09 What It Means to Do Everything in the Name of the Lord (Colossians 3:18-4:1)

Hello, Christopher, welcoming you to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. What the Bible means and how we know. Today we'll be looking at Colossians 3, verses 18 through chapter 4, verse 1. This is the ninth talk in our series on the book of Colossians. If you'd like to follow along with the lecture notes, you can find them at wednesdayintheword.com slash Colossians 9. wednesdayintheword.com slash Colossians 9. Thanks for joining us. When my daughter was about four years old, we were doing a puzzle together, and she had two of the pieces reversed. She was struggling to make them fit in the wrong spots, and finally she grew so frustrated she asked for help. I told her to take a look at the pieces again and try them the other way around. Well, she ignored my advice and kept struggling with the puzzle, growing increasingly frustrated and demanding that I help her. And I said, Sweetie, I already told you the solution, but you don't believe me. And she answered with perfect childhood logic, I believe you, mommy, but it's not true. Well, acting consistently with what we say we believe is at the heart of Paul's exhortation in this section of the book of Colossians. So just to review where we are, Paul is writing to a church that's on the verge of believing a legalistic gospel. And this legalistic gospel says you have to practice certain practices to maintain your favor with God. He's given us clues that they are things like keeping Sabbaths, new moons, festivals, and certain rituals. And Paul has been encouraging them to flee from that kind of a gospel and to remain true to the gospel that says you are saved by grace through faith in the blood of Christ. In other words, the gospel they first believed. And in this exhortation section, Paul is essentially saying the kinds of things you should be worried about are not those rules and practices and rituals such as when you eat, when you fast, when you rest, when you work, and so on. Rather, you should be concerned about your attitudes and your values. Paul sees this dynamic relationship between what we believe and how we live. The idea is that when I come to believe the gospel is true, it does in fact change the way I live my life. It has an effect on my choices, it has an effect on what I value, it changes my actions, my reactions, and the things I say. But that change results from the Holy Spirit working inside me. It does not result from the practices that I practice on the outside. Through this series of exhortations, Paul has been saying, here are some of the places where belief matters. These are some of the places where the rubber meets the road, and you have a choice to make. You will be placed in these situations where you have to live your life in a certain way. And if you believe the gospel, it means something. It should affect the choices you make in that situation. It should affect how you act and react in these areas. So these exhortations are not just a series of, well, do these kinds of things and your life will go better. Or do this because it's the right way to go. It's more pointed than that. It's do this because you have embraced the gospel, and embracing the gospel means something. You heard this story about Jesus and what he came to do. You embrace the picture of reality he painted, and these are the implications of embracing that picture. So let's back up to 316 from last week just to set the stage for where we are in the book. In 316 and 17, he said, 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. So let the word of Christ dwell among you richly. In other words, let the importance of this story about Christ change you from the inside out. The things he taught, let them make a real difference. Christ is at the center of everything God is doing. God has given him all authority, God reveals himself through Christ. You've come to believe that, let that make a difference. We have so much entertainment, we have so many responsibilities, our jobs take our attention, our smartphones take a ton of our attention, our houses take attention, our families, health and fitness, recreation. And Paul is saying, all that's well and good, but the gospel is the thing that ought to encourage and nurture you. The gospel is something you ought to make a big part of your life because the gospel is food for your souls. There's no point in being physically fit if you're spiritually dead. So if you say the gospel means something to you, then you ought to pursue it. You ought to follow where it leads. All of us are susceptible to distractions and the tyranny of the urgent and the busy. And if I organize my life such that, okay, I do my job, I nurture my family, I eat good meals, I decorate my house, I enjoy fine wine and beach vacations and physical fitness. And then and only then, if there's any time left over, well, Bible study, the Bible, the things of God, that's just the icing on the cake. If I organize my life that way, I have missed what's truly important. Because all that stuff is going to burn. And the thing that's going to last is the gospel. From Paul's perspective, the gospel is not just one good thing among many good things. It is the good thing. It is not the extra cherry on top of a rich and full life. The gospel is what makes life rich and full. We ought to want to think about these things to grow in the story and further our understanding. That's, I think, all behind what he means by let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. There will come a day when all that other stuff is going to fall by the wayside, and the only thing left that's going to have eternal significance is how you responded to the question, who is Jesus and what did he do for you? And then in 317, whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. I think that verse sets up the section we're going to look at today. Whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. So how we speak and act, we are to do that in the name of the Lord Jesus. And let's talk about that because that's one of those Christian phrases that kind of goes in one ear and out that out the other. What does it mean to do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus? In the name of generally means I am acting in the place of another. Now, in certain contexts and situations it might have different nuances, but the basic idea is someone is acting in the place of someone else. So one person is not here and I am acting in his stead. I am acting in his name because he is not here to speak for himself. So in the situation where the person is not physically present, I am doing things that he would do if he were physically present. So you might remember in old TV shows you'd see the policeman banging on the door and he'd say, Open up in the name of the law. Well, as a private citizen, the policeman doesn't have the right to demand that you open the door. But as an officer of the law, he has the right to demand you open the door because he represents the law of the land. He's not speaking as Joe Smith, he's speaking as an officer of the law. The law gives him the right to enter. And he's asking you to respond to him as a representative of the law, not as your next door neighbor. So in that sense, he is acting in the name of the law. In the same way, we see the apostles speaking and acting in the name of Jesus. They claim they've been given the authority of Jesus. Jesus is no longer physically present, but they have been granted the authority to speak for him as if he were present. And that's the idea when Paul says he's an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ or his bondservant. He's saying, You should listen to me, not because I have a PhD in religion, but because I am speaking the ideas that Jesus explained. I am speaking the message he authorized me to speak. If he were here, this is what he would say. So I am speaking in his name. And Paul is asking us to believe and follow him because he speaks in the name of Jesus. And that's what sets up these series of exhortations. Do everything you do in the name of Jesus, as a representative of the Lord Jesus Christ. Because you are now a follower of Jesus, you are not acting as a private citizen, you are acting as a representative of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then he gives us examples of what it looks like to act in the name of the Lord in these specific situations. He gives us three pairs of relationships, and in each pair, each side has an obligation to treat the other appropriately based on that relationship. So in each pair, one person has one responsibility and obligation, and the other has a different responsibility and obligation, and they are being exhorted here to respond appropriately. Well, of course, the problem is we're all selfish. Our natural tendency is to resist submission and to abuse authority because we're sinful. We don't come to these relationships with the right attitude, no matter which side of the pair we're on. Paul is asking us to consider when I'm in this kind of relationship, what am I looking for? What's my goal? Am I in this relationship to get the best deal I can get for me? Am I in this relationship to make my life the most comfortable, the most secure, or to gain power or leverage or something like that? If so, if that's my attitude, that usually means I will fight submission if I'm on that side of the equation, or I will seek to get my way and abuse my authority if I'm in the position to have it. So he's saying, rather than that, come to these relationships with a different frame of mind. There's something bigger than me and my rights that I am looking for in this situation. Ultimately, I ought to be acting in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. I ought to be seeking my Creator's approval and acting as if he were here. I ought to speak and act in such a way that I represent his interests and his name. And I think that's the key in each of these relationships is to realize my choice is to act as if the only thing that matters is me and my rights, or to act as if I am under the sovereignty of God, the lordship of God, and that I am seeking to do his will. The three pairs of human relationships Paul describes are wives and husbands, children and parents, and slaves and masters. And in each situation, someone has a measure of authority over the other half of the pair. And he's exhorting us how should you act in these relationships? You should act not only recognizing what you owe the other person in the relationship, but also acting, recognizing what you owe God. You are in some sense representing Jesus to them, and you ought to respond accordingly. So you can exercise your responsibility or your submission knowing that there is a sense in which you also are acting in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. All your actions should be a reflection of the name you carry. So, like a policeman, you're an officer of Jesus Christ, just like a policeman's an officer of the law. It carries a certain obligation, it assumes a certain level of speaking and acting, and it's that ought to be your guide. This is what Jesus would have you do. If you know that, if you know Jesus wants me to treat you generously or cheerfully in a specific situation, it has a sort of double meaning. It is an act of kindness to you, but it is also an act of obedience to God. So in each of these pairs of relationships, there's an appropriate way to conduct yourself, not only because it's the right thing to do, but because it