Daily Bible Reading 30th July 2025 // Colossians 3:18-21

18 Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. 19 Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them. 20 Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. 21 Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.

Paul has an equally revolutionary word for the husband (v 19 and Ephesians 5:25-33). There are, you see, mutual responsibilities. Indeed, the wife's submission is hardly possible without his love and vice versa. It is when we think of the love of Christ that we realise just what Paul is commanding of the husband. In giving himself for the Church, Christ displayed gracious initiative. He loved the unlovely and He loved on despite the indifference and lack of response. He displayed tender, steadfast love, sacrificial, self-giving agapae love that took him to death (Romans 5:8). The husband is to love his wife like that. It is his duty in the Lord. This love which Paul is urging is clearly not simply a matter of affectionate feeling or sexual attraction. It is a commitment of the husband's will, involving his tender, unceasing care and loving service for his wife's entire well-being. Once again, it is only in heeding this apostolic injunction that the Christian husband fulfils his divine destiny. Only thus is he clothed with the love and the grace of Christ; clothed with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. No place here for harsh and overbearing husbands. Rather, every area of married life is characterised by self-giving love, by forbearance and by forgiveness. This is the beauty and harmony which adorns the home where Christ is Lord. As Mr Philip writes in his Notes, commenting on these verses:

A woman is at her most womanly, and therefore most attractive, when she most approximates to this biblical standard, just as a man is most manly when showing forth the gentleness and the grace of Christ.

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