Now if you would take a copy of God’s holy Word in your hands and turn back with me to 1 Timothy, chapter 5, as we continue our examination of the teaching of the apostle Paul in the pastoral epistles. Paul, you will remember, has been instructing Timothy on how the Ephesians should honor various segments of the church family. Widows – chapter 5, 3 through 16. Pastors and elders – chapter 5, 17 through 25. And now, he turns to address the behavior of Christian slaves in the congregations of ancient Ephesus in chapter 6, 1 and 2.
Before we get to the positive teaching of these verses, let me ask for your indulgence for a few moments as I seek to clear the decks first and make some important clarifications about the Bible’s teaching on the subject of slavery. If we don’t, in my judgment, we are liable to misunderstand and misapply this text in potentially troubling ways. Tragically, church history is littered with people doing precisely that. Not least it has to be said to our very great shame by some of the greatest theologians of the Southern Presbyterian Church in our own country. I am persuaded that driven far more by a set of racial prejudices and a priori commitments to the existing social and political conditions of the antebellum South than they were by a thorough, honest submission to the Word of God on this issue, many of these men perpetuated the monstrous oppression of black people in this country, and we continue to deal with the dreadful fallout of those errors to this day.
That the international slave trade was allowed to exist for as long as it did and indeed that forms of human slavery including the trafficking and exploitation, especially of women and girl, all over the world continues at the levels that it does still today, ought to be a terrible source of grief and shame to the Church of Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, the claims of some, despite the claims of some, I want you to see that the Word of God is in fact utterly hostile to the institution of slavery, especially as it was practiced in its American context. Consider first of all the form of slavery about which Paul is writing in our text day. The form of slavery that Paul is discussing was very different indeed to that practiced in the trans-Atlantic African slave trade. Slaves in the New Testament context were often professional people, well-educated, highly skilled. Unless a person was a field slave, which was a very hard life indeed, most slaves were members of a household, they earned a salary. Some occupied positions of significant authority, including government office, and even held slaves themselves.
At the time that Paul was writing, slaves in the great cities of the Roman Empire really could not be distinguished from free persons based on their language, appearance, dress, behavior or personal worth. Importantly, slavery in Paul’s day was primarily economic in its motives and character, not race based as it was in antebellum America. Sometimes people became slaves as prisoners of war, but very commonly people sold themselves into slavery as a mechanism to ensure economic stability for themselves and their families. By the time of 1 Timothy, far reaching changes were sweeping the empire, significantly improving the lives of slaves and leading actually to the rapid decline of the institution itself. About half of the 50 million or so slaves in the empire could expect to gain their freedom before they turned thirty.
And so when we read about slaves in the New Testament, we need to try hard to banish the appalling image of impoverished African chattel slaves, toiling under the cruel lash of brutal, Southern taskmasters, kept in ignorance, subjected to every form of deprivation and degradation. That monstrous evil has very little in common with Paul’s subject here in 1 Timothy chapter 6. And what’s more, the Bible is actually crystal clear in condemning the kind of slavery that was practiced in 18th and 19th century America. For example, Deuteronomy 21:16 says, “Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death.” That’s pretty clear. The capture, sale and ownership of slaves, which was exactly how it was practiced in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, was considered a capital offense in the law of Moses. And in 1 Timothy itself, in chapter 1 verse 10, Paul denounces in the strongest terms as – this is his language – lawless and disobedient, ungodly and sinful, unholy and profane, he denounces “enslavers” of his own day and time. And so while man-stealing, the abduction of people from their homes simply to enslave and exploit them is condemned, so too actually is making and trading in slaves, even in the kind common in Paul’s day and time. Enslavers, he says, are ungodly and disobedient. The Bible is hostile to slavery.
