Tag: missional tactic
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Household: Household Code in Review
A month and a half ago, I introduced this series on household codes. I noted five themes related to using the fictive family metaphor in the New Testament by Jesus, Paul, and others: identity, unity, mission, inheritance, and affection. Yet scattered throughout the New Testament, we see instruction about how to live in actual households…
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Household: Household Code in Colossians
As we saw earlier, Colossians was written to correct false teaching that Christ was insufficient for the Colossians' needs, that supplemental help was needed from the "elemental spirits" of the universe. There is clear evidence that some were practicing Gnostic asceticism in pursuit of mystical knowledge. Paul opens his letter with his wonderful hymn about…
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Household: Household Code in Ephesians (Part 1)
Paul makes extensive use of fictive family and household metaphors throughout his letters. The central focus of his fictive family metaphors is other-centered love as siblings, the most intimate and least status-conscious of relationships in the Greco-Roman world. God is the paterfamilias. Yet the Church lived amid an extremely status-conscious society where the powerful were…
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Household: Household Code in Titus
Another household code passage is Titus Chapter 2. Titus 1:1-4 says Paul writes the letter to Titus, who is working in Crete. (I am aware that many scholars believe this letter was from the late first century and pseudographical, but for simplicity, I will simply refer to the author as Paul.) The people of Crete…
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Household: Household Code in 1 Peter (Part 3)
We move now to Chapter 3 and Peter's instruction to wives and husbands, the more controversial portions of the passage. 1 Peter 3:1-7 1 Wives, in the same way, accept the authority of your husbands, so that, even if some of them do not obey the word, they may be won over without a word…