Slaves And Masers, Part 2 (Ephesians 6:5-9)

Introduction

A. Preliminaries

Welcome: Please turn with me in your Bibles to the sixth Chapter of Ephesians, beginning in verse 5. Our text this morning will be verses 5 thru 9 of Chapter 6, which you can find at the top of page 1163 in the navy blue Bibles found in your pews.

Ephesians 6:5–9 (ESV)

Bondservants, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ, not by the way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or is free. Masters, do the same to them, and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and that there is no partiality with him.

B. Review

Principles:

(Review from Last week)

Meaning of the word “Bondservant”

The word in Greek is doulos and it can be translated either bond-servant or slave. What I told you last week was the way that the ESV handles this is that if it’s a lifelong or generations long servitude with no hope of escape, then the ESV will generally use the word slave. If it’s a temporary set of circumstances with hope for liberation, then it’s generally servant. Bond-servant was a specific kind of servitude, usually used to pay off a debt.

Concerning the Institution of Slavery or Bondservice

What we covered last Sunday is that Paul does not deal with the instittuion of slavery in qutie the way we might expect him to. He does not call for open rebellion or immediate abolition. Rather, he sets the whole institution on a collission course with the rule and reign of Christ by calling the servants and masters brothers, and by instructing the Corinthians not to enter into this kind of service if they can ever avoid it.

What this means that the institution is not itself sinful, but it is evidence of the fall, and that it is possible to participate in the institution without sin (unless you’re a harsh master or an embittered slave or a contentious servant—all of that is sinful). It is possible to participate in the institution without being automatically guilty of sin.

However, what we also covered on Sunday is that this is one of the most fertile grounds for sin.

Sin springs up more easily here than most other conditions. In other words, if you want sin to abound, slavery is one of the greatest environments for sin. It’s like the most fertile soil ever for the weeds of sin and depravity. The presence of the institution doesn’t guarantee that sin is happening in every corner of it, without exception, but it makes men far more vulnerable to sin in every corner of it, without exception.

So what Paul does is plant the seeds for the destruction of this institution in a way he did not do with any other human institution, far as I can tell. Paul has a way of re-asserting the goodness of things he means to keep around that we don’t really see here. He does not root it in the created order as he does distinctions between men and women. He does not image it as Christ and the Church as he does with marriage. He does not compare it with heavenly glory as he does with gathered assembled worship.

No, here he simply prescribes responsibilities with an even hand, and in so doing, begins to chip away at unequal treatment of each other.

A Posture for Servants An Identity from Above A View from Below

I. A Posture for Servants

Ephesians 6:5 (ESV)

Bondservants, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling...

Do you know what the Greek means there? It means with fear and trembling.

Sometimes we like to think that Greek and Hebrew unlocks secrets. In actuality, all Greek and Hebrew does ordinarily is it clarifies usage or meaning here or there. But it’s pretty rare that the Greek or the Hebrew will just absolutely overturn and revolutionize the understanding of some passage of Scripture. Beware people who treat Greek or Hebrew like it unlocks all the secret hidden meanings that your Pastor never told you about. We are a highly suspicious people, and easy targets for bait like that.

But my point is that we often have a temptation to think “Well, I’ll bet that what’s going on in the Greek there is something softer, something more agreeable to me, something less offensive to my sensibilities.” I’m sorry to say, that’s just not an option here.

When we grasp what is being said here, most of us will be offended. Fear and Trembling language is God-language. It’s respect language. It’s reverence language.

This is hard for us because autonomy and individualistic judging of authority is the bread and butter of our cultural moment. As a culture, we believe that respect for authority has to be earned first, and then given. But that is not the biblical construct of authority.

The biblical construct of authority is that there is respect and honor for the office, and obedience to it in accordance with the power God has delegated to it and designated for it. When there is wicked tyranny, resistance to it is appropriate under the orderly cover of lesser magistrates. So it’s possible to disobey your governor while obeying your Sheriff, for instance. But there must be a willingness to suffer wrong, injury, loss, and even death for the sake of Christ.

If we are honest, we will admit that much of the biblical data about authority is that it should ordinarily, in most cases be respected without grumbling. Because the Lord seems to take more seriously the breakdown of societal order and authority than he does the comfort of individualistic autonomy.

God prioritizes two things that we—in our flesh—hate. And that is:

(1) Submission to authority when it costs us, and

(2) Being cheerful and glad of heart when we don’t want to be.

We are generally terrible at both of these things. Our approach to submission to authority is usually submit unless you really don’t want to. And our approach to cheerfulness is be cheerful in your work unless it’s really hard.

And I think this is why Paul specifically addresses bond-servants. Can you think of a group that might feel more entitled to bitterness and frustration? Can you think of a class of people who might feel more justified in their rebellion or disrespect?

And to men and women such as this, Paul says

Ephesians 6:5 (ESV)

...obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ

Work for your master with sincere obedience from the heart. What? You mean not only do it, but want to do it? Yes. Why? Because Jesus Christ is your King. That is your posture. That is the posture of your service. Humble service as you would serve Christ. Humble speech as you would speak to him. Humble work as you would work for Him.