But if that is true, if the Bible is hostile to slavery, why don’t the Scriptures ever call for the immediate end to the institution as it was practiced in the Roman Empire? Why do we have so many instructions addressed to slaves and masters throughout the New Testament, including an entire letter, the letter to Philemon, in which a newly converted runaway slave, Onesimus, is actually sent back to his master by Paul himself? Well let me make a few point in response to that concern. First, it bears repeating that the fundamental principles of Christianity are inherently hostile to slavery. Galatians 3:28, “There is neither slave nor free. All are one in Christ Jesus.” First Corinthians 7:21, “If you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity.” First Timothy 1:10, just quoted, “Enslavers are ungodly and disobedient to God.” Christianity is hostile to slavery.
Secondly, remember that Roman society was built in large part upon the institution of slavery. A third of the population of great cities like Rome and Ephesus was made up of slaves. And that meant that while the institution was declining and conditions were generally improving for slaves at the time when Paul was writing, slave revolts, which did happen occasionally, when they happened, were still brutally suppressed by the Roman authorities who had a vested interest in protecting their economic prosperity. Add to that the expectation in the culture at the time that slaves would participate in the pagan religion of their masters, and it becomes clear that Christian slaves faced very real social dangers. Cicero, the Roman orator, famously taught that slaves who embraced a “foreign religion” like Christianity were suspect, likely to be insubordinate to their masters. In other words, Christianity, as an oppressed, minority religion in the empire, with large numbers of slaves in its ranks, needed to navigate the political landscape very carefully indeed if it wished to avoid even greater public opposition and oppression. An open call for the end of the institution on which the whole society was based at that time would likely have had calamitous consequences for the fledgling church.
And yet it is still very clear that the Christian Gospel contained within it the seeds of the eventual destruction of the entire institution of slavery, radically transforming the relationship between a slave and his master by making them brothers and sisters in Christ. And history shows us, again and again, wherever Christianity is allowed to flower to its fullest extent in a culture, there, slavery withers and dies.
Alright, now, we’ve cleared the decks. That was the introduction! And we’re finally in a position to approach 1 Timothy 6:1-2 and hear its positive message for us today. And I have to say that given the wide range of personal and professional roles that slaves performed in the ancient world, the primary application of our passage is not to modern slavery, whether in the old South in America or in its various contemporary iterations. The closest parallel, the primary application is really to the working lives of modern people. “Just as the relationship between master and slave was the primary economic relationship in the ancient world,” writes Philip Ryken, so the relationship between boss and employee is the primary economic relationship in the world today and we should apply the Biblical teaching accordingly. Now understood that way, 1 Timothy 6:1-2 contains important instructions for believers on how to live for Christ in the post-Christian workplace today.
And so we’re going to unpack these verses under two simple headings. First, verse 1, we’ll think about work and Christian witness. Work and Christian witness. And then verse 2, work and Christian fellowship. Work and Christian witness, now work and Christian fellowship. Before we do, let’s bow our heads and pray and ask for the Lord’s help. Let us all pray.
Our God and Father, we ask now that You would give to us the illumination, the enlightening ministry of the Holy Spirit, that we may understand Your Word, and indeed, by Your Spirit’s help, begin to be reformed, remade, reconfigured in the way we live, in our habits, in our attitudes, in the frame and set of our whole lives by Your Word so we might be like Christ who served us and gave Himself for us. For we ask it in His name, amen.
We’re going to begin our reading from the twenty-fourth verse of chapter 5 to provide some context and we’re reading through verse 2 of chapter 6 of 1 Timothy. This is the Word of God:
“The sins of some people are conspicuous, going before them to judgment, but the sins of others appear later. So also good works are conspicuous, and even those that are not cannot remain hidden.
Let all who are under a yoke as bondservants regard their own masters as worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and the teaching may not be reviled. Those who have believing masters must not be disrespectful on the ground that they are brothers; rather they must serve all the better since those who benefit by their good service are believers and beloved.
Teach and urge these things.”
Amen.
Let’s think about work and Christian witness first of all. Look at verse 1 again please. “Let all who are under a yoke as bondservants regard their own masters as worthy of all honor, that the name of God and the teaching may not be reviled.” What should the attitude of a Christian slave be to his work? And what are they to do, as seems to have been the case here in verse 1, when their masters are unconverted? Or in our context, how should a Christian relate to his or her unbelieving employer? Well notice that Paul says they are to “regard their masters as worthy of all honor.” He doesn’t say their masters are worthy of all honor. Paul isn’t being naive, suggesting that everyone, simply because of their authoritative position is inherently superior, honorable, or worthy of respect. Not at all. Masters, in Paul’s day, just like employers in our own, can be controlling, demanding, untrustworthy. When an employee today grumbles about a boss being a slavedriver, probably that is an exaggeration.