is something God has asked you to do. Now I think he spells it out most clearly for slaves. In verse 23, he gives them the most verses, but I believe his thinking applies to all the pairs. So in 323, he says, Whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men, which is the same kind of thing he was saying in 317. We're not just serving our earthly masters, we're serving God. The Lord has a claim on us that trumps all else. If all I see in m in this situation is the demand you're making on me if you're the other half of the pair, well, I could write you off and ignore you. I could just say, you know, you're annoying, I don't feel like submitting. What have you done to deserve it anyway? And it's easy to ignore you. But if I realize God is making a claim on me, and my refusal to treat you in the way God has requested is a refusal to him. Well, that's harder to justify and ignore. Okay, let's look at each pair. Colossians 3, 18 and 19. Wives, submit to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them. Well, I think the biblical concept of husbandheadship has been missed on many fronts. We have fallen off both sides of the horse on this one. Paul is not saying the wife ought to obey the husband as if he were Lord. He is not saying that her husband is God to her and represents God to her. He is not saying if he tells her what to do, that's God's will because he's Lord for you. That is a significant distortion of Paul's logic here. Rather, as I just said, in each relationship there's a certain type of conduct that is appropriate. It's appropriate for children to obey their parents. It's appropriate for a slave to be obey his master, or in today's language, an employee to obey his employer. And it's appropriate in some sense for a wife to submit to her husband. She's not only recognizing the right thing in a particular situation, she's recognizing God's right to say, in this situation, this is how I want you to act. So for her to do this right thing is a submission to what God has said is the right thing to do. Just like if it were to be generous with her money, she could do that in the name of the Lord. If it were to be diligent and responsible rather than lazy and slothful, well, that's something she could do in the name of the Lord. So when God tells you this is the right, good, and appropriate action in this situation, and you follow that, you submit to that, you're submitting to God. So there's a sense in which it's appropriate for a wife to submit and a husband to love. And our response in these this relationship is not just a response to my spouse, it is also a response to God. Now, what is submission and what is headship? Well, Paul doesn't spell it out in this passage. He just says it and moves on. And we can't argue from Colossians alone what his thinking is. I think here Paul is assuming we know the basics of a husband-wife relationship just like we know the basics of a parent-child relationship. He expects his readers to bring some prior knowledge to this. Now, because I'm female and a teacher, I've studied these passages in great depth at various times. I teach frequently on marriage issues and premarriage, and I'm basing my following comments on that prior study, not on Colossians alone. And I have lots of talks on marriage and headship and submission on my website. You can find those at wednesdayintheword.com, and I will put a link to them in the lecture notes. Here's what I think from that prior study what husband headship is. And this is very brief. Uh it's not going to answer all your questions, but it at least give us the groundwork, the framework that I think Paul expects his readers to be bringing to this passage. So husband headship is the biblical concept that God assigned the husband responsibility for the marriage and the family. And the biblical writers argue for headship on the basis of the creation of Adam and Eve. And their case is not simplistic. It is not, well, Adam was created first, so therefore he has priority and authority. It's it is more than chronology. Their argument rests on the roles that God assigned to Adam and Eve at creation. So in Genesis 2.18, God says, Then the Lord God said, It is not good for man to be alone. I will make him a helper suitable for him. So God had created Adam, he had given him the responsibilities of tending the garden, of having dominion over the garden. He put him in there to cultivate and keep it. So that was this level of responsibility that he had given to Adam prior to the creation of Eve. And then God created Eve to help him meet those obligations. So she was to be Adam's partner in the responsibility, helping him meet them equal in every way, but not ultimately responsible for it. So she is equal in relationship to God, but she was given a different role to play in this marriage and in this drama of creation. She was Adam's partner in the responsibility. She was obligated to help him fulfill that responsibility wisely, but she was not the one who's ultimately going to be held accountable for it. In the same way, if I help my child with his homework, the homework is his responsibility. In the end, he will take whatever grade is given on the homework. I can help him wisely or unwisely, but I'm not the one who's going to be held accountable for it. So being a helper is recognizing who is responsible and granting him the freedom to follow his conscience. So a helper has the responsibility to provide sound wisdom, guidance, advice. She needs to be involved, she needs to be discussing, analyzing, seeking truth and the wisest path. But if you get to a place where you simply cannot agree, being a helper means saying, you're responsible, we do it your way. And the same way, if I was helping the child with his math homework, and he refused to believe that 