Slaves of Christ | Ephesians 6:5-9
Slaves of Christ
Ephesians 6:5–9
Introduction
“The Bible permits slavery.”
So begins David Chilton’s section on slavery in his incredible book, Productive Christians. That is a jarring statement to modern American ears, often deemed anathema. That claim challenges our cultural and historical context, leading many to reject the Bible as racist or cruel. A 2023 Barna Group study identified why people doubt Christianity: hypocrisy, negative experiences, judgmentalism, secularism’s rise, and moral/ethical concerns. The latter looms large, as modern sensibilities view biblical ethics on women, family, manhood, womanhood, and justice as archaic and repressive, fueling widespread deconstruction of once-firm faiths.
Over the past two decades, particularly recently, conversations about politics, race, and social issues have strained relationships, sometimes irreparably. Friends who once shared faiths now question everything, reinterpreting scripture through critical lenses, leaving Christians to defend the faith. If unequipped, we may feel ashamed of the Bible’s words in a culture rejecting truth, goodness, and beauty. The unbelieving world asks, “Did God really say that?”—echoing the serpent’s question in Eden. Did God truly command submission in marriage, obedience from children, or slaves to obey masters? If so, then the God of the Bible is unjust.
Yet, we must choose: trust the God who created all, promises good, and never forsakes us, or rely on subjective experience? In Ephesians, Paul reveals majestic truths: God chose us in Christ before time, revived us from sin, and calls us to walk in a worthy of the gospel, unified in Christ’s body, shedding old ways for His finished work. In Ephesians 5-6, Paul gets practical, addressing husbands, wives, children, fathers, slaves, and masters directly. And in our text this morning, his words to slaves and masters still shock, challenging our modern understanding. Will we respond to God’s word by faith or by sight, trusting the Spirit or our cultural elites?
So, let us return to this great letter and see what God has in store for us. Please rise as you are able as I read Ephesians 6:5–9.
In our text this morning, Paul concludes this section often referred to as the “Household Codes”. He is unpacking what a manner worthy of the gospel looks like to different people in different stations of life. Paul has been addressing “households”. You’re likely familiar with the Greek work oikos—meaning a house, or a family, or a household. But that term means more than just those of your immediate, flesh and blood family. We know this because in this section, he moves beyond the immediate nuclear family to the greater and larger context of society at large. He starts addressing social and vocation worlds—but those are their own forms of oikos. I mean, what is a city but a collection of families and households? What is a nation but a collection of families and households? What is a church but a collection of families and households?
So this text is intensely practical. It reaches out beyond just the 4 walls of our homes and churches and into society itself. How are we to relate to those in authority over us? How are we to relate to those who are under our charge? We do not live in a compartmentalized world, where the home and the church are completely quarantined off from the world around us. No, God’s word is profitable for us in every circumstance and so that we might do every good work. By nature, our religion is a public one that requires it to be lived out in the world around us. And thanks be to God that he has given us clear instructions on what we are to do.
But before we wrestle with what God would have us do, we need to wrestle with the reality of God's word to us, and understand the world that Paul is addressing by looking at the nature of slavery.
The Nature of Slavery
It is nearly impossible to unpack all the treasure of this section without first dealing with the very first word. Who is it that Paul is addressing here at the beginning of Ephesians 6:5? Answer: according to our ESV translations—bondservants. That is how the ESV translators translated the Greek noun δοῦλος. That word is used 127 times in the NT. Theologian Murray J. Harris has argued, convincingly, that everywhere that particular word is used, the proper translation is not bondservants, but slaves. The authoritative Greek NT dictionary defines this word: male slave as an entity in a socioeconomic context, slave.
It’s imperative that we deal with this question first, because if we don’t understand who it is Paul is addressing, we will completely misinterpret, misapply, and misunderstand everything the Lord would have for us in this incredible passage. So, in order to not trip all over our own feet, let’s ask the question: why did the translator of the ESV translate that word bondservants instead of slaves?
I think the key reason they did was to by-pass the immediate gag reflex of the American reader. When you read the word slave, no matter the context, what comes to mind? If you grew up in America attending American schools in American social study classes, the image that must come to mind is the Transatlantic Slave Trade, and the often brutal reality of Southern slavery in America.
And that’s understandable. We have been taught and conditioned to hear that word—even as I began this morning—and have an immediate response of disgust and indignation. Incredible evils were committed in the midst of American slavery—one only needs to watch the Oscar-winning movie 12 Years A Slave to experience that gut-level repulsion to the injustice and wickedness that often took place in that American Era. And again, that is right and that is just.
