Colossians 3:18-25

Colossians 3:18-25 
English Standard Version (ESV)

 What's tempting, because we're sinful, is to look at verses like this as giant opportunities to get our way.  As a married man, verse 18 could be a giant flashing neon sign offering me the opportunity to have Rachel always do what I want.  Perhaps Paul is signing her up for a lifetime of endless debates about the merits and foolishness of bunting with a man on first and no one out in a close baseball game or, even worse, doing the dishes every night. 
 We twist Scripture whenever we take one verse out of context and don't read it in light of everything God is doing in the entire witness of Scripture.  God has been moving and revealing and working and selflessly saving for thousands of years -- to pull one verse out of context is like picking a single sentence out of War and Peace and pretending you can capture the entire breadth of the book with it.  Some may get closer than others, but it takes patience to understand the entire work.
  So if any verse in Scripture leads to the temptation to abuse it, or leads to something that doesn't look like selfless love that lifts up another and points to sacrificial living in the hopes of embracing a person as the handcrafted, beloved, and redeemed child of God that each of us is, then we should probably keep reading before rushing into action, for there is likely more to be revealed.