"18Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. 19 Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them. 20 Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. 21 Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged. 22 Slaves, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. 23 Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, 24 knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. 25 For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality.
4 Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven."
Colossians 3:18-4:1
I wonder if, once again, we are perhaps intended to see Adam and Eve behind the scenes here? What Paul is describing is surely a restoration of the pre-Fall harmony between husband and wife. It seems to me that throughout this section, as Paul addresses the home and the workplace, his injunctions relate to Christ's reversal of the Fall. Where sin destroyed the love and the harmony of the home and the dignity and grace of work, this has been renewed and restored in Christ. So Paul can urge us to live as part of that renewed creation. For the husband and wife in Christ, the Creator's original order has been restored. The original order has been twisted and marred by the devil, by the rule of sin, and by the flesh, with all of its self-centredness, and had ended in the tyranny of eros and the slavery of sex. When we look at what Paul writes in v 5 about sexual immorality, impurity, evil desires and covetousness, we are surely brought face to face with the sad breakdown in morals and in marriage that we see as we look around our world today. It is God's original order, once so twisted, which can now, because of Christ, and only because of Christ, be lived in the harmony of love and submission.