every authority structure beneath a greater authority. It’s implicit that husbands and fathers and masters all answer to Christ, explicit in the case of the slave masters. Authority remains, but it becomes delegated authority that is subordinate to and accountable to the Lord Jesus. What Paul is doing in this passage is he is showing the sovereignty of Christ over the household.
This also becomes clear when we look at the specific commands that are given to those who hold authority. Husbands—he tells them not, “Rule your wife”; he says, “Love your wives and do not be harsh with them.”
If you look at the parallel passage in Ephesians 5, he actually shows what the standard of this love is. It is, “Love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” The standard of love is the self-sacrificing, cruciform love of Jesus Christ.
It’s as if Paul is saying, “Husbands, if you want to wear this crown as the head of your household, remember that you are wearing a crown of thorns. You are called to sacrificial love. ‘Love your wives, do not be harsh with them.’ And as fathers, don’t provoke your children.” That’s one thing he says: “Do not provoke your children, lest they be discouraged. And masters, you are to be just and fair.”
In other words, he’s placing limits on the authority. He is placing checks and balances on the authority structure. He’s subordinating their authority to the authority and the sovereignty of Jesus Christ.
(4) Then finally, the fourth thing he does is he situates the household code within his broader teaching on Christian living.
There’s a reason that the household code in Colossians comes in chapter 3 and not in chapter 1. He doesn’t start here; it’s not his main concern. In fact, you have to look at kind of the flow of the whole letter to the Colossians. The theme of the letter to the Colossians is the supremacy and the sufficiency of Jesus Christ. Chapter 1 is all about the supremacy of Jesus Christ, “that in all things, Christ might be preeminent,” might be supreme.
Paul shows that he is supreme in creation and he is supreme in new creation as the firstborn from the dead, the first resurrected one; supreme in creation and in redemption.
Colossians 2 is all about the sufficiency of Jesus Christ and the sufficiency of the gospel, over and against every competing ideology, including mysticism and the veneration of angels and the ceremonies of the law.
It’s in chapter 3 that Paul makes this transition to begin talking about the Christian life, and he begins by reminding them that they are united to Christ. “If you are raised with Christ, set your minds on things above.” He’s reminding them of who they are in Christ. They’re part of a new creation. That, then, leads into this call to live a new life in Jesus Christ, and then comes the household instructions.
In other words, before Paul ever says, “Wives, submit to your husbands,” he says, “Put on compassionate hearts and kindness and humility and meekness and patience and bear with one another and forgive one another as Christ has forgiven you. And above all things, put on love. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, and let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, and speak to one another and instruct one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, and do everything in the name of Jesus Christ.” All of those commands provide the context in which the specific commands to each member of the household follow.
I think there’s an important implication from this. This means that the call to submission does not suspend the other privileges and obligations of discipleship. So a married Christian woman is first of all a child of God, a daughter of the king; and husbands, she is your sister in Christ, and she has all the privileges and the responsibilities that are common to all disciples of Christ. The command to submit does not suspend those other commands.
So that includes things like teaching and admonishing one another (verse 16), or, “If your brother sins against you, you are to tell him so” (Matthew 18), or, “If your brother is caught in a transgression, you restore him” (Galatians 6), or refuse to participate in the sins of others (1 Timothy 5:22), or defend the vulnerable and the oppressed (Isaiah 1 and other passages). A wife does not cease being a disciple because she is a wife, and the command to submit does not cancel out the many other commands that Christ gives to every believer.
That means we have to be careful in how we define, interpret, and apply this command.
Let me give you a definition of what I think submission is and then what it is not, in light of everything that’s been said so far.
First of all, here’s the positive definition. Submission can be defined as a Christian woman’s willing disposition to honor, support, and follow her husband’s wise and godly leadership as they seek to follow Christ together.
But get this: The call for a wife to submit to her husband cannot mean, does not mean, that she bows to her husband’s every wish and whim, especially if he is immature or in sin. It does not mean that she follows his leadership blindly when it is neither wise nor godly. And it does not mean, of course, that she should tolerate abuse of any kind, so behaviors where her own safety and wellbeing or those of her children are in danger.