But sometimes reality justifies the complaint. Bosses expecting an employee’s every waking moment to be devoted to their professional lives, work cultures that incentivize those who sacrifice their homes and their marriages and their personal health for the sake of the job, those aren’t caricatures, and some of us know that personally all too well. You’ve felt enormous professional pressure to out-perform your colleagues and impress the bosses no matter what in order to maintain job security or gain advancement. Sometimes the working environment is abusive, toxic, exhausting. Sometimes those to whom we report are people of low character and unrealistic expectations.
So how should a Christian navigate a work environment like that, one that is hostile to the Gospel and inimical to Biblical values? Paul says we should regard our masters, our employers, our superiors as “worthy of all honor.” They have been made in the image of God, let’s remember, and whatever their character, they retain a dignity as a human being that no sin can ever efface. And we are to treat them accordingly, with all honor, because they bear the likeness of the God you love. More than that, they do indeed stand in a position of leadership and authority over us, and we should honor their office even if the person is dishonorable in a way that is fitting to our respective stations.
An excellent exposition of precisely that point can be found in the Westminster Larger Catechism’s treatment of the fifth commandment. “Honor your father and your mother,” which the catechism explains refers not just to the dynamics of the home but to every situation in human society where there are different power dynamics at play. And so Question 127 asks, “What is the honor” – here’s the echo of 1 Timothy – “What is the honor that inferiors owe their superiors? How do we do this? How are we to honor our masters?” Listen to the answer. This is what Scripture is calling us to in our workplaces with respect to our employers. And as I read, let’s examine our hearts together, shall we? Examine our behavior by these words. We may find we have some repenting to do. Larger Catechism 127:
“The honor which inferiors owe to their superiors is all due reverence in heart, word and behavior, prayer and thanksgiving for them, imitation of their virtues and graces, willing obedience to their lawful commands and counsels, due submission to their corrections, fidelity to and defense and maintenance of their persons and authority, according to their several ranks and the nature of their places, bearing with their infirmities and covering them in love so that they, the inferior, may be an honor to them, their superior and their government.”
Do you honor your dishonorable employer? How do you speak about your demanding boss when you’re chatting in the breakroom with your colleagues? What about when you get home after a hard day and you want to blow off some steam? Do you bear with and cover their infirmities in love in order to be an honor to them? And Paul has more than just our words, of course, in his sights here. He’s talking about our behavior, our work ethic, our diligence. The point is, Christians ought to make the best employees because we honor every lawful instruction our superiors give us, we work hard to achieve the best outcomes for ourselves, for our employers, and for the businesses in which we are involved.
It may be, actually, that in Ephesus some slaves were beginning to think because of their newfound faith they didn’t really need to honor those placed over them who did not share their commitments. One commentator on this passage recalls the experience of one employer who once told him, “He’d become sceptical about Christians because of his experience with two theological students who seem to be always standing around talking about God during work hours. But what really did it was when the boss observed one go into the washroom for twenty minutes. When the employee emerged, he heard him whisper to his fellow student, ‘I just had the most wonderful time. I read three chapters of John’s gospel.’ Three chapters of John in the john on the bosses time,” writes this commentator, “pleases neither God nor man.” Masters in Ephesus were beginning to weary of these Christians who were actually less hard working, less reliable, less willing to put in a day’s hard graft than their pagan peers because their minds were on higher things. So as a result, the name of God and the teaching was being reviled. Do you see that in verse 1?
