Ephesians 6:5-9
Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men, because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free. And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.
Reflection
I will be using this passage of scripture both today and for tomorrow. I am doing this because I want to focus on a common misunderstanding concerning this scripture today. Tomorrow I will deal with the specific teachings in the verses.
It has been suggested that the Apostle Paul, because of his teaching addressed to slaves and masters, was pro-slavery. It has also been suggested because of this passage and some verses from the Old Testament that the Bible as a whole approves of the concept of slavery.
In the case of this particular passage I believe that it is being unfair to Paul to conclude that he was in favor of the institution of slavery. We first must understand that Paul was living in and writing from a culture that slavery was simply accepted as a part of the order of things. This doesn’t say that the practice of slavery is right for any time but we must be careful not to over generalize and then conclude that if we were to take Paul from his culture and place him in our culture that he would still have the same views on slavery. Paul may have been dealing with the relationship between slaves and masters simply as a reality of his time.
We must remember that Paul also wrote, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” We need to be careful about drawing conclusions about Paul who lived and wrote from the first century from our perspective in the twenty-first century.
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