It is right, then, for a woman who is married to sometimes confront and even correct her husband. Holly was right to call me out for my driving, and she’s been right many other times to call me out for attitudes or behavior that were not wise or not godly. Submission does not deny any of that.
So that brings us to an important question then. If Christian marriage is not, clearly, about a husband getting his way, and if the goal is not merely preserving an ancient authority structure, what is it? What does it mean to make Christ central in your own marriage and in your own household?
3. Keeping Christ Central in Your Household
So point number three, keeping Christ central in your household. What I want to do is point out five things that Paul says in this passage. I’ll show them to you in the text and then translate it into a practical skill or set of skills that have to be learned and cultivated in marriage.
Of course, these are broader than marriage. Paul isn’t speaking these things only to husbands and wives, though it includes them, but these are things that all of us are called to put into practice, whatever the shape of our household, whatever the shape of our discipleship and our relationships with others.
So I’ll state the principle, then show how it translates into practical skill.
(1) Number one: Be clothed in the character of Christ. You see it in Colossians 3:12-14, where Paul commands us to put on the virtues of compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience—five virtues—and then says we are to bear with one another and forgive one another as Christ has forgiven us. “And above all these things put on love.”
Now, let me just say, if husbands and wives would do that—would just do that—90 percent of marriage conflicts would take care of themselves, if husbands and wives would do this. If there’s compassion, if there’s kindness, if there’s humility, if there’s meekness, if there’s patience, if there’s forbearance, if there’s forgiveness, if there is love—most of the problems do not become huge, huge issues. The huge issues develop when those things are absent. Put on the character of Christ.
The biggest problem in most Christian marriages is that the partners in that marriage are inadequately conformed to the image of Christ. In other words, further sanctification is needed.
Of course, it is one of the great graces in marriage, as Gary Thomas points out in his book Sacred Marriage, that God gives us marriage not just to make us happy, but to make us holy. Marriage is a crucible that tests us in just these things, and it is one of the primary places—not the only place, but it’s one of the primary places—where we are conformed to the image of Jesus Christ as we are tested and called up to live in this way.
Now, the practical skill here is to simply ask some questions. “How would Jesus respond to my spouse? How would a spouse who genuinely is humble and kind and patient and forgiving—how would that kind of a spouse, that kind of partner act in this situation?” And then do that; then act like that, even if you don’t feel like it. You look at the model, Jesus, translate it into marriage, and then you put it into practice.
Even if you don’t feel that way, if you start seeking to live that way, it has a gradual transformational effect. There’s a great place in C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity called “Let’s Pretend,” where he talks about how children, when they are young, play like they’re grown-ups. They act like adults, you know, and they’ll sometimes dress up in grown-up clothes and they’re play-acting. But he argues that the very act of doing that is part of the maturation process. It’s one of the ways that they actually grow up into adulthood.
He says that the same is true in our spiritual lives, and he says there is a kind of pretending that is not hypocrisy, it’s not pretense; it is essentially a part of our formation. You start acting in loving ways towards someone that maybe you don’t have any feelings of love for, but if you treat them in loving ways, you act with loving behaviors, what you discover over time is that the feelings catch up and you actually begin to become a loving person.
Every marriage is faced with this process, as we learn to become Christlike and to treat one another with the love that Christ calls. That’s number one: be clothed in the character of Christ.
(2) Number two: Be ruled by the peace of Christ. Paul says, “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.” This peace is not simply the subjective experience or feeling of peace. Paul’s already talked about the peace that Christ has secured through his work on the cross (Colossians 1:20). This peace is the reconciliation between God and human beings, between heaven and earth, and ultimately, reconciliation that finds its horizontal dimension, reconciliation in our relationships with one another.
So when Paul says, “Let the peace of Christ rule,” he’s telling the church, “The harmony, the peace, the shalom that Christ came to bring and die for on the cross, that should rule in your midst.” That’s also true in marriage. Christ came to bring harmony and peace, and when we live in conflict with one another we are living at cross purposes with what Christ came to bring.