But the African slave trade and American slavery in the 19th century American South is not what Paul had in mind as he penned these words. The slavery of the Greco-Roman world—the world of his original audience, and the slavery described in the Jewish Law of the first 5 books of the Bible, which Paul would have known front to back—was very different from the slavery that we think of. We have to be careful in our study of the Bible—we can not read our context or our situation back into the Bible. We have to take God’s word seriously and in its original context first. Before applying the meaning of the Bible to us today we must first understand what that meaning is first.
So, what did Paul mean by that word doulos, slave? Murray Harris is helpful when he says…
For our purposes we may define a slave…as someone whose person and service belong wholly to another. On this view slavery involves (a) absolute ownership and control on the part of the master and the total subjection of the slave; and (b) the absence of the slave’s freedom to choose his action or movement.
—Murray J. Harris
According to the NT writers and in reflection of the Greco-Roman society they were in, to be someone’s slave was to belong to them, to have your allegiance and entire self governed by them, not being free to choose whatever it is we would like. To be sure, to us that will sound an awful lot like the slavery of the American south. But there are key differences that we must keep in mind.
Most critically, while the situation of the slaves might be the same (bound and subject to their masters in such a way that they are not free to do whatever they choose), how people entered into slavery was very different. In the Transatlantic Slave Trade we are all familiar with, Africans were enslaved and kidnapped (often by fellow Africans) simply because of the belief that the African race was constitutionally and ontologically inferior to the White race. This wicked theory was substantiated and defended by the very intellectual elites of the day—that the White man was just simply more evolved than the black man, and thus could own a human being, made in the image of God, just like they would own a work horse or a dog.
And it is around that awful sin—that of racial prejudice and vainglory and the denial of the very image of God in his image bearers—that the modern institution of slavery was formed. It was wicked, it was sinful, it flew directly in the face of the common grace truth of our Declaration of Independence—that all men are created equal and are each one endowed by our Creator with certain rights that can not be taken—and it was right to be abolished.
You want to understand the stakes involved in understanding and interpreting and applying words in the Bible correctly? Look no further than the American Church during the era of slavery. They interpreted a one-to-one overlap of the slaves referred to by Paul in Ephesians 6:5, and the slaves on the various plantations throughout the South. “Slaves, obey your earthly masters!” There it is, right there. This misunderstanding led to wicked misapplication.
Rather than identify the specific sins being committed, they were overlooked, redefined, and ultimately excused. Far from obeying the word of God, they were warping and twisting it to meet their selfish needs. The former slave who became a prominent abolitionist, orator, and writer Frederick Douglass laments this reality when he writes…
What I have said respecting against religion, I mean to apply to the slaveholding religion of this land, and with no possible reference to Christianity proper; for, between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference—so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity.
—Frederick Douglass
In God’s providence and by his grace, slavery as such in its sinful form has been abolished from this land. But don’t miss the connections here—we must not act like the social elites of the past. We may feel as though we have evolved and transcended evil slavery, but the same wicked and sinful motivations and forces that were at play in the Transatlantic Slave Trade—namely the belief that not all humans are equal if value and worth and may be treated however we see fit—are very much alive and well today in the abomination that is the abortion industry.
Just 3 days ago, a popular social commentator—one of our “cultural elites”—posted this on Instagram referring to the detainment of violent illegal illegal immigrants at the new “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida…
Every atrocity in history began with someone deciding who counts as human.
—Sharon McMahon
She’s exactly right. More than she even knows. And yet, the same people who lament the supposed “enslavement” of actual criminals in a prison hold no lament for the extermination of their own children in the prison of a feminist womb. The unborn have become enslaved to the wickedness of our day, and victim to its need for autonomy and self-expression. “It's just a clump of cells! Therefore, I can enslave it!” is not far removed from “It’s just a clump of cells! Therefore, I can kill it!” I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the church or Christianity that defends a woman’s so-called “right to an abortion” a church.
But again, this is not the slavery Paul is referring to here in Ephesians 6. In the ancient world, one did not enter into slavery simply by virtue of their race, but for many different reasons, including captured soldiers after war, defaulting on a debt, or simply out of poverty. Murray J. Harris again is helpful in understanding Greco-Roman slavery…
In the first century, slaves were not distinguishable from free persons by race, by speech or by clothing; they were sometimes more highly educated than their owners and held responsible professional positions; some persons sold themselves into slavery for economic or social advantage; they could reasonably hope to be emancipated after ten to twenty years of service or by their thirties at the latest; they were not denied the right of public assembly and were not socially segregated; they could accumulate savings to buy their freedom; their natural inferiority was not assumed.
