Living as Sincere Servants of Christ

This morning we continue the last little section on the book of Ephesians. We, as you may know, few weeks ago started the second half of this letter, and it's really the application aspect of the letter where Paul has begun to firstly explain the gospel, and now in chapters four through to six, he explains the implications of the gospel. The series is called Living as Light, taking from some of the metaphor that Paul uses in Ephesians chapter five especially, and it is exactly that, that we as Christians are called to live a different type of life. We have a lifestyle that is emulating the life of Jesus himself. And as we've seen, so much of what we do, as Rick also prayed, so much of what we do is exemplified in Christ.

We look to him as our example and the motivator of why we do these things. We're going to read this morning from Ephesians six. Last week we looked at a small section at the start of Ephesians six, Paul writing to children and parents. This morning we look at bondservants and masters, as the ESV entitles it, slaves and masters. This passage we look at will teach us how to live as servants of Christ, whatever our respective calling in life may be.

We'll see that as followers of Jesus, we are called to serve one another with love and respect, whether we are in positions of submission or in positions of authority. So let's dive into this passage and see what it teaches us about following Christ in our daily lives according to God's calling. Ephesians chapter six, verse five. Bondservants, 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 pleases, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, rendering service with a goodwill as to the Lord and not to man. Knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or is free.

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. So far, the reading, this is the word of the Lord. I want to focus on three aspects this morning. Firstly, we need to do some work in understanding the context of slavery in the first century into which Paul writes this part of his letter. We're going to unpack this culture in the first century, then we're going to look at what Paul calls the respective slaves and masters, what he calls them to do.

And then finally, we'll try to glean some applications for our Christian lives today. So firstly, the context of slavery in Paul's day. There's a lot of assumptions when we hear the word slavery, isn't there, today? We've seen so many Hollywood movies of emancipation in the US, you know, the anti-slavery movement and so on. But contrary to some of the ways we have come to understand slavery across the past few hundred years, in early slavery, the slavery that existed in Paul's day, the fact that a strict separation between slaves and free persons was quite a fluid concept.

For example, you could be a slave and yet own your own property. You could be a slave and do your day job as a slave and then do extra work as a paid worker. Thereby you earned some money, and over time, if you earned enough, you could pay to be set free. Many slaves could have their entire households with them, working alongside them. They might have been slaves, but their family was free.

And so you could have a wide variety of different contexts. Manumission, which is the act of setting a slave free, was also regarded to be a very positive thing morally. So in the culture of the Roman Empire, setting people free was a good thing to do. You were seen as being virtuous if you did. Economically, releasing slaves and then asking them to work for you as paid employees was actually better for the slave owners because as a slave owner, you had to pay for their housing, obviously, and pay for their food.

Now as employees, they had to look after their own needs. So when Paul writes about slavery here, we find a very complicated, intricate landscape. That's not to say that slavery was an ideal situation though. People didn't love becoming slaves. They didn't, you know, couldn't wait to become a domestic slave.

It is not paradise. And so undoubtedly, part of why Paul is writing these things is that there was abuse of slaves in that day. It is also worthwhile understanding how prevalent slavery was. It is said that in the first century, about 30% of all of Greece and Italy were slaves. 30% of the population were slaves.

It's no surprise then that the churches located throughout the Mediterranean had converts who were slaves. You know, if all things were equal, 30%, one third of their church would have been slaves. Perhaps for sociological or psychological reasons, the idea of liberation and freedom in Christ sounded very appealing to slaves. But it's also probably the fact that if the father of a household, the paterfamilias, the head of the household became a Christian, generally the entire household became Christian, including the slaves. So it's entirely reasonable for us when we come to read Ephesians six here that when Paul writes to slaves and masters, he's writing to slaves and masters from the same house.

There's also a basic theology for Paul regarding the situations of slaves and masters that's worthwhile for us to understand and summarise briefly. According to Paul's letters, Paul mainly emphasized the irrelevance of a distinction between slaves and masters. Paul emphasized an irrelevance in the distinction between slaves and their masters or slaves and free persons. Galatians 3:28, 1 Corinthians 12:13, you can see some of those examples. In Philemon, for example, Paul says that in the church, slaves are to be seen as full brothers and sisters.