Here’s a practical thing I think this means. It means we have to learn to de-escalate conflict rather than escalate it. We have to remember that Christ calls us to peace, not to conflict. And most of the time most of the time, the issues that couples argue about are non-moral issues. Most of the time they are preferential issues. It’s my way versus her way, my way versus his way. And when a couple persists in conflict in those situations, they are putting their own interests above the wellbeing of the marriage and of the relationship and above the peace that Christ has called us to.
So when those situations arise, as they do in every marriage—in every marriage these arise, potential conflicts—every time that happens it’s like a match. Somebody strikes a match, drops it on the tinder of your relationship; you can do one of two things. You can put it out, douse it with the water of grace and love and patience and humility and kindness and so on, or you can pour gasoline on it and watch it burn. So often we escalate rather than de-escalate. We get defensive, we get mean, we get cruel, we start saying things that we shouldn’t say. We let anger take over, we let selfishness drive the train, and we forget the peace to which Christ has called us. Let the peace of Christ rule in your marriage and in your home and in your life.
(3) Number three: Be filled with the word of Christ. Verse 16, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.” The word of Christ here is the message of Christ; it’s the gospel. Let the gospel or the message of Christ dwell in you richly.
That means that the gospel should be central in our hearts and in our lives. Now practically, that means we have to be feeding on the truths of the gospel through the word of God and through reading and meditating and praying the Scriptures. This is how the Spirit of God works to actually bring about transformation in our lives.
In fact, there’s an interesting parallel between Colossians 3 and Ephesians 5. In Colossians 3, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly,” and then a list of results; in Ephesians 5 it’s, “Be filled with the Spirit,” and then the same list of results, or very similar, and it shows that the Spirit works in concert with the word.
So practically speaking, what are some practical skills? Well, here’s one: build a rich personal devotional life, where you personally are feeding on Scripture, you are reading the Scriptures, you are hearing the words of Jesus. As we saw in the Sermon on the Mount, it’s not just the hearer; it’s the one who hears and does who is the wise person who builds their house on the rock.
Let me just say that this applies to both husbands and wives, and really it applies to every disciple in this room, whatever your age, whatever your marital status. You need a devotional life.
Let me just address husbands for a moment real directly. You need a rich devotional life if you are to lead your family as Christ wants you to lead your family. You can’t do it with your own wisdom. You’ve got to be shaped by the word. You’ve got to be shaped by the gospel. You’ve got to be filled with the word of Christ. If the only time you’re pulling out the Bible is to use it as a battering ram to get your own way or a bludgeon to beat your wife and your children, metaphorically speaking, into submission, you’re misusing the Bible. Instead, you need to be feeding on the word so that you’re looking first at, “What does it say to me? What does Christ require of me? What does God want of me? How does God want to change me? How does he call me to love and to serve and to be grateful, to be kind and to be humble, not to be harsh? How is God’s word correcting me?”
If you’re not doing that, don’t ever think you’re going to lead your family well. You need a rich devotional life. You’ve got to be in the word of God. That applies to all of us this morning.
(4) Number four: Be thankful for the grace of Christ. Grace and gratitude belong together, somebody said, like thunder and lightning. God gives so much grace, the grace so clear here in this letter, and it’s why three times in this section Paul returns to thanksgiving. Be thankful. Be thankful. With thanksgiving. Be thankful.
He’s calling us to gratitude. So often the currency of our communication is not gratitude, it’s criticism. Paul calls us to something better.
Practically, that means you have to learn to notice and express appreciation. Notice the evidences of grace in your spouse’s life. Notice the good things they do. Notice the qualities you appreciate, and then say something. Say it. Write the card. Express the words. Put it into a verbal or a written form so that you are expressing gratitude in your life.
Here’s a great measure: for every one word of gentle, constructive criticism, let there be at least ten words of appreciation. Overwhelmingly show gratitude and appreciation in your marriage; it will make a difference.