—Murray J. Harris
Do we see this today? Well, yes we do. We are not as free as we presume we are. Think of your job—whether employed by a formal employer or the work you do in your home—you are not free to do whatever it is you want. Likely, no one knows that more acutely than stay-at-home moms! You have voluntarily bound yourself, limiting your own freedom to submit to do whatever tasks are given to you by your supervisor. And you recognize you must do those things whether you want to or not. When we hear slaves and masters, we ought not to import our understanding of those words into the text, but understanding that the same principle as at work today in the vocations and spheres we operate in today.
So a question that is often asked of this text is why doesn’t Paul denounce the institution of slavery here in Ephesians 6? Why doesn’t he declare in his letter, “Slaves, rise up against your masters! Throw off the chains of that wicked institution and be free!” He doesn’t say that because it is not his focus to subvert or overthrow corrupt governments or institutions. Rather, his aim was to equip Christians—both slave and master—to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord in whatever life situation they found themselves in.
We must think biblically and we must think critically. Paul in Ephesians 6 does not denounce slavery here because in the Bible, slavery is permitted. We know it can’t be inherently sinful because Paul takes the universal reality of slavery and then puts it into a metaphor of the Christian life. Look again at verse 5…
Bondservants (slaves), 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 (slaves) of Christ…
—Ephesians 6:5–6
If slavery is fundamentally about allegiance, about belonging wholly to someone, to identifying with them and with their household, bound to them in such a way as they have the authority to control your behavior, then all people everywhere are right now, currently enslaved—either to sin or to Christ. Paul is making a clear connection back to the very beginning of the letter. Remember what he said in Ephesians 2…
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
—Ephesians 2:1–3
That is the natural, sinful state of all man. Do you have your eyes open to that reality this morning? All around us in the city, around us at work, maybe in our own families, there are people enslaved to the passions of their own flesh, and hostile to Christ. Do you see them? Do you see them as Christ sees them, with compassion and mercy?
That is how we all once were. We were all once enslaved to our own passions, to our own sinful lusts and desires, but because of the sovereign grace of our Lord, our allegiances have been switched. We are no longer slaves to sin, but to Christ and to righteousness. We remain slaves—the difference is our master. That is who we belong to, that is who we are. We are not free to do whatever it is we want, but are commanded and empowered by the Spirit to obey all that he commands.
The tremendous mercy of God is what the Christian life is all about. We were once alienated from God, not just lost and wandering, but hostile to him, to his ways, and to his kingdom. But despite our enslavement to sin, his mercy truly is more! The cross of Christ is the supreme display of the kindness of God to those who hate him, to turn our hearts from those of stone to those of flesh. Paul is talking to Christian slaves and Christian masters in Ephesians 6, and he wants them to reflect the kindness and allegiance of Christ to the rest of the world. That is at the heart of the gospel that Paul loves so much, and that is what is at the heart of this text. Because we are slaves of Christ, we are free and commanded to obey our authorities and act justly to those who are in our charge.
So I ask you, how does that reality land on you? You are a slave of Christ! How does that work itself out in your life? That, I believe, is what Paul unpacks for us in Ephesians 6:4–9. And I think that works itself out in 2 clear points of application that we’ll end with this morning.
Trust God by obeying those in authority over you.
The command Paul gives to slaves and us to obey is clear. This is the same Greek word all 3 synoptic gospel writers used when describing the famous story of Jesus in the boat during the storm. Recall that story from Matthew 8, as Jesus is asleep in the hull, a storm kicks up, and his disciples rouse him asking him to do something…
Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. And the men marveled, saying, “What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?”
—Matthew 8:26–27
The Lordship of Christ and his mastery of the winds and waves meant that when he spoke, the elements not only heard him, but did what he said. They obeyed. You and I are called to do the same to our earthly masters.
And who are our earthly masters? The word used for master is actually the same word for lord, implying authority. Your masters are anyone who has authority over you. That could be your boss, your manager, your CEO, your crew leader, your mayor, your governor, your president, your king.
And notice, we are to obey our earthly masters as we would Christ. Similarly, as husbands represent Christ to their wives and children, so do masters to those under them. But how are we to obey our earthly masters? Paul lists a number of motivations and 1 promise:
"with fear and trembling" (v. 5)
We are to have this attitude as we obey not because the earthly masters are tyrannical, but fear and trembling is the proper response to those who have been commanded and assigned a task by the Lord—namely to obey. So we obey our masters because we want to obey God!
"with a sincere heart" (v. 5)
Or we could say, obey with a singleness of heart. Our obedience should be marked throughout with integrity and purity, not with ulterior motives.
"as you would Christ" (v. 5)
That is, fully understand that our obedience and submission to our earthly masters is actually obedience and submission to Christ. Submitting and obeying our bosses and those in authority and submission to Christ are not two separate things, but the same activity.
