Here’s my longer sermon notes from this morning’s Metro Christian Centre service (dated 23rd July 2023), continuing our series in the letter Colossians.
You can also catch up with this via MCC’s YouTube channel (just give us time to get the video uploaded).
‘No change, I can change |I can change, I can change |But I’m here in my mold, I am here in my mold |And I’m a million different people, from one day to the next’
—The Verve, Bitter Sweet Symphony
READ: COLOSSIANS 3:15—4:6 (NIV)
THROUGH THE WARDROBE
Have you have had a ‘Narnia moment’?
What I mean is, have you ever been somewhere where what you encountered inside exceeded the expectations that the outside set up?
Years ago, in the B.C. era (Before Children, that is), Steph and I were invited to attend a work-organised function over in Harrogate, Yorkshire. We’d never been to Harrogate before, so we decided to arrive early and explore the town during the day. Inevitably, as the day went on, Tristan needs feeding. And so, seeking a bit of budget grub, we ended up walking into the local Wetherspoons.
I am not on commission for Wetherspoons, and other chains are available. But, my jaw literally dropped when I walked through the doors of this Wetherspoons. It was situated within what used to be the Old Royal Baths, and the interior was breathtaking. The sign, on the outside, read ‘Wetherspoons’, but inside was a world away from any Wetherspoons I’d stepped into before.
It was a ‘Narnia moment’.
On the other side of Bury, on Cork Street, there is an old four-storey industrial-era mill. The outside has seen better days, it’s crumbling here and there, and there is an external escape-stair that you would have to pay me to use. Nevertheless, it’s one of my favourite places in Bury, because the husk of this old-world structure contains four levels of video games!
If you have never been, stepping through the doors of this structure that used to be filled with industrial machines and now seeing it filled with arcade machines, is a ‘Narnia moment’.
‘Narnia moments’ aren’t only present within places.
Many people, I believe, are having similar ‘Narnia moments’ watching the new Barbie movie. As the message and the content of the film subverts what is normally associated with the Barbie brand.
I’ve even had a ‘Narnia moment’ when eating a dark chocolate Kit Kat: I bit into it to discover a solid lump of chocolate. No wafer present.
That was a good day.
I call them ‘Narnia moments’ because of a story called The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, written by C. S. Lewis. In that story, a little girl, called Lucy, discovers an old wardrobe. But, inside the old wardrobe isn’t a wardrobe, but a whole new world.
The contents do not match the exterior; they are radically different.[i]
The idea of ‘Narnia moments’, I hope, will help explain the words we’ve read; words that have sparked controversy and, in the wrong hands, caused harm.
IN COLOSSAE & IN CHRIST
In the passage prior to this, as Helen shared with us last time, Paul, writing to the believers in Colossae, instructs them to strip off the old rags, the dirty clothing that does not represent who they are in Christ. Instead, they are to clothe themselves in their new and true nature.
Rather than exhibiting self-asserting, self-indulgent behaviours that are harmful and exploitive of others (Col. 3:5-9), they should demonstrate mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and, above all, love (Col. 3:12-14).
In the middle of all this talk about clothing, Paul mentions status (Col. 3:11). He does so because he’s talking about identity—a main theme of this letter. Paul topples any notions of certain ethnicities or certain classes of people being superior to any others. In Christ, it doesn’t matter if you are Jew or Gentile, slave or free, we are equal. ‘Christ is all that matters, and Christ is in all.’
In his letter to the Galatians, Paul puts it this way, ‘all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes. There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.’ (Gals 3:27-28)
He’s not saying there are no longer genders or ethnicities or nationalities. Paul is saying, in Christ, there is a unity in our status.
He says a similar thing in his letter to the Ephesians; ‘There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, in all, and living through all.’ (Eph. 4:5-6)
Paul is consistent about this in all his letters: ‘In Christ, no one has an inherently superior nature or status [or priority] over [and] against another.’[ii]
When we get to these verses, that flow out of what comes before, and Paul starts talking about wives and husbands, children and parents, slaves and masters, Paul is not doing a U-turn. Paul is not throwing out everything he has just said, re-instituting a hierarchy of superiority, and contradicting all his ‘one-in-Christ’ talk. Moreover, Paul is not echoing Orwell’s Animal Farm, saying all people are equal, but some are more equal than others.