2 plus 2 is 4, and he wanted to put down five, there might come a point where I'd say, it's your homework, you have to put down the answer you think is right. Is that unfair? No, because roles like head or helper, teacher, student, father, mother, child, employer, employee, those are all roles, and they're a question of responsibility. They are not a question of worth, value, identity, power, or superiority. The Bible is very clear that we are equally sinful, equally saved, equally gifted, but we have different roles to play in the body of Christ. And you've seen this on your families. If I assign one child the task of setting the table and make that setting the table that child's responsibility, and I assign the other child the task of washing the dishes and make that child's responsibility, it does not mean that one child has more worth than the other in the family. It just means in this family I've given them different tasks. I've assigned them different responsibilities. And God does the same with us. He gives us different roles to play in his kingdom, but we are fellow heirs of the grace of life, to borrow Peter's language. Remember, there's a difference between obedience to God and obedience to another human being. I obey God unquestioningly, where it is clear that God is speaking. For example, Abraham may not have known why God was asking him to s to offer up Isaac, but he was absolutely convinced that God was telling him to do this thing and he did it. A wife does not treat her husband like that, a child does not treat a parent like that, a slave does not treat a master like that, because in each case that other person is not God. So as a wife, I am not required to take my husband's word as infallible, never to be questioned, and he would be the first to tell you that. But I do recognize that as my husband, he has a right to speak to me and because God has given him a particular responsibility in our marriage. It's a different responsibility than God has given me, and I ought to recognize that and be willing to help and support him in that responsibility and not sabotage him in it. So submission is an act of love to put him in a situation where he cannot do Something he is responsible to do and he will be held accountable for it, that's rebellion. That's hurting him. That is not seeking his best. In our marriage, there is a sense in which he is going to answer to God differently for our family choices than I am. Now we both have responsibilities. We're both going to be held accountable, but they are different. So as a helper, having made my case, having offered the best, most sound, thoughtful biblical wisdom I can offer, if we ultimately come to a point where a decision must be made and we just can't agree on it, I have to recognize he's the one who's ultimately going to be held responsible for it and be willing to say, all right, we'll do it your way. That is an act of grace and love, and it's ultimately trusting that God is in control. So submission is appropriate when a husband is trying to do the right thing before God, recognizing a decision must be made that affects everyone. So that is very, very different than whatever he says goes, or very different from the idea that he should just get his way. Submission and headship are not licenses to get his way. The whole point is he is obligated before God to do what is best for the family. And that's what essentially Paul goes on to say. Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them. Love your wives has nothing to do with romance. What's at stake here is the commitment to seek the other person's best. Love is my decision to look out for what's best for you. Paul is not really talking about my affections or how warm or cuddly I feel at any given moment. He's talking about a commitment to seek the other person's best. This is why Jesus can say love your enemy. He's not saying have warm, fuzzy feelings to your enemy. He's saying have the view of looking out for what is best, despite how you feel about it. So in that situation, love your enemy, we can clearly see love is not a romantic feeling. Now, romantic feelings are great, but the husband is not being called to to have feelings. He's being called to use his authority to do what is best for his family. He is not to use his family authority for his own benefit. He is to use it to seek what is best for his wife before God. Now it's probably always been true that husbands or any of us in positions of authority tend to use that authority to get what we want rather than what is best. But Paul is saying we are duty bound before God to seek what is best for the other person, your wife, and your family. Remember 317 that sets this up. Whatever you do, you do in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is incumbent on the husband to be able to make a credible, legitimate claim before God that the decision he wants to make is the best action for everyone. So do not treat her harshly, do not be harsh with her, has the idea don't use my advantage to benefit me, don't use my advantage to treat her harshly. In Ephesians, when discussing this idea of submission and headship, Paul uses the example of Christ, and he says to the husband, Be the head of your wife, as Christ was the head of the church. Well, what did Christ do as head of the church? He gave up his life for her. He put her first to the point of dying in her place on the cross because that's what is best. And that's the example husbands are called to follow. Your authority is not the right to get your way. Your authority comes with a calling to sacrificially seek what is best for your wife. Now, the wife too has a calling to sacrificially seek her husband's best, but it's going to look different in different situations. For both of them, the situation