"not as people-pleasers" (v. 6)
Our obedience and submission is not to simply be done when the boss is present or only to bring attention to yourself in order to receive some special attention or promotion. Rather, we are to obey genuinely and at all times.
“doing the will of God from the heart" (v. 6)
Or more literally, “doing the will of God from the soul”. Not just with our actions, but with our attitudes and dispositions. Again, not with eye-service or people-pleasing, but with genuine and full obedience and joy.
"rending service with a good will" (v. 7)
Our obedience and service and work ought to flow from a good attitude, a cheerful attitude, and a grateful attitude. Again, in everything we do, we ought to do so with eagerness and wholeheartedness.
And those motivations Paul lays out are not conditioned on whether or not your master is just or good. It is not here say, “IF your master is a good man, or a good boss, or a good manager who just so happens to always agree with you and always does things exactly how you would do it, THEN you ought to obey.” No, these motivations are to mark the Christian worker and slave at all times, in all circumstances, which can only happen because of Christ, who produces in us the fruit of the Spirit.
But it ends with a promise. The promise (v. 8): the good you do here, the true obedience you render here, stretches far beyond your current circumstances and into the life to come. V. 8: whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord. And notice, that promise is not conditional on whether or not your boss sees your good works, notices how efficient you are, or acknowledges your hard work.
Does that give you hope? Does that give you any encouragement to go into the office tomorrow, to keep going? Obey the command of Christ and trust the promises of Christ, and work everything as unto the Lord, for it is he and he alone we belong to.
Fear God by being just to those under your authority.
The command given to masters in verse 9 is to “do the same”. It should be noted that the original readers, the slavemasters in the audience at the original reading of the letter of Ephesians, would have been shocked by that statement. And that’s the point—the gospel offends everyone. So they are commanded and expected to have all the same attitudes as they lead and rule over those under their authority.
This “do the same” is obviously not commanding them to obey their slaves, but rather referring to the same motivations and attitudes as those under them. The relationship is meant to be reciprocal, but not symmetrical. Masters all called to lead, but to lead justly and with grace and love to those under them. Essentially, be a godly, just, kind, loving, strong master to all those under your charge. Bosses, make it easy for those under your employment and supervision to obey their command to obey you, and work for you with goodwill and a sincere heart.
And the sinful treatment we so associate with slavery is rightly and forcibly denounced. “Stop your threatening!” Paul says in v. 9. Because all of us, even masters and rulers and bosses, are people under authority. All of us have a Master in heaven who is ruling and reigning and observing how we treat those under us. The King is watching, and he knows no partiality. This should work in our hearts an appropriate fear of the Lord. Recall what David said in Psalm 2…
Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth. Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled.
—Psalm 2:10–12
Do you run a small business? Do you run a major corporation? Do you lead a work crew? Do you rule over a couple toddlers? Remember that God overall, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, and the Creator of Heaven and Earth is watching and observing how it is you treat those under your charge. So act like Christ—lay your life down for those whom God has called you to lead.
And for those of you thinking, “you don’t understand. My boss or my employees are impossible. They never do what they’re told, or he’s impossible to work for.” That may be so, but we must begin with ourselves, we must take responsibility for ourselves and trust and fear God. It begins with us. It begins with confessing our own sins and turning in faith to the promises of God, and that will have an effect in our world, that will witness to the kind of people we are, and so called the world around us to do the same.
And it is through everyday obedience, everyday sanctification that change families, that change households, that change cities, and nations. It is through the mercy of God, operating in our lives and witnessed by others, that can transform whole societies.
All of these commands in the household codes do not come by nature. Naturally, we do not want to submit to our husbands, we do not want to take responsibility for our homes, we do not want to obey our parents, we easily provoke our children to anger, and by nature we do not want to obey our authorities and tend towards domineering to those under our charge. But that is exactly why Paul commands it.
You no longer belong to that old nature. You are no longer enslaved to that old nature. And it is all by his mercy and grace. Thanks be to God that he does not treat us as our sins deserve—however great our sin to him was, his mercy is more! To be free in Christ is to belong to Christ and to his righteousness. To belong to him is to have the same Spirit working in you that caused him who was equal with the Father to submit himself to the Father’s plan, to take on our fragile frame, to live among us, and for our sake to be crucified in our stead, so that those who belong to him, who are enslaved to him, might die to themselves and live for him.
Obedience is required because obedience is possible. Fear is required because Christ did not stay in the grave, but rose in glorious might, and is right now ruling and reigning over all things. And he did all of that, he overcame your sin, so that you might behold his kindness and mercy to you, and so live for him today, and tomorrow, and forevermore.