Colossians 4:1

Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal.

I. The duty of masters. They are not required to abdicate their mastership, but to exercise it as a service for Christ.

1. Justice has reference to servants as workers. They are to receive fair remuneration. The price of labour is generally regulated by supply and demand. This is a maxim of political economy. Wages cannot be fixed by fancy and philanthropy. If I can get work done for 6s. a day, why should I give 7s.? Still, there is great scope for the exercise of religion. Servants may be ignorant of the market price of labour, and it is unrighteous to take advantage of it. It might be difficult on the grounds of political economy to say that the squire or farmer should give more than 10s. or 12s. a week when he can get abundance of labour at that price, but it is not difficult to see how this would not satisfy a Christian master. It is surely wrong to show more care for the horses which draw the plough than for the man who holds it. The man who has found out the lowest price at which some starving needlewoman will do “slop” work, the mistress who makes a workhouse girl her drudge for a mere pittance, may do what they think is just; but hardly if a Christian.

2. Equal involves equality as well as equity, and has in it the element of reciprocity.

(1) If by the energy and skill of his operatives an employer is greatly benefitted, should all the profits be his? Is it right after a series of successful years, when a reaction sets in, to close a factory and send the hands adrift? Some employers have kept on, and been rewarded with attachment and devotion.

(2) Servants should be treated as having like feelings and sensibilities with their masters. They ought not to be, as in many cases they are, treated as destitute of feeling.

(3) Nor must it be forgotten that they have characters to be cultivated, and much depends on your example and treatment. It is not to be expected that they will give their best efforts for those who are reckless in their habits and indifferent to just claims. “Like master, like man.”

(4) Servants have souls to be saved. A clergyman waited on the principals of a large city house and asked for facilities to attend to the spiritual good of the employees. He was promptly told that the firm had nothing to do with their souls. Happily Christian employers are now waking up to their responsibility (John 13:13).

II. The motive by which this is enforced--“Knowing,” etc. The servant is required to serve his master as if he were serving Christ, and the master is to use his authority as if he too were serving Christ. Many masters hold the responsibility of servants, and yet ignore their own. Nothing is more displeasing to God than this (Job 31:13). The issues of the great day depend on our conduct towards each other. What we have done to the poorest Christ will regard as having been done to Himself. (J. Spence, D. D.)

Master and man

Observe--

1. The first step towards righteousness between master and man, mistress and maid, is to respect the relation.

2. Every human being has a right to himself, consistent with the rights of others. When he sells himself, hands or brains, for honourable ends, he is to be respected. The cook makes as respectable sale of her arts in the kitchen as the owner of the real estate in renting a house. Here is safety. The poorest creature you employ never contracted to sell self-respect.

3. The strong, moreover, should bear the infirmities of the weak.

4. You may be conscience to your servants. What are the servants, for the most part? Grown-up children. They ape you; talk large, as you do at times; try to dress like you. You are your servant’s example--the keeper of his conscience. You pray every morning for your wife, your children, your property, clear down to the fence at the rear of the lot behind the stable, but never for Jack in the stable.

5. There should be a reciprocity of interest felt between a Christian master and his man. Nothing in social life has been more admirable than the magnificent loyalty of old servants. Read of it in the armour-bearers of Hebrew kings, the squires of days of chivalry. After faithful years he, the old servant, tried and true, did the honours of the castle, and set the turret pennant for great festivals. He spread the plates, and made the feast ready in oaken halls; he conducted fair and brave to their chambers. On errands of knightly valour, he accompanied his lord; he carried the helmet, the shield, the gauntlets, the armour all, and bore the banner of the house; he gave the battle-cry, and when, borne down, his liege would fall, the old servant bore him from the field; and so he won the right to wear golden spurs--no longer a servant, but a knight of the line. In comparison with this shining loyalty of a barbarous age, how pitiful the frequent bickerings and mutual hurt of Christian times. An old family servant, after ten years, comes to look upon your home as her home--all she has in this world. She has clung to you in five movings, and knew just where everything belonged. She knows your ways, moods, likes and dislikes. She has had her flare-ups, and you forgave and said nothing; in return, she has seen flare-ups above her floor, and said nothing. She’s been sick, and you waited for her recovery--how she thanked you; and that winter you were all sick she paid you back with interest. She prefers you to the savings bank. She has known Master Charley from birth, and has nigh spoiled him; and that other one down in Greenwood she remembers, and surprises you by saying, “This is the 15th of May, the day he died.” God bless you, good creature. She has wept in the doorway at three of your funerals; she has laughed in the doorway at two household marriages; and how she boasts of her cake. You leave everything in her hands and go on long journeys; you return and find all safe, and exclaim, “God bless her; she shall stay with us until she goes on that long, long journey.” All this is possible. But it is only possible to those who carry Christ’s rule everywhere, even the rule of this text. Brethren, let us treat all artizans, serving tradesmen, labourers, and workers as we wish Christ to treat us, till the time when He shall “call us no longer servants, but friends.” (Emory J. Haynes.)

Masters deal unequally many ways

1. When they require inconvenient things; for though the servant must obey, yet the master sins in requiring unequal things.

2. When they impose more work than they have strength to do.

3. When they turn them away when they are sick; for it is equal that as thou hast had their labour when they were well, so thou shouldest keep them when they are sick.

4. When they restrain them of liberty for their souls. If thou have the work of their bodies, it is equal that thou take care for their souls; and if they serve thee six days, it is very equal thou shouldest proclaim liberty to them to do God’s work on the Sabbath day.

5. When they restrain and withhold their meat and wages.

6. When they send them out of their service empty, after many years’ bondage, and not provide that they may have some means to live afterwards.

7. When they hear every word that men say of their servants (Ecclesiastes 7:23).

8. When they bring up their servants delicately (Proverbs 27:23).

9. When they leave the whole care of their earthly business to their servants, and fail to know the state of them for themselves (Proverbs 27:23). (N. Byfield.)