Greater Than Our Relationships

These are two of the most argued-over sentences in the New Testament, and it is worth slowing down on four small words: as is fitting in the Lord.

Sunday, Jay Reynardus offered another way to hear them — as long as it is proper in the Lord. Which means there is a line. If what is being asked of you runs against Christ, you do not go along with it. Standing up and saying no is not rebellion there; it is faithfulness. That was radical in a world where the head of a household legally decided whether a newborn was kept or discarded.

And notice Paul does not stop with one side. The very next breath is aimed at husbands: love, and do not be harsh. Jay was blunt about it — men have spent generations acting like ogres, and much of what makes marriage hard today is the harvest of that. This is not a passage that hands anyone a weapon.

What it does is name what actually matters. Most of what we fight over is secondary. The thing worth standing on is Christ. Almost everything else can be let go.

Paul says obey — and then, immediately, before anyone can weaponise it, he turns and says: do not provoke them.

He knows us. He knows how fast instruction becomes leverage. So he closes the door in the same breath he opens it. Jay put the warning plainly on Sunday: do not discourage them so badly that they run, or so constantly that you break their spirit.

The goal of parenting, he said, is not well-mannered children who stay off drugs and get into a good school. That is a fine outcome and a poor aim. The goal is to point them to Christ.

Which is uncomfortable, because children live with us. They know exactly how much of our faith is real. If Jesus is at the centre on Sunday morning and absent from the house Monday through Saturday, they learn the lesson we are actually teaching: that this is something you do, not someone you follow.

You do not have to be perfect for them. He has to be, and He is. What they need to see is a parent quick to repent and quick to apologise — the gospel, demonstrated at close range.

Not by way of eye-service. Not the version of your job you perform when someone is watching.

Paul is writing into a world where slavery was everywhere — the Roman Empire held more people in it than any society in history. He does not call it good. He speaks into it, and what he says to the person with the least power in the room is startling: your work matters to God, and how you do it matters to God.

Jay reached for a seventeenth-century monk named Brother Lawrence, who worked in a monastery kitchen and wrote that the noise and clatter of his kitchen was no different from the time of prayer. He left a small poem behind:

Since I have no time to be a great saint by doing lovely things, make me a saint by getting meals and washing up the plates.

Your work is as important to God as God is important to your work. Which reframes the whole thing. Work for money, and it is a dog chasing its tail. Work for God, and the dishes count.

Watch what Paul does in two sentences. He lifts the servant up — your labour is service to Christ Himself, and there is an inheritance coming. Then he turns to the man who owns him and levels him: you also have a Master in heaven.

There is no partiality. The most powerful person in that household is told, in front of everyone, that he is not the ultimate authority in the room. He answers to Someone.

Jay called it the moment Paul elevates the low and brings down the haughty. If you lead anything — a team, a company, a family — this is aimed at you. Justly and fairly is not a management style. It is what it looks like to remember that you are also under authority.

And for anyone who has been on the receiving end of power used badly: the wrongdoer will be paid back. God is not indifferent to how you have been treated. He has simply not settled the account yet.

Step back and look at the whole passage this week. Marriage. Parenting. Work. Three arenas that could not be more different, and one thread running through all of them.

Jay ended Sunday almost at a whisper, imagining people asking how you manage it:

How do you husband? It's Jesus. How do you parent? It's Jesus. How can you do that when your job is falling apart? It's Jesus.

That is not a slogan. It is the argument of the entire passage. A household does not flourish because the people in it try harder or find the right technique. Every generation invents a new technique, and Jay's point was that every one of them collapses in turn — because they are built on us.

A household flourishes when Christ is at the centre of it. Your marriage belongs to God. Your children are being pointed somewhere. Your work is service to Him.

Not your fulfilment. Not your happiness. His glory — and then, as it turns out, your good.