The point is, our public witness is at stake in the way that we behave in our secular working environments. Live and act with such integrity and discretion and reliability that the name of God might be magnified, not despised. Be so reliable, so dependable, so trustworthy that even your pagan bosses will be forced to acknowledge that “the teaching,” by which Paul means the apostolic Gospel that is supposed to be so precious to us, they will acknowledge that “the teaching” really does transform human lives. You are the proof that they cannot deny. Have you forgotten, I wonder, that you carry with you the name of God in all your working relationships? Have you forgotten that while you sit, you know, doom-scrolling on your phone or surfing the hours away on the internet instead of doing your job, you represent Jesus Christ before the watching world?
What would your boss say about the Gospel you profess to trust in and shape your life around and the Savior you profess to love and seek to imitate, what would he say about the Gospel based on the way you conduct yourself in your working environment? Are you the office gossip? Are you the constant complainer, the idler who’s always looking for the least amount of work she can get away with? Do you join in the group griping session about management? Would your boss say after observing you, “If that’s what Christian teaching produces, I don’t want any part of it”? Or do you seek to show everyone that Jesus Christ has changed your heart, made you a new creature by His marvelous grace so that you are always working hard to find ways to honor even dishonorable people? Do you treat with respect those who do not treat you that way? Do you work hard, even at mundane, disinteresting, unengaging tasks because you bear the name of God with you in everything you do? That’s the first thing we need to think through here – work and Christian witness. How is your witness in your workplace?
Then secondly, look at verse 2 and notice what we learn about work and Christian fellowship. In verse 1, the scenario seems to be the working environment and relationship between Christian slaves and their unconverted masters. But now in verse 1, Paul addresses the issue of how Christian slaves should relate to their believing superiors. Verse 2, “Those who have believing masters must not be disrespectful on the ground that they are brothers; rather they must serve all the better since those who benefit by their good service are believers and beloved.” Now you can see the dilemma immediately here I’m sure. Slave and master have both together come to faith in Jesus Christ. They have discovered to their great joy that as many as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male or female. You are all one in Christ Jesus. It’s wonderful. In Christ, those who are unequal in the world are one in the eyes of God. Slave and master have exactly the same status, equal members of the visible church. There are not second class citizens in the kingdom of heaven.
But that thrilling reality was leading some Christians to faulty conclusions. Believing slaves were beginning to disrespect their Christian masters. “Now that I am a Christian, you can’t tell me what to do. We are brothers in Christ now, you see. We are equals. I don’t have to submit to you anymore.” The word Paul uses for this attitude of disrespect in verse 2 means literally, “to think down.” We would say, “to look down” on someone; to belittle them; to forget that they are nevertheless still in a position of earthly authority over us. That’s what was beginning to happen in the church. These Christian slaves were acting disdainfully of their duties, disrespectfully toward their masters because, “He’s my brother in Christ and he won’t mind; brothers forgive. She’s my sister in Christ; she’s not the boss of me anymore.” That was their attitude.
I remember a friend once remarking after taking a job with a Christian publishing house that he would never again work for a Christian organization because the bosses presumed on the humility of their Christian employees and neglected to pay them and support them appropriately and the staff, for their part, presumed upon the kindness and forbearance of their Christian employers and shirked their responsibilities and ignored expectations of hard work and due diligence. Instead of a workplace filled with godly respect and mutual honor, it quickly became a toxic environment in which both employers and employees used their faith to excuse their own mistreatment of one another while each condemned the other for failing to live like the followers of Jesus they claimed to be. And my friend said he would rather work for an outright unbeliever than return to that environment ever again.
Now I think Paul would say that is a disaster of the first order. Don’t you? Instead, Paul says, Christians must serve all the better since those who benefit by their good service are “believers and beloved.” If Christian employees are to show non-Christian employers all honor in word and deed, how much more ought those who are bound together in Christ as brothers and sisters serve all the better because the one you serve is a believer and beloved. Do not allow the differences in your earthly stations to lead you to think you can suspend the duty to love one another as members of the household of God.