What has Paul been doing this entire section?

Giving direction that is contrary to our weaknesses. To husbands he says “Love and nurture and wash and lead and rule and cherish and protect.” To wives he says “respect and submit.” And in fact he gives wives the same posture as he gives here—as to Christ. You’ll remember back in Chapter 6, he said

Ephesians 5:22 (ESV)

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.

It’s the same construct he gives here in our text.

Ephesians 6:5 (ESV)

Bondservants, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ,

And as we already saw a few weeks back, to children he says “Obey mom and Dad.” To Fathers he says “Do not provoke to wrath. Do not set impossible standards. Do not force them to achieve your dreams to make up for your failures.”

And to bond-servants he says “Obey your earthly masters as you would Jesus.”

He commands according to our weaknesses.

So if you were going to ask “Paul are you for obedience to masters or are you for the destruction of slavery?”

Yes. But strategy and priorities here are important. Paul is playing the long game. His long game is the dismatling of the whole institution. His short game is that Christ is glorified in the happy work and service of the Bond-Servant. That is the posture he calls them to, and it’s the posture of service to which we are called as well.

That is the posture for Service, next is the Identity from above.

II. The Identity From Above

Ephesians 6:5–6 (ESV)

Bondservants, obey your earthly masters...not by the way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart,

Paul is saying to bondservants that even if you weren’t a bondservant...you are still a bondservant. Even if you didn’t have a master, you still have a Master.

This is probably one of the least talked about aspects of the Christian life. We love to talk about how our connection to Jesus is relational. How we are in a relationship with Jesus. We like the familial passages that reference God as our Father and Christ as our Brother and that is all true and no small encouragement to our hearts and it is meant to be encouragement to our hearts.

But here Paul gives us another sense of our identity. And that is as bondservants of Christ.

What this means is that it’s not a sin to be a master, or else Christ is in sin. And it’s not shameful to be a servant, for that is what we have been called.

It seems that what we can gather from the Bible is that God delights to use familial language so that we know the family to which we belong. And he is also pleased to use servant/master language so that we know the duties to which we are called.

Remember that Paul is addressing various vocations here because he is still applying his own words from Chapter 4, when he instructed the Ephesians...

Ephesians 4:22–24 (ESV)

to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

And when we looked at that passage some months back, we saw that what Paul is doing is going right to the core issue of sin, which is our deceitful desires—our desire that lie to us--and he is saying that is where sin starts, that is what God will transform, that is where change happens, but it begins by taking our desires and handing them to God with open hands and saying “I am not my own, these too are yours.”

My desire. My dreams. My vision for my life. My flag that I fly on my social media account. My obsession with knowing what’s really going on so I can correct everyone.

Which means that for the Christian, our identity is not rooted in our impulses, our feelings, our proclivities, our preferences, or our desires. It can’t be.

Do you know why? Because we are bond-servants.

What does a faithful bond-servant want?

Oh all us modern Americans are going to hate this answer.

What does a bond-servant want? To be the delight of his master. That is my identity. A good and faithful servant of my good and faithful master.

And this brings me to the last point this morning. That we are called to rest in an identity of being bond-servants of Christ. So the temptation is to fear that we have an evil master.

III. The View from Below

Look at verse 7...

Ephesians 6:5–7 (ESV)

Bondservants, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling...doing the will of God from the heart, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man

Serve your master as you serve Christ. For in reality, you are his bond-servant. You are doing his will, and you are rendering service to him. Not to mankind. In other words, the Lord Jesus is your master. Or as I will frequently say in this sermon—Jesus is your actual boss.

And...

What you believe about your boss will tend to set the pace of your work ethic.

I’m not saying that’s inescapable. You can have a good work ethic and a terrible boss. And you can have a pathetic work ethic and a good boss. But I am saying that generally speaking, your flesh will cultivate a work ethic commensurate with how you feel you are being treated.

Paul understands that. The Holy Spirit understands that. So we are given the reminder that we do not labor under a bad boss. We are bondservants of Christ.

Nothing incentivizes sloth quite like feeling mistreated or feeling worthless. The work ethic that has captured the imagination of my generation is that you shouldn’t have to work until you find work that excites your heart, pays you very well, and gives you a deep sense of meaning and purpose.

And that’s understandable to a certain extent. Because nothing strengthens sloth or laziness or even self-pity quite like the sense that your work is worthless.

So it is true that if a person is excited by work, is well compensated for the work, and they have a deep sense that the work gives them purpose, they will naturally want to work hard. That’s almost universally true.

But what my generation has done is taken that reality and turned it into a demand. My generation and the one after me has said if my employer doesn’t give me this sense of meaning and value, then I won’t give them my work. And I’d rather be unemployed than stuck in a job that doesn’t fill me with a sense of meaning and purpose and worth.