(5) Finally, number five: Be devoted to the name of Christ. As I’ve already said, the center of gravity shifts away from the authority of the husband or the preferences of either the husband or the wife. The center of gravity here is Christ. It is the name of Christ. So Paul says, “Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of Christ.” This is the governing priority in all of our lives. This is the criteria by which you evaluate decisions that you make in your marriage and for your family. You ask, “What will most honor Christ?” You learn to subordinate every competing priority to this.
Practically, it means prioritizing worship in your household, prioritizing the life of the church, ordering your family life around that. Then you build rhythms and encourage rhythms that reinforce the centrality of Christ in your life.
So we tried this morning to understand the ancient household, we’ve seen how Paul Christianizes the household, and then these five ways to keep Christ central in your marriage, in your household and in your life as a disciple, as you build your marriage on the character of Christ, the peace of Christ, the word of Christ, the grace of Christ, and the name of Christ.
Let me just return one final time to that moment in Atlanta in 1996. It’s been long enough that I don’t actually remember what was going on in my head at the time. But I think I entered into marriage with a fairly wooden understanding of the roles of husband and wife, without really understanding the whole context. So it obviously didn’t take very long for me to pull the “submit” card, and it shows how much growth I still needed.
I didn’t understand that the most important word in Christian marriage is not the word submit. The most important word in Christian marriage is Christ. It is Christ the Lord, Christ the Savior, Christ the Redeemer, Christ who gives us the model by showing us how he uses authority. How did Christ use his authority? He used it to serve. Here’s the king, and he dies for his subjects. Here is the divine husband, and he gives up his life for his bride. Here is the master teacher, and he washes the feet of his disciples. That’s the model. It took me a long time to begin to understand that.
I want to tell you that the healthiest marriages are not the marriages where one person gets his way or her way, it’s not the marriage where the husband dominates or the wife dominates; it’s the marriage where Christ reigns supreme as Lord and where we follow in his footsteps, where we imitate his character, where we let his word so fill and permeate our lives that everything changes as we seek to become more like Christ and to imitate him and his love. That’s what the gospel calls us to this morning. That’s what you and I are called to in our marriages, our homes, our families, our relationships, and in our discipleship to Jesus. Let’s pray together.
Gracious, merciful God, we thank you this morning for the grace that you have shown us through your Son, Jesus Christ. Lord, when we stop for a moment to just think of what it means that the king has died for us, that the master has served us, that our divine husband has given his life for us, it should break our hearts as we think about how often we’ve sinned against that love, it should humble our hearts, and it should reform, reshape our hearts so that we want to live that way. I pray, Lord, for that right now, that in every heart in this room that by your Spirit you would make this portrait of the Christ-centered household and the Christ-centered life beautiful to us and compelling to us. In fact, Father, what I pray is that you would make Christ himself beautiful and compelling to us, that we would see with new eyes who Jesus is, what Jesus has done, and what Jesus now calls us to.
We thank you this morning for the grace you’ve shown us in our lives. Lord, I thank you for the grace that you’ve shown me in marriage, not least of all through Holly’s love and patience, but also the grace you’ve shown us together in helping us through struggles over thirty years. And Lord, I pray that now for the marriages in this room, especially for those who maybe feel like they’re barely hanging on. Would you breathe in a word of hope today? Would you give a new vision for what life together in the kingdom of God can be? And would you begin helping husbands and wives to make those small, daily choices and changes that will reshape their marriage so that it becomes a copy of the ultimate marriage, the marriage of Christ and the church?
As we come now to the Lord’s table, we ask you to use these moments and use the table as a means of grace to help us today, to help us see what Christ has done and to taste the goodness of it, so that in tasting and seeing that you are good our hearts will be satisfied and sanctified, changed in the way that we need. Lord, help us not to check out in these moments but instead to engage our hearts in prayerfully seeking you, seeking to follow you as you’ve called us. We ask you, Lord, to draw near to us in these moments by your Spirit. We pray it in Jesus’ name and for sake, amen.
Brian G. Hedges