Masters are to accept them in this way. They are your brother and sister. The Colossian household code in Colossians chapter three also stresses that there is no distinction between slave and free. Slaves were not only considered members of the household, but also full members of the church, and they have the same importance in the church as any other social group. So it's this type of system that Paul is addressing here in Ephesians chapter six.

The next thing we need to understand is what exactly Paul calls the slaves and masters to do. Our ESV translates the Greek word doulos into bondservant, which is, I think, probably a slightly more sanitised English word than slave, but that is exactly what it means, slave. Paul calls these slaves to obedience. Verse five, bondservants, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart as you would Christ. Now think back over the last two weeks, and you would have seen how Paul has grounded the ethics of husbands and wives, parents and children, and linked both of those groups to each other in service to Christ.

The motivating ethic for being obedient to these earthly masters now for the slaves is exactly the same one for why wives and husbands will love each other and why parents and children will love each other. He calls Christian slaves to serve their masters in fear and trembling with a sincere heart, and what that means is that they will serve their masters with respect and with pure motives. Verse seven adds that they are to serve with a goodwill, which can also be translated to serve with enthusiasm. Serve your master with enthusiasm. It means that throughout their entire lives as slaves, these Christians are to be exemplary workers.

They are people who don't grumble, who don't complain. They are to serve, not catching the eye of their master in order to be recognised for doing good work. They are just to do good work because it is inherently good. Ultimately, they are to understand that their entire service is done in order to delight their Lord Jesus. Paul also addresses the slave masters in verse nine.

Again, it's very likely that the masters of these slaves in Ephesus were the same as the masters sitting with them in church. They were brothers and sisters, these slaves, of these masters. If you thought church dynamics could be weird today, think again. Paul tells these masters in verse nine not to threaten their slaves, but to treat them in the same way, which is a reference back to what Paul wrote about slaves, that these slaves were to serve their masters with sincerity and enthusiasm. Paul tells the masters to serve the slaves with sincerity and enthusiasm.

That is a radical thought. The designation of a slave was always to serve the master, but here the master is told to serve the slave. The threatening of a slave that Paul warns against could take all sorts of shapes. Whipping, hard labour, the withholding of meals, all that sort of physical punishment was deemed fine if the slave had been deemed guilty of committing a punishable offence. But Paul tells masters, don't hold those sorts of threats over your slaves.

Don't dangle the rod, the stick over their heads as a way to make them serve you. Paul encourages masters to treat their slaves in such a kind and gentle way that they won't find it difficult to serve you. So those are some of the things that Paul tells the first century church in Ephesus. Question is, how on earth does that apply to us? Like I said, some people come to this passage and think that it stands so far removed from where we are today in free Australia that it is completely irrelevant.

Does any of this still apply to us? People ask. And as a Bible believing Christian, I obviously say yes. But we have to do a little bit more reflection and thinking about it. Living as servants to Christ is the basic principle here, but there are a few subcategories to look at.

Like I said, some people come to this passage saying that it is completely irrelevant. We've moved on from that time. It may exist maybe in some quadrants in the world today, but for the most part, we don't pay any attention to this passage. And yet others very quickly come to Ephesians 6:5-9 and quickly apply it to the work situation. They see that master-slave dynamic as being equivalent to the employer-employee situation.

And so they will say, as an employee, you need to serve your boss well, and as a boss, you need to treat your employees well. That's not necessarily the worst interpretation, but it is also very important to see that the situation here is significantly different. I don't think anyone who's working in a job today would call their situation slavery. Some of us might when we grumble to one another in the lunchroom. Today, if you don't like your job, however, you can always quit and find another job.

Slaves couldn't. We have incredible upward mobility. If you don't like your job situation, your career options, you can quit. You can go to retrain. The government can pay you to do that.

You can put all your study retraining costs on a low interest loan, and after three years, you can work in an entirely different avenue. Slaves, of course, could never do that. And so this is a significant hurdle in applying this teaching directly to our work context. The incredible pressure, the incredible hopelessness, perhaps, of slavery doesn't exist in our workplaces. So I want to talk and think along those lines of applying, not applying things too directly, you know, to easily point A to B in terms of workplaces, but also holding that line that God's word speaks to us in every generation.

The scripture is useful for teaching, for reproofing, for correcting and training in righteousness, always. All of scripture is, Paul says. There are principles from this passage that we can deduce. The first principle I want to think of this morning is the idea of being content in God's sovereignty for being where you are. God, through Paul, encourages Christian slaves and masters to understand the story behind their story.