And so to my fellow millennials, and to Gen Z, speaking as an older brother alongside you, and rooting for you, if the apostle Paul speaks the way he does here in Ephesians 6 to bond-servants and slaves, what would he say to us? Do you have the courage to imagine it?

You might have noticed there is a repeated refrain in our passage. Much like how Paul, at the end of Ephesians 5 repeatedly makes the Christ-and-the-Church picture clear when he’s talking about marriage, he belabors the point in the same way in this part of Chapter 6, repeatedly emphasizing that a bondservant is working for Jesus not simply working for an earthly master.

Now that’s really important. Because Paul could have simply said “Bondservants, the Lord commands you to have a cheerful heart and to work diligently. Therefore, work diligently and have a firm grasp on your cheerfulness. And that would have been enough.

But he actually goes “the extra step” you see, and he doesn’t simply call his readers to a good attitude. He doesn’t simply re-write the job description, he replaces the boss.

He doesn’t simply say work hard or work cheerfully or work diligently. He repeatedly tells them work for Jesus.

Verse 5

Ephesians 6:5 (ESV)

Bondservants, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ,

Verse 6

Ephesians 6:6 (ESV)

not by the way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart,

Verse 7

Ephesians 6:7 (ESV)

rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man,

Verse 8

The Lord is your boss because he’s the one writing your ultimate paycheck

Ephesians 6:8 (ESV)

knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or is free.

And then even to masters, Paul’s point is that you are not the boss because you yourself have a boss.

Ephesians 6:9 (ESV)

Masters, do the same to them, and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and that there is no partiality with him.

This is perhaps one of the most masterful political-spiritual chess moves in history as Paul is both long-term putting this institution in the ground, and short-term using it to glorify Jesus.

By forcing his readers this one question:

Who do you think your master is?

What sort of master do you have? How you answer that question will determine a great deal about your work ethic here on earth, and the attitude with which you approach your work.

We see evidence of this in the Gospel of Matthew don’t we? When Jesus tells the parable of the talents. And how to one servant he gives five talents and that guy (by wise management and investment) makes 5 more, to the joy of his master. And to the second he gives two talents, and that guy (by wise management and investment) makes 2 more, to the joy of his master.

And to the last servant he gives one talent. And when he comes back what does that servant say to him?

Matthew 25:24–25 (ESV)

He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.’

Now, many times we read that, and we are tempted to believe the servant.

What this servant is essentially saying to his master is “You’re a thief. You steal from people. You steal their time. You enjoy the fruit of other people’s labor. You’re a villain.” And because we are Americans who are naturally suspicious of authority (especially authority that has money) we tend to read that as the servant having the real inside scoop on what a jerk his master is. But what is actually going on here is because the servant hates his master and has severe bitterness against him, he refuses to work.

We should take very seriously that what you believe about your authorities has a powerful effect on what you are willing to do with your time and your resources.

And so apply that principle back to our text in Ephesians 6.

Ephesians 6:5 (ESV)

Bondservants, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ

He does not say “Do it because they are such good and admirable men.” He says “Do it as you would do to Christ.”

Because we work best when we trust well, so in order to motivate our trust, God puts us to work, always, for himself.

Children understand this. Boys and girls, you already have a sense of what I am talking about. You aren’t out in the world yet with jobs or with bosses. Right now your bosses are Mom and Dad, the Lord has placed you under their care and under their authority.

And sometimes, Mom and Dad will ask you to do something, and you will say Why? Now, be honest with me for a moment. Sometimes that is because you are really curious. You don’t understand. You want to understand. And sometimes it is because you don’t want to do it. You don’t want to listen. You don’t want to obey. And you think that if you can ask a bunch of questions about what you’ve been asked to do, then maybe you won’t have to do it.

And often times when we have to suffer unjustly, we start asking why, and when we don’t get an answer, we get mad, we get bitter, and we get slothful in whatever work God has set before us. This is a temptation for everyone in every kind of vocation.

But we work for Jesus.

And there is a peace bound up in that reality that we will find satisfying for several lifetimes if we will dare to crucify our complaining spirits.

Conclusion

So what is it that we must know today? We must know that the impulse of our flesh is to say we will finally be secure when we have a perfect master.

This doesn’t mean we should not ask the Lord of heaven to give us godly rulers and leaders and pastors and families and so on.

But the reality is that we will always be in service to some master. Always be in service to some hope or idea or system or ideology. Christ calls us to full and total service without exception. Created being can never put the Creator in their debt.

And yet, our Creator has taken on flesh and died. The Son of God, Jesus Christ has come and has served us by lowering himself even to the point of death so that we can be free men and women. Free and clean. Free from fear. Free from terror. Free to actually be at peace in the service of one who loves us and has died and risen again and promised to spread his kingdom all over.

So are you free? Do you know the Lord Jesus Christ? Are you free? Are you free from the guilt and shame of sin? Are you free from the terrors of earthly masters? Have you good cause to hope? Or are you threatened on every side by terrors?

Come and know the bond-service that makes slaves into free men. In the name of Jesus, Amen.