You remember how Paul began this whole section of the letter back in verse 1 of chapter 5? “Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters in all purity.” In other words, we are family. That means we are beloved; we are beloved by God in Jesus Christ and we are to be beloved by one another in Christ. A Christian employee works hard, shows respect, honors his or her Christian employer, does the best job he or she can at all times because they are loving their employers for Jesus’ sake. Did you know that? If your boss is a Christian, when you put in a hard day’s work you are loving him. It is love to serve diligently and do your duty to your superiors who are brothers or sisters in Christ. I wonder if part of the reason for laziness among Christians, one reason we resent hard work, I wonder if it can sometimes be that we have removed the category of love from the equation. Christian employers, Paul says, are beloved. So love them well by doing your duty by them for the honor of God whose name you bear.
Now that, I think that’s actually quite a subversive idea, don’t you, to see hard work as love? But that’s always the dynamic of the Gospel as it plays out in practical ways in our lives. It subverts the paradigm of the world. The world expects slaves to hate their masters and masters to mistreat their slaves. It expects employees to be begrudging towards their employers, and employers to be demanding and distrustful of their employees. The world rejects the Christian Gospel as incredible and then complains when Christianity refuses to be an instrument of radical social change and political revolution in ways that fits the world’s paradigm. But the Gospel turns all of those expectations on their heads, doesn’t it? The world privileges power, but the Gospel makes slaves of us all and calls us all to honor rather than resent those who are placed over us.
This is to be the posture of a Christian because of course it is the posture of our Christ. Remember the Son of Man who came “not to be served but to serve and give His life a ransom for many.” He is the Servant of the Lord, and we owe our salvation to His service. And since He has so served us, we are to serve one another.
I came across a story about John LaFayette Girardeau recently that I think gets at Paul’s message here actually rather well. Girardeau was a leading light among Presbyterians in the antebellum South, and he pastored a very large black congregation called Zion Presbyterian Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Before and during the Civil War, of course his congregation was comprised almost exclusively of slaves. But after the war, the black members of Zion Presbyterian Church were all now freed men. And the northern presbyterians sent a black missionary to Charleston to be their pastor after the Civil War. But it is a testimony to the love between pastor and people that it was Girardeau, their old white pastor, and not the black missionary that the members of Zion Presbyterian Church actually called to return to them and to pastor them. And when he did, when he came to them on Sunday, December 23, 1866, his sermon text was 2 Corinthians 5:4 – “We preach not ourselves but Jesus Christ and Him crucified, and ourselves, your servants” – the Greek is literally “your slave” – “for Jesus’ sake.” “We preach ourselves, your slaves, for Jesus’ sake.”
Jesus makes enemies into friends and friends into family. He makes the white pastor into the Gospel slave of black freed men in the Old South. He makes employees love their employers and strive to be the best employees they can be because Jesus has made them family. He makes Christians in the secular workplace honor their bosses even if their bosses are not honorable people, so that the name of God that they bear with them and the teaching of the Gospel that they trust in might not be reviled, but rather embraced. Brothers and sisters in Christ, let’s search our hearts once more in light of the work of Christ, shall we, who served us, gave Himself for us, hateful and unworthy of His service though we are. Let’s examine ourselves and weigh our work and our attitudes and our words by the standards of 1 Timothy 6:1-2. Show honor, even to the dishonorable because it is a picture of the Gospel. Weren’t we, aren’t we still so often the dishonorable, unworthy of honor? And Christ, the Lord of glory, came and served us. When we serve those who are unworthy of honor, we put them in mind of Jesus.
Be the best employee. Love your Christian colleagues and employers by the integrity and diligence of your efforts. Honor even the unconverted who God, in His providence, has set over you. And in this way, you show the truly revolutionary power of grace at work in your heart. May God help us all to do it. Let us pray.
Lord our God, as we bow before You, we do confess to You that we have not always honored those whom You have set over us in Your providence, but have been lazy. We’ve been complainers. We’ve been gossips and grumblers. We’ve been discontent. We’ve abused our freedoms in Christ. We’ve spoken ill of those we should have honored. Forgive our sin and teach us again, show us again, that we who are unworthy of any honor or service were served by the Lord of glory all the way to the cross. And then, in light of His work, make us glad and willing servants of Him and of those whom You have placed over us, for the glory of His name. Amen.