Passage

Colossians 3.18

Book: Colossians · ASV / WEB / KJV / YLT

Immediate context (±2 verses)

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Setting

• Speaker: Paul, with "Timothy our brother" named in the greeting (1:1), writing as a prisoner (4:3, 18). Many critical scholars hold that a follower of Paul wrote the letter in his name; others defend Paul's authorship, pointing to its close personal ties with Philemon.
• Audience: the church at Colossae in the Lycus valley of Phrygia, founded by Epaphras (1:7). This verse addresses the wives in the congregation directly, as members of Christian households that also included husbands, children, servants and masters.
• Location: an imprisonment, traditionally Rome, with Ephesus and Caesarea as the main alternatives.
• Time period: about AD 60-62 if Paul wrote from Rome, or the mid-50s if from Ephesus. Scholars who read the letter as written after Paul's death place it later in the first century.
• Literary context: the first line of the household code (3:18-4:1), which takes three pairs in turn: wives and husbands, children and fathers, servants and masters. Similar codes appear in Ephesians 5:22-6:9 and 1 Peter 2:18-3:7. The code follows directly on "whatsoever ye do, in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus" (3:17).

Theological reading

One half of a pair. The instruction to wives is matched at once by one to husbands: "Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them" (3:19). Each party is addressed directly, as a believer answerable to the Lord, not merely as an object of the other's authority.

As is fitting in the Lord. The reason given is not custom alone but what is "fitting in the Lord." The phrase both grounds the instruction and frames it. The whole household stands under one Lord: servants are told "ye serve the Lord Christ" (3:24), and masters that "ye also have a Master in heaven" (4:1).

Debated application. Christians disagree on how the verse applies today. Complementarians read it as a lasting pattern for marriage grounded in the Lord's order. Egalitarians read it as Christian conduct within the household structures of the first-century world, note that the same code regulates slavery, which the church no longer treats as an institution to preserve, and point to the mutual submission of Ephesians 5:21. Both readings take seriously that the code is written "in the Lord," under the rule that "Christ is all, and in all" (3:11).

Key words

Theologically-loaded Greek or Hebrew words in this verse may have entries in the lexicon. Curated to roughly 100 contested terms across the corpus, not every word.

• G5293 - hypotasso, hypotasso, Strong's G5293
• G2962 - kyrios, kyrios, Strong's G2962

Quoted in

Arguments and defeaters:

• Christianity Is the White Mans Religion Objection Defeater

Lexicon:

• G5293 - hypotasso

Notes

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Why these four translations

ris3n chose ASV, WEB, KJV, and YLT for two reasons together. They are the most literal English translations available (formal-equivalence: word-for-word renderings that preserve the Hebrew and Greek grammar rather than smoothing it into modern dynamic-equivalence idiom). And they are in the public domain in the United States, which means fair-use quotation at any length requires no publisher license. Modern licensed translations (NASB95, ESV, NIV) restrict volume of quotation under their copyright terms, so they are not used at stub-level coverage here. NASB95 appears only on hand-curated rich passage hubs under Lockman Foundation's fair-use allowance.

The four:

• ASV (American Standard Version, 1901). The basis of the modern critical-text English tradition.
• WEB (World English Bible, contemporary). Public-domain revision in the ASV line, in current English.
• KJV (King James Version, 1611). Reformation-era, Textus Receptus base.
• YLT (Young's Literal Translation, Robert Young, 1862). Hyper-literal preservation of Hebrew and Greek grammar; useful for word-study work even where English reads stiff.

See Bibles for the full per-translation history, translators, textual basis, strengths, and weaknesses.