Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. (Colossians 3:20)
Paul is writing to the church in Colossae, located in the Lycus River Valley about 120 miles east of Ephesus, in what is today south central Turkey. Local indigenous languages and customs were still predominant in the surrounding countryside, but in the town, Greek was the most used language and Greco-Roman customs were common. So Paul is writing to people whose family life is generally structured like a Roman household.
In such families, the father is the head with absolute legal authority over the family. Based on that Roman model even the emperors liked to characterize themselves as the father of the empire – even though several of them were quite incompetent and even quite mad, as was Nero, the emperor in 62 AD when Paul was writing this epistle.
In Chapters 3 and 4, it might seem that Paul is simply approving the Roman family structure but this is not the case of saying, “Conform to the local, respectable customs.” He’s doing something quite different (see Romans 12:2). Both here and in Ephesians 5 and 6, he’s radically transforming the family by saying that authority in the family does not reside in the father, mother or children but rather in Christ. Everyone in the family is responsible to God – not just at the end of life, but moment by moment throughout life.
Both the Old and the New Testaments actually talk quite a bit about “authority.” In Matthew 7 and Luke 8, we get the story of Jesus healing the centurion’s servant. When Jesus says that He will go to the centurion’s house the soldier says, that is not necessary. “I too am a man under authority . . . just say the word and my servant will be healed.” Jesus is amazed at the man’s faith. In 1 Timothy 2:1-4, Paul reminds Timothy to, “pray for Kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior . . .” In John 19:11, Jesus reminds a boastful Pilate that, “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above.” And Proverbs 21:1-9 begins, “The heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord.”
In our time, questioning and defying authority is not just tolerated but celebrated. But this is not how God designed the present world. This requires genuine faith and spiritual maturity to accept. When Jesus was only 12 years old, his family went up to Jerusalem for the Passover and stayed around after his parents left in order to be in the Temple and ask questions of the teachers. After three days, his understandably freaked out parents (my own translation) found him and scolded him. Jesus responds, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” Which sounds kind of cheeky for any 12 year who is not God incarnate, but it continues, “And he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them.”
Does this mean that we are to submit to authority that we don’t like? Yes. Does it mean we are to submit to authority we didn’t vote for? Yes. Does it mean that we are to submit to authority when it means being disobedient to God’s will as revealed in scripture? No. I would refer you to the Book of Daniel. In Chapter 1 Daniel and his four Hebrew friends are ordered to eat food from the king’s table that was forbidden by the Law of Moses. So Daniel offered an alternative to the king’s steward that would fulfill the king’s desire that they be well fed, but remain obedient to God’s Law. But later, the same Hebrew young men (now mature, high ranking government officials) are ordered to worship an image of the king, they refuse and suffer what should have been life-ending consequences. But their faithfulness to God is met by God’s faithfulness to His obedient children.
In God’s Kingdom authority is both an umbrella of protection over us and a conduit of blessing for us. So, children (whatever your age) obey your parents in everything, for this is pleasing to God.