"5 Bondservants, obey your earthly master, with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ, 6 not by the way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart,7 rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, 8 knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or is free. 9 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."
Ephesians 6:5-9
The third relationship that Paul deals with is that between masters and servants. The first thing we have to notice here is that the reference of these verses is unquestionably to the principle of submission in the Christian home, and to the relationship within the home between masters and servants. The question of industrial relationships between capital and labour, between management and employee, is not in view. Indeed, it is clear that the 'servants' here are in fact 'slaves' and what he is speaking of is the domestic relationship between Christian slaves and their masters. The primary lesson of these verses therefore can hardly apply to us today, for such a situation as Paul envisages here does not really exist for us. But the derivative lessons and applications of what he says are very considerable, and that in two directions: on the one hand, there is the question of slavery as such, and the principle of the application of the gospel to social, economic and political issues; on the other hand, there is the relationship between servants and masters in general, as for example Christians working in a non-Christian environment, and the whole vexed question of industrial unrest. We look first of all then at the 'slavery' question. We are all familiar with the great philanthropic and humanitarian movement in the 19th century which led to the final abolition of slavery. We also know that this was accomplished in the name of the gospel, and by staunch evangelicals who earnestly contended for the faith once delivered to the saints. But it is an astonishing thing that slavery is nowhere explicitly condemned in the New Testament, indeed, the New Testament seems not only to countenance it but acquiesce in it. Paul seems content to give instructions as to how to behave within the context of the institution of slavery; on the one occasion when a runaway slave called Onesimus was converted, the apostle sent him back to his master, Philemon. How are we to explain this? Are we to say that Paul had a blind spot in this matter? We shall look at this important issue in the Notes that follow.