I need to make this crystal clear from the start: Paul does not establish and neither is Paul championing institutions of slavery or the hierarchical ordering of households. Paul is not implying approval or divine authority to structures of patriarchy or institutional racism.[iii]
Again, ‘In terms of true status, the redemptive work of Christ is [conclusive]: in Christ there is neither slave nor free, [male nor female (Col. 3:11, Gal. 5:27)].’
What we need to remember, though, is that Paul is writing to people who live in the real world where ‘the concrete conditions of society still remain.’[iv]
I’ll explain …
Paul, as clearly stated in the second verse of this letter (Col. 1:2), is writing to one set of people who find themselves in two situations at the same time. He is writing to brothers and sisters in Christ, who are also God’s Holy People in Colossae.
Paul is writing to people who have new clothing (new identities) in Jesus, that level their relationships with everyone else. But, when they became Christian, the fabric of Roman society didn’t disappear; these people still live and work in the Old Wardrobe, the cultural realities of the Roman Empire, in their new clothes.
This group of Christians in Colossae was made up of people who were slaves in Colossae, wives in Colossae, children in Colossae, along with those who were husbands and masters in Colossae.[v] They can’t break out those culturally-enforced moulds, as such. They are in Christ, but the real world of Colossae also remains. And sadly, the reality of Colossae included patriarchy and slavery.
Again, Paul is not, in any way, applauding cultural power structures, saying they are right. He’s simply seeking to encourage Christians to put on Jesus in the realities of their lives.
Paul has just told the Colossian believers, in Col. 3:17, to represent Jesus wherever they find themselves. And, in what follows, he’s just answering an obvious response he anticipates: ‘How do I live out the reality of my identity in Christ, in the broken reality of my world?’
When I became a Christian, at the age of 18, I became a new creation, a new person. That was a Sunday evening back in 1998. The following Monday morning, I walked into my old job. As the youngest in the office, I was still making brews. I also still lived in my mum and dad’s house, paying ‘keep’ and respecting (most of the time) their house rules.
We all find ourselves in old wardrobes wearing new clothes.
Of course, there are those who are disappointed with Paul, thinking that he should have said more and that the early church failed to tear down power structures.
This critique is unfair. Paul and the early church were not some dominate superpower within the ancient world. The early church was a minority, and Paul, himself, is in prison when writing this letter—which is hardly some throne room or senate.
More than this, that critique is wrong because it is blind to how revolutionary Paul and the early church were. They may not have been able to step out of the wardrobes their societies locked them in. But, using what freedom they did have, Paul and the early church certainly changed the insides of those wardrobes.
Against the backdrop of Paul’s world, these few verses are revolutionary. In Colossians 3:18-4:1, ‘Paul takes the conventional understandings of [these] relationships and plants in them Christian ingredients that radically transform and reshape those relationships from within.’[vi]
We may be blind to it, in our own privilege, but, in these instructions, ‘Paul [actually] pushes against these manifestations of domination.’[vii] While it may not meet our modern sense of equality, ‘nevertheless, [Paul’s] vision for [households] unsettles and deconstructs any [superiority in] these relationships by urging [all those involved] to practice self-sacrificial care.’[viii]
Paul does something so the contents do not match the exterior.
UNSETTLING SUPERIORITY
What Paul does here is unconventional in his day. For several reasons:
Firstly, Paul, in all three sections (wives and husbands/children and parents/slaves and masters), addresses the person who was seen, through Roman eyes, as the ‘inferior’ in status first. Whereas, the person who was supposed to have priority and shown more honour in his culture is made to wait.
Greco-Roman culture had this idea of who was superior and who was subordinate. But Paul shows special concern for the “subordinate” member. He prioritises them.
Secondly, Paul speaks to “lower” person directly. He doesn’t speak to them through their cultural “superior”. He doesn’t treat them as if they are non-persons, ‘shadowy figures that are screened from view by a bossy [husband or master].’[ix] They are real people. They are his brothers and sisters.
They are not eavesdropping on this letter; Paul expects them to receive this letter, and everything he’s written in it so far about their status in Jesus, as much as anyone else.
Thirdly, and leading from this, when Paul speaks to those who are “lower” he talks to them as if they have as much agency and freedom as those who are over them. Paul doesn’t speak to them as if they cannot make or act on their own choices. Paul talks to them assuming and affirming that they have the self-authority and self-ability to make decisions about their own actions.
