Colossians 3:16 says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to God.” Psalms are the longest songs, hymns are shorter, and spiritual songs are the shortest ones, like choruses. Verse 17 continues, “And whatever you do in word or in deed, do all things in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.” The issue of this is in verses 18 through 20: “Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not be bitter against them. Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing in the Lord.” Then the subsequent verses go on to speak of fathers, slaves, and masters. This indicates that all the proper things in the Christian life—such as wives submitting to their husbands, husbands loving their wives, children being under their parents, slaves serving properly, and masters treating their slaves rightly—all come out of the enjoyment of the Lord through the word in praising and thanking.
According to the context of these verses, we first have the word as the means to convey Christ to us, and we enjoy Him to such an extent that we are filled with Him. Then praises and thanks flow out like living water. From this kind of enjoyment of the Lord, submission issues from wives, love comes out from husbands, and honor for parents comes out from the children. All these different matters in the Christian walk issue out of the enjoyment of Christ.
Ephesians 5:18 through 20 confirms this same truth. These verses say, “And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissoluteness, but be filled in spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and psalming with your heart to the Lord, giving thanks at all times for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to our God and Father.” Colossians 3:16 tells us to be filled with the word, while Ephesians 5 tells us to be filled in spirit. Verses 21 and 22 continue, “Being subject to one another in the fear of Christ: Wives, be subject to your own husbands as to the Lord.” Following this, Ephesians 6 continues by speaking of children, fathers and mothers, and slaves and masters (vv. 1-9). This is the same as Paul’s word in Colossians, again showing that all the proper matters of the Christian life come out of the infilling and enjoyment of the Lord.
Many Christians seem to cut off the portion concerning being filled in spirit and pick up only the portion that teaches the wives to submit to their own husbands, the husbands to love their wives, and the children, parents, slaves, and masters to be proper. However, all these things in the Christian walk issue from the enjoyment of Christ. When we are filled with Christ and enjoying Christ to the fullest extent, something flows out from this filling within. The submission of a wife and the love of a husband are outflows from the inner filling. The matter of foremost importance in Colossians 3 and Ephesians 5 is the enjoyment of Christ. If we are filled with Christ, all these other things come out spontaneously.
The Christian life is not a religious life or even merely a moral life. The Christian life is simply a life of enjoying Christ all the time. All the proper and necessary matters come out from and depend upon this enjoyment. Even the church life itself is a matter of the enjoyment of Christ. If we do not have the enjoyment of Christ, it is hard to have the church life. We can have a certain kind of religion or organization, but we cannot have the church life. The church life is the overflow of the enjoyment of Christ. This is proven in the last part of Ephesians 5, which speaks of the church (v. 32). When we all enjoy Christ to the fullest extent, the church life comes into being.