is not about who wins and who loses. It's about serving and doing all things as to the Lord, acting in his name. So it's not that the husband is his wife's spiritual director, you know, like he can say, here's what you ought to think and what you ought to read, and this is who your friend should be. That's acting outside the bounds of his authority. He has overstepped his authority. As a fellow believer, it's true. He might say, Well, you know, here's what I think you ought to read, or maybe you ought to drop these kinds of friends because he's seeking her best. And so as a fellow bondservant of Christ, he might ex exhort and encourage her to the right path, but he doesn't have the right to make her personal decisions. And she has the right to exhort and encourage him the same way. So love is not micromanaging the beliefs and actions of the other, no matter how good I think I am at it. It is a recognition of my author my need to act in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, my obligation to act in the name of the Lord, and to seek that other person's best. So submission is a recognition of who is responsible and giving them the freedom to follow their conscience. It's not a question of ability, who's best, who's got more worth, or, you know, like one person is unable to think for themselves. It's nothing like that. It's a question of role and responsibility. Now it would be nice if we could just say, make a rule and say submission always means you say yes, sir, but it's more complicated than that. The loving and best thing to do may be to say, you're going the wrong way, and I cannot follow you there. There are times when it's appropriate to go along with someone, to meet them where they are and walk with them through an issue, and there are times when it's appropriate to shut the door and say, no more, I can't follow you there anymore. Both of those responses may be the right and loving thing to do depending on the situation. The idea here is that this is a principle among a series of principles that I need to apply wisely and carefully. So the warning Paul is giving is you're going to come into this situation with the natural tendency to want to get your way, to think about yourself first and to try to win. And your challenge is to approach these situations with a different perspective, and that is the perspective of acting in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. To think about what He would call you to do. Okay, let's look at children and fathers, 320 and 321. Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children lest they become discouraged. Again, there's a question of who has the responsibility here. The obligation of the child is to obey the responsibility that his parent has been given. And children can deal with their parents with the goal of getting away with as much as they can. We've all done that, the attitude of beating the system, of getting all I can and seeking only what I want. And that's going to be our natural tendency. And instead, Paul is saying, children, recognize that God gave a responsibility for your welfare to your parents. Acknowledge that. Respond to it appropriately. When your mom says, because I'm the mom, that's why, she's standing on the responsibility that God has given her and asking you as the child to recognize it. Now, no parent has done everything they ought to do in every situation perfectly. It, you know, we all fall very short of this ideal. It's very easy to use our authority to serve ourselves and our needs as a parent. The challenge is not to discipline in the way that seeks to get my way as quickly as possible, or to use discipline as an excuse for not being patient. The challenge is to discipline in a way that is teaching to seek, train, and guide. Now, we all fall short of that ideal, but thankfully that's we have the grace of God. So lest they become discouraged has the idea, less they lose heart, less you break their spirit. You can enforce, as a parent, you can enforce your authority and your responsibility in such a way that your child has none, that you break their spirit, or you can train and guide them and point their will to the right things before God. So as parents, we have the upper hand. We have more age and wisdom and experience and resources. Our children, especially as youngsters, have few options, and that puts us in a challenging and difficult situation. If I'm going to call on my child to obey out of a recognition of God's calling on them, then I have to act with that same recognition, realizing that I have a responsibility before God to act a certain way. Okay, let's go on to slaves and masters. 322 through 41. Slaves 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 slaves justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a master in heaven. Okay, slavery was an institution of Paul's day. He doesn't denounce it here, but neither does he condone it. It was just a fact of life at the time he was writing. My understanding is that at this point in Roman history, slavery was much more humane than it was at the beginning of Roman rule, and probably more humane than what we think of as 1800s American slavery. It was just a fact of their working lives. Slaves could and did buy their freedom, and now, of course, like all relationships with authority, it is one that I'm sure was greatly abused. And I think Paul is recognizing Christians are going to face this as a fact of life. They're not going to overthrow slavery in the Roman government in the near future. So the crucial question for now is how do I live in that situation? As a believer, how do I deal with this fact of life? Maybe my parents were conquered in battle and I was born into slavery and I grew up with no choice of the matter, and now I've become a believer, how