Paul does not tell anyone with superior status in Colossae to tell anyone of lower status what to do.
Fourthly, and finally in Paul’s radical approach, I want you to see that when Paul speaks to those of lower status first, and directly, affirming their freedom, he encourages them to do something. Whereas, when he speaks to those with a higher status, he prohibits them, he puts restraints on them.
Admittedly, when you read ‘wives submit to your husbands’, ‘kids obey your parents’ and ‘slaves obey your earthly masters’ it may not seem like an encouragement, and, understandably, it may seem as if it is granting rights to the superior. But they’re not.
For a start, looking at the wives and husbands statement, submit does not mean to become some demeaning, downtrodden women. It means (in a non-military sense, which this is) having a ‘voluntary attitude of cooperating.’ It does not mean subordination. It does not mean being made to do something. It means to freely choose to work with and alongside another.
Actually, the qualities involved in this submission have already been listed in the preceding verses: it’s compassion towards others, kindness, humility, not asserting yourself or indulging yourself. If you want to know how submission looks, it’s everything Paul has just written in Col. 3:5-14—the qualities, the clothing Paul expects all Christians to wear, not just wives.
In Ephesians 5:21, where Paul writes a longer version of these ‘household codes’, before he instructs wives to submit, he tells all Christians to submit to one another. There was meant to be mutuality in this submission to each other, it was not one-way traffic.
Paul is not saying that wives submit and everyone else can have their own way! Paul is not permitting anyone to ‘have their own way’, nor encouraging anyone to assert their self over anyone. He is asking all of us to work towards mutual self-giving.
Additionally, it needs to be said, Paul is definitely not saying that all women are generally subject to all men. That is a gross misreading.
Again, Paul is asking all people—wives and husbands, children and parents, slaves and masters—to submit to each other, to cooperate with the other, to work in unity, bound together in harmony (Col. 3:14)
Furthermore, Paul is certainly not instructing people to submit in all things—only in what is fitting in the Lord. Wives, children, slaves are not to be the victims of every whim of their husbands, parents or masters.[x] Submitting to unkind, selfish people in a degrading, servile manner is not what Paul is asking for. There is no obligation to submit to foolish, manipulating, or abusive behaviour—to do so is not ‘fitting in the Lord’(Col. 3:18), ‘pleasing to the Lord (Col. 3:20), or ‘working for the Lord’ (Col. 3:23).
There have been those who have used these ‘qualifying’ words to manipulate, as if “submission to their whims” is what is fitting in the Lord. But that’s not what Paul is saying. Paul is saying ‘only voluntarily give yourself to what is fitting in the Lord… what is pleasing to the Lord… what is the Lord’s work.’
In a way, Paul’s only restating what he’s said in Col. 2:6-7; ‘only root yourself in the things of Jesus.’
Again, Paul is not encouraging subordination or condoning domination. He’s simply asking Christians not to be self-assertive or to seek their own way.
It’s the same thing in Paul’s prohibitions to those seen as “superior” in Colossae.
In Greek and Roman culture, one might have expected Paul to instruct husbands, parents and masters to rule their households, like Aristotle did.[xi] But Paul deviates from the social norms and tells Husbands to love their wives, instead. Don’t be harsh, angry or bitter with them. He tells parents not to be overbearing on their children. He tells masters to be just and fair. And the real kicker is, he tells masters that they too have a master.
In Colossae, people in those roles probably thought it was there natural right to assert themselves over others. They thought they could treat people however they liked, especially those who belonged to them. Paul’s radical and unsettling response is, ‘no you can’t. You’re not the master—Jesus is!’
It’s telling, in all of this, that Paul never refers to the lordship of Husbands, Parents, or Masters, and never places wives, children or slaves under their lordships. Jesus is Lord. Everyone else is directly accountable to his Lordship—including those who thought they were lords.
In my own marriage to Steph, I am not the boss. Neither is Steph. Jesus is the lord of our marriage, and we cooperate, supporting each other, under His governance. We don’t always get it right, sure. And yes, there are those times when someone must make a decision. In such occasions, we lean on each other’s strengths. For example, Steph is far more financially savvy than me. I take a lot more persuasion with the money stuff, and she helps with that. But, ultimately, I trust her knowledge over mine.
