Ephesians 6:5-9

The Christian Home: Servants and Masters

5. Servants Bondservants, slaves. Cp. Colossians 3:22-25; and see 1 Corinthians 7:21-22; 1 Timothy 6:1-2; Titus 2:9-10; Philemon; 1 Peter 2:18-25. The Gospel nowhere explicitly condemns slavery. But both O.T. and N.T. state principles which are fatal to the extreme forms of slavery familiar in the Roman world, forms which allowed no rights whatever, in theory, to the slave. And the Gospel, in the act of proclaiming the complete spiritual equality of slave and freeman, revealed a principle which was sure ultimately to discredit slave-holding even in its mitigated forms. See Bp Lightfoot's Introductionto the Ep. to Philemon, and the pamphlet (by Prof. Goldwin Smith) quoted there, Does the Bible sanction American Slavery?

We may observe further that the great Gospel doctrine of the believer's "slavery" to his Master, Christ (cp. e.g.1 Corinthians 7:22), when once made familiar to the conscience and will, would inevitably tend to a peculiar mutual rapprochementbetween Christian masters and slaves while the institution still legally survived, and would do infinitely more for the abolition of slavery than any "servile war." Prof. G. Smith well observes, "Nothing marks the Divine character of the Gospel more than its perfect freedom from any appeal to the spirit of political revolution" (Does the Bible, &c., p. 96). With impartial hands it not only sanctions, but sanctifies, subordination to constituted authority (Romans 13), and meanwhile ennobles the individual, in respect of all that is highest in the word liberty, by putting him into direct and conscious relations with God.

The Gospel won many of its earliest converts from the slave-class. This is less wonderful, when the vast number of slaves is remembered. The little territory of Corinth alone contained nearly half a million slaves.

In the present and similar passages the primary reference to slavery will, of course, be remembered. But there is a secondary and permanent reference to ordinary service, of all varieties.

according to the flesh With the implied thought that they were not the masters of their bondmen's spirits, and that the bondmen were themselves, spiritually, the slaves of Christ. So Colossians 3:22.

with fear and trembling With earnest, conscientious care and reverence. For the phrase, and this as its meaning, cp. 1 Corinthians 2:3; 2 Corinthians 7:15; Philippians 2:12.

singleness of your heart The honest desire to do right for its own sake, or rather for the Lord's sake; as against the self-interested seeking for praise or promotion. Cp. for the word rendered "singleness," Romans 12:8; 2 Corinthians 1:12 (perhaps), 2 Corinthians 8:2 2 Corinthians 9:11; 2 Corinthians 9:13; 2 Corinthians 11:3; Colossians 3:22.

unto Christ Cp. Romans 14:7-9; a suggestive parallel.