Colossians 3:18

18 4:1. Universal Holiness: relative duties

18. Wives Cp. 1 Peter 3:1-6 and the close parallel, with its large expansion, Ephesians 5:22, &c.

The Christian Home, the masterpiece of living Christianity, is now presented as the special field for the practice of the holy principles just stated.

submit yourselves with the noble loyalty of "the weaker vessel" to the husband who, in the order of nature (i.e. of God its Orderer), is the leader in the marriage union. No submission as of a vassal is meant; the man is (1 Peter 3:7) to "give honour to the wife." Her relative attitude is to be that of every Christian to every other (Ephesians 5:21; 1 Peter 5:5), the attitude of unselfish service, only emphasized by the special fact of man's ordained leadership.

own The word is probably to be omitted; a natural and obvious gloss upon the text. Cp. 1 Corinthians 7:2 for the apostolic prohibition of polygamy.

fit in the Lord The order of nature is thus affirmed by grace. Wifely loyalty is not only a human but a Christian law; it has relation to union with Christ. See at large Ephesians 5:22-24.

" Is fit" :lit., "was fit." Lightfoot compares our past tense in "I ought," and says that in such phrases is perhaps implied an essential a prioriobligation.