In all of this, Paul is revolutionary. He is not permitting either party to be arrogant or domineering.
To repeat what I said earlier, in these verses, Paul is not establishing, reinforcing or championing institutions of slavery or the hierarchical ordering of households. He is knocking the props out of all domineering behaviour.
He’s taking the Old Wardrobes of the culture Christians are contained within, and he is planting in them values that will radically redefine them. The result Paul is seeking is that whenever their surrounding society opens up these wardrobes that Christians inhabit, their expectations would be overturned. They’d have Narnia moments, because, in the place of superiority, subordination and self-assertion, they would find mutual co-operation, understanding, humility, unity and self-giving love.
Instead of opening these wardrobes and seeing Colossae, they would see Christ. The contents would defy the Colossian labels.
They may open the wardrobe of husband and wife, with their expectations about who ‘rules the roost’ and ‘who wears the trousers’, and instead of finding a monarchy, they find two people walking and working together in companionship and love.
They may expect to open up the wardrobe of slave and master, with all their expectations of domination and subordination, but instead, they discover a kinship, a family, where both slave and master care and provide for one another.
In the midst of the old wardrobe, they would discover a different world, a new humanity—a new creation in the midst of the old.
YEAST & WINESKINS
Such an approach may seem weak. However, I’m reminded of how Jesus compared the Kingdom of God to a woman mixing a little bit of yeast into a large batch of dough (Matt. 13:31-33).
Yeast changes everything. A little yeast inside the mass of dominating dough still has the ability to fill it with pockets of air. It transforms it from the inside out. Putting your teeth into bread made with yeast is not the same experience as putting your teeth into bread without yeast.
Maybe Paul is thinking of this in his approach, from a powerless position. Maybe he knows that if he can get the yeast of the kingdom into the dough of the society it will create pockets of Divine breath. He’s not endorsing anything—it’s simply the only starting point he and they have.
Does Paul expect these systems to continue? That’s hard to know. But, Jesus told another story about what happens when you put New Wine into Old Wine Skins (Matt. 9:14-17). When you put the new into the old, the old bursts. Maybe this is Paul’s expectation.
Paul knew it was impossible to live according to Christ’s model within society’s structures without fundamentally altering the relationships within those structures.[xii] The wineskins have to burst eventually, because ultimately they cannot contain the new.[xiii]
Paul’s tactic has worked. The seeds he planted have borne fruit. The world is different because of Christianity.
As Rodney Stark, a historian and sociologist shows, in his book, The Rise of Christianity, that despite the ‘modern denunciations of Christianity as patriarchal and sexist, it is easily forgotten the early church was especially attractive to women.’ Women flooded in because they had an improved status in the Christian sub-culture, and they were fundamental to its growth.[xiv] Children and slaves also has better status, and seen as people with rights.
In the late 4th Century, it was a sole Christian voice, Gregory of Nyssa, who spoke out, in a culture saturated with slavery, condemning the practice of slavery as ungodly and evil.[xv]
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, was one of the voices leading the charge against modern slavery in the 18th century.[xvi]
Our Quaker brother and sisters, in the midst of the industrial revolution, when industry thrived at the cost of workers, were the ones leading the charge on changing the law, making sure we had regulations protecting the worker’s welfare and education.
Even our modern conception of human rights comes from the new wine of Christianity. As the recent author, Tom Holland (not the Spider-man actor), has said in his book, Dominion:
‘[The idea] that every human being possessed an equal dignity was not [a] self-evident truth [in the ancient world]. A Roman would have laughed at it. To campaign against discrimination, however, was to depend on large numbers of people sharing in a common assumption: that everyone possessed an inherent worth. The origins of this principle—as Nietzsche had so [scornfully] pointed out—lay not in the French Revolution, nor in the Declaration of Independence, nor in the Enlightenment, but in the Bible.’[xvii]
Paul’s approach fermented and has burst a lot of wineskins.
Of course, the history of the church isn’t so clean, and yes, there have been those who found themselves in a position of superiority and privilege within a culture who did not allow the new wine to reshape their relationships, because they knew it would burst the structures that gave them power.
But such behaviour was not aligned with what Paul was teaching, even when it misappropriated his words. They used Paul as if he was championing power structures and ignored the fact that he was championing Christ-likeness. Paul was not promoting patriarchy, he was promoting humility, kindness, and selfless love. Paul is not condoning slavery, he was calling for justice.
When we misunderstand these words, we end up manufacturing the old wardrobes instead of wearing the new clothes.
Frederick Douglass was right, after escaping slavery in America in the 19th century, to say that in the ‘slaveholding religion’ of his land, he recognised the widest possible difference between it and the Christianity of Christ.
‘I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ’, he wrote. ‘I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women–whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.’[xviii]
Frederick Douglass could write this, because he saw what Paul was getting at.
I will be accused of speculating, but I don’t believe Paul would disagree with Frederick Douglass. I think Paul would shout, Amen![xix] I don’t believe Paul would endorse slavery. Paul never refers to anyone being his slave. He may call himself a slave of Christ (Rom. 1:1), but he always refers to others as his brother and sisters, and fellow co-workers.
In the final verses of this letter, Paul mentions an actual Colossian slave, Onesimus (he’s the subject of another New Testament letter called Philemon). Paul refers to Onesimus as a ‘faithful and much loved brother’ (Col. 4:9)
Again, Paul was not underwriting hierarchy, domination or self-assertion, in this passage. Paul simply wants the message of Christ, the words of Christ, the teaching of Christ to dwell among us, embodied in our relationships (Col. 3:16).
Jesus, as Paul has said in this letter, is supreme. He is the greatest, the best, and the highest. He is the fullness of God in a human body. He is superior and the only one with any supremacy. And yet, in his supremacy, God does not dominate us or assert himself. God gives his self.
As theologian, Marianne Meye Thompson describes it, ‘It is not a power that exerts itself over others but that expresses itself in service for others. It’s not grasping but giving.’[xx]
REPRESENT!
So, what’s the take-away for us here?
Well, it’s not husbands going home and telling their wives to submit. If you do that, you have missed the point.
The take away is that all of us will inevitably find ourselves in many places this week. We’re in Christ, but we will also find ourselves moving from place to place; in homes, in offices, in schools and colleges (when September comes); in traffic, in the shops, in cafes and restaurants; in society; in relationships.
In a sense, we are a million different people from one day to the next, as we move from one societal mould (wardrobe) to another. In some places, we may be somebody. In other places, we may be nobodies.
Whatever the wardrobe, wherever you find yourself, be full of grace and seasoned with salt (Col. 4:6). In whatever you do, in word or deed, do it all in the name of Jesus (Col. 3:17, NIV), let it represent what Jesus is like (Col. 3:17, NLT).
Be gentle. Be kind. Be patient. Be forgiving. Yes, don’t submit to abuse. Yes, seek to be just and fair. Don’t be domineering—you have no right to dominate another. Above all, be loving, and let the peace of Jesus Christ rule in your hearts and from your hearts into the environment around you (Col. 3:16).
Be the solid lump of Kit Kat, with no wafer. Be the Turkish bath house in a Wetherspoons. Be like the arcade in the old industry mill.
Let how you relate to those around you create ‘Narnia moments’—where, in the midst of whatever structures we find ourselves in, people catch a glimpse of a new creation.
‘Imitate God, therefore, in everything you do, because you are his dear children. Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ. He loved us and offered himself as a sacrifice for us, a pleasing aroma to God.’
The Apostle Paul, Ephesians 5:1-2, NLT
[i] If you’re a Doctor Who fan, you could call this a ‘Tardis moment’
[ii] Marianne Meye Thompson, The Two Horizons New Testament Commentary: Colossians & Philemon (Eerdmanns Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, UK, 2005), p. 89
[iii] Marianne Meye Thompson, The Two Horizons New Testament Commentary: Colossians & Philemon (Eerdmanns Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, UK, 2005), p. 92
[iv] Anthony C. Thiselton, Colossians: A Short Exegetical and Pastoral Commentary (Cascade, Eugene, Oregon, 2020), p. 96
[v] It would be wrong to assume that all the corresponding partners are present in the church. There would have been non-Christian wives, husbands, children, parents, slaves and masters. Ergo, when Paul is address the wife, for example, don’t assume that she has a Christian husband, etc.
[vi] Anthony C. Thiselton, Colossians: A Short Exegetical and Pastoral Commentary (Cascade, Eugene, Oregon, 2020), p. 94
[vii] Lynn Cohick, Discovering Biblical Equality, Ronald W. Pierce, Cynthia Long Westfall, Christa L. McKirland (eds) (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2021), p. 183- 204, 192.
[viii] Marianne Meye Thompson, The Two Horizons New Testament Commentary: Colossians & Philemon (Eerdmanns Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, UK, 2005), p. 88
[ix] Tom Wright, Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and Philemon (SPCK, London, 2012), p. 186
[x] Btw, not all masters in the ancient world were men. Business was as diverse then, as it is now. Maybe, more so. There were many female masters in the culture. We even a meet a few of them in the New Testament. As an example, there’s Lydia in Acts 16:13-15; a business woman dealing in purple dye. (Ps. Purple dye was the most expensive of all dyes in the Med—a symbol of wealth and royalty. So, Lydia would have been very influential).
[xi] Aristotle, Politics 1.5, 1.12
[xii] Marianne Meye Thompson, The Two Horizons New Testament Commentary: Colossians & Philemon (Eerdmanns Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, UK, 2005), p. 94
[xiii] A number of commentators argue that Paul’s approach in Colossians 3:18-4:1, and other NT household codes, were tailored to help new Christians live within their Greco-Roman and Jewish cultures without doing damage to the fledgling Christian movement [see, Keener, Paul, Women and Wives: Marriage and Women’s Ministry in the Letters of Paul (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1990), p. 133]. In such an approach, Paul’s desire is to present a good witness. I would not dismiss this entirely; Paul, after all, is asking the church to be wise in its actions to the outside world (Col. 3:5). That said, a Paul who is afraid to ruffle societal feathers is unlike the Paul who’s gospel preaching in Acts solicits hostile economic reactions from the Ephesians. Admittedly, Paul is not out to instigate a riot. Yet, Paul knows that the Kingdom of God brings challenge to the religious and political structures of the world. In the household codes, Paul’s kingdom posture certainly unsettles the entitlement and privilege of those superior persons in society. As Michelle Lee-Barnewell states, ‘[A] closer look at the cultural context reveals that while Paul was aware of these expectations, he does not conform to them but rather subverts the traditional order… Rather than being accommodating, Paul proposes a way that would be seen as causing great social disruption. The irony is that he says that in Christ it actually leads to the opposite, creating intimate unity and harmony between husband and wife.’ [Michelle Lee-Barnwell, Neither Complementarian nor Egalitarian: A Kingdom Corrective to the Evangelical Gender Debate (Baker Academic, Grand Rapids, MI), p. 165]
[xiv] Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a few Centuries (HarperCollins, HarperSanFrancisco, 1997). See chapter 5 The Role of Women in Christian Growth.
[xv] Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on Ecclesiastes. If the link still works, there is a good article here.
[xvi] John Wesley, Thoughts upon Slavery
[xvii] Tom Holland, Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind (Little, Brown, 2019). p. 494
[xviii] Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass (Oxford World’s Classics, Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 101
[xix] As Cynthia Long-Westfall states, ‘Paul explicitly and vehemently opposed the Greco-Roman concepts and systems of authority as a model for leadership in the church. He urged his church communities to the do the same by resisting conformity to the world (Rom. 12:2). Such change is part of a “great reversal” where the “turning of the ages” occurred at the cross, at which point, “all human standards of evaluation are overturned.” This is most clearly expressed in Paul’s correspondence to the Corinthians and to the Thessalonians. He rejects leadership that is based on Greco-Roman concepts of wisdom, power, and status (1 Cor. 1:18-31). His teachings are the polar opposite of Plato’s argument that the weak should be ruled by the strong, the ignoble by the noble, and the ignorant by the wise. When Paul rejects the status markers of his heritage, privilege, and attainments in Judaism, he rejects the biological essentialism and the social pyramid of the Greco-Roman system as well (Phil. 3:1-11). He therefore rejects all the values on which status and authority in the culture were based.’ Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle’s Vision for Men and Women in Christ (Baker Academic, Grand Rapids, MI, 2016), p. 254.
[xx] Marianne Meye Thompson, The Two Horizons New Testament Commentary: Colossians & Philemon (Eerdmanns Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, UK, 2005), p. 120
TRISTAN SHERWIN 
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