should I respond? Or maybe I'm the head of a great household with all these slaves, how should I treat them? I think he gives more space to it because it is the one most characterized by power and the least characterized by sacrificial love. So according to society and culture, the master does not have the same obligation to treat his slaves that a parent has to treat his child or a husband, his wife. In those other situations, we see a measure of love and affection that's expected, that society and culture upholds, but we don't see that with the master and the slave. The master is not called upon by society to seek the slave's welfare. And yet, Paul's saying, you are called by God to do so. So he starts with slaves and he says, as a slave, you're called to act with genuine obedience, not external service, not the kind of lip service and eye service that just does what's the minimum required on the outside, so it looks like I'm obeying, but I'm really not. He's saying, consider the question who's your real master? Ultimately, who's in control of your life? Who are you really serving? And the answer is you're serving the Lord Jesus Christ. He's your master. He's the one you serve, he's the one whose name you reflect. Your destiny, your welfare are ultimately in his hands. True, your earthly master can give you a lot of trouble if you don't obey, but ultimately the opinion of your heavenly master is much more serious and valuable. As Jesus said, fear the one who can cast both the body and soul into hell, not the one who can merely kill you. He's calling them to think, are you more concerned with what your earthly master can do or what your heavenly father can do? Whose opinion is more important to you? He's not saying, slave, your master is God to you, and thus you'd have to do everything he said. He's saying God has called you to live your life in a certain way, and he's put you in a situation where you have an earthly master. So you need to respond in that situation as one who carries the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, knowing it is God who is the one you're ultimately serving. And you act seeking the other person's best. In 325, when he says, For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality. I think that's the key, that without partiality, today I may be a slave and you're the master, but the day is coming when we are both going to stand before our Heavenly Father. And we will be equal in that situation. There is no partiality. So today, as a slave, I have a particular obligation to live a certain way and you don't. Or as an employee, or maybe a student to a teacher, those would be analogous relationships today. And in today I stand in that role and I have a particular obligation to live a certain way, but there is a judgment coming that's going to ask a bigger question of am I following God's will? And there's no partiality in that judgment. The roles could be reversed and the calling to serve the Lord is the same. The master's not going to get a pass because he had the upper hand and the position of power. The slave's not going to get the upper hand because the slave had a submissive role in that relationship. There's no partiality. Each of us has been called by God to live our lives in service to Him in whatever situation we find ourselves in, and we're going to face that music. I, the slave, and you the master, will each individually make choices about how to live a godly life, and we will be held accountable for it before God. Then, masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a master in heaven. It's the same idea we've been talking about all along. He turns to the one with the power or the authority in the relationship and says, You don't have a blank check. You're answerable to God as well. Slaves are not a tool for you to use to your personal gain. He may be your servant in this life, but he is a human being and a fellow heir of the grace of life. And masters ought to start thinking and asking that question, what's just and fair in dealing with my slave? What's just and fair in dealing with my employee or my servant? That kind of question, if you think about it, that could be the first shot that brings down the institution of slavery. If masters started thinking about slaves in light of the mastery of God and asking what's just and fair and right, slavery is going to start looking a whole lot different. So again, in all these relationships, the idea is to live our life and to respond and act as in God's name, as he said in 317. I'm called to think about my choices not as a problem of the other person in the relationship, not as a problem of how do I get my way, but to think about how would God call me to act wisely, rightly, with grace and love and compassion in this situation. What would he want me to do? Because I recognize God has a higher priority on my life, God has a higher claim on my life, and how do I express that claim in whatever situation I find myself in? Let's pray. Father, these are hard truths, and we recognize and admit that we are not the parents we should be, we're not the wives and husbands we should be, we're not the employers, employees, teachers, or students. In our relationships, our natural tendency is to seek power, to win, to gain the upper hand, to act selfishly. And we just recognize that without the work of the Spirit in our lives, that's the direction we go ahead. And we ask that you forgive us for those tendencies, that you begin that process of changing us and helping us to learn to live as to the Lord, to do everything in word or deed as if it's to the Lord. We recognize we all fall short, but we recognize that you and your grace and mercy are beginning the process of changing us and making us the people we ought to be in Jesus' name.