They don't serve an earthly master. They serve a heavenly one. They aren't free as masters. They are bound to an eternal master. Live the life you've been given by this great master.

Paul expresses it very clearly in another place. One Corinthians 7, from verse 17. He says, let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches. Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called.

Were you a bondservant? Were you a slave when called? Do not be concerned about it. But if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity. For he who was called in the Lord as a bondservant is a freedman of the Lord.

Likewise, he who was free when called is a bondservant of Christ. You were bought with a price. Do not become bondservants of men. So, brothers, in whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God. What this means is that as a Christian, you can relax.

You can rest in the fact that your current situation, that anything in your life regarded as a calling is directed by the all powerful, all knowing, all loving God in heaven. It means that you are where you are, not by mistake. If you are a child of God, the Bible says, you aren't there to be punished. If there is hardship, however, you are there for an opportunity for maturity, which will lead to good outcomes eventually. Whatever condition each of us is called to, Paul says, let them remain there with God.

That last phrase is really important, isn't it? To remain anywhere without God is terrifying. To remain there with God is always hopeful. So that's the first thing. Be content in God's sovereignty for having placed you where you are.

Secondly, understand what a calling may look like. There's a popular message that society keeps telling millennials like me, and that is that you are the smartest, cutest, most creative person that has ever existed, and the world is so lucky to have you. And then it says, go out and be great. Go out and make money. Yeah.

Yet the corresponding level of anxiety, depression, and suicide amongst millennials is astronomical. Why? Because most of us aren't great. Most of us are just normal people. I remember the demythologising that my preaching professor, Doctor Murray Kaple, had to do each year with new preaching students.

In the first lecture, he would say something like this: you've probably entered ministry or entered studies hoping to go into ministry because you've been inspired by the Timothy Kellers, the Sinclair Fergusons, the John Pipers in preaching the gospel, and you believe that one day you will be like them. The chances are you won't. Chances are you don't have the same giftedness, the same personality, the same mental capacity, or the opportunity to be like them. But you can be you, and that is all God has called you to be. Sometimes in life, God has called people to be slaves.

That's a shocking thought. But that's exactly what Paul says here in one Corinthians seven. God has placed that in your life. Again, it's important, I think, for us to also see that Paul was still positive about emancipation. He said, if you can be free, be free.

So Paul shouldn't be used by people to say that slavery was fine, I think. It's still ideal to be free, but he doesn't encourage feeling sorry for yourself if that's not an option. Our calling from God can vary between one another significantly. Think about the Ephesian context. Some Christians in the same church God had called to a life of slavery, and their brothers in the same church God had called to be their masters.

Master and slave in the same church called respectively, they believe, by the same God. Does God love one more than the other? They can't believe that. For the Bible, it's not so much then what we are called to do in our daily occupations that matters, but about how we behave within that calling that does. This week at the recommendation of someone at church, I read a book by Michael Horton called Core Christianity.

I can recommend this little book to you. It's basically a summary of the gospel message, and you can give this to someone perhaps that you want to talk about with concerning Christianity. But in there, right towards the end, he asked the very logical question and a question that I'm sure he got asked a lot of times in his campus ministry that he was involved with. When I become a Christian, what happens next? Now what?

I'm a Christian, do I go and sell my business and become a preacher? I'm a Christian now, and I believe that Jesus Christ will come soon. Do I go and sit on the veranda and wait for him to come? Horton says, if you are in a situation in life that's not expressly unbiblical or sinful, you continue to live out your calling. You may only now have come to know God, but the truth is God has always known you.

He created you, remember. He planted inside you gifts and talents and a personality long before you knew salvation. You don't have to be great. You can be you, and that is what God is calling you to be. So Horton helpfully taps the brakes on the idea of calling for Christians when he gives us a balanced view of what a Christian's calling can look like.

This is what he writes. He says, we are called neither to transform society nor to shrink from our responsibilities. In answering the question of what Christians should do in anticipation of Christ's return, the apostle Paul wrote, work with your hands just as we told you so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody. Horton writes, we are waiting for that day when Christ returns and makes the kingdoms of this age the kingdom of Christ. Until then, we are called neither to change the world nor to abandon it, but to love and serve our neighbours to the best of our ability.

Sometimes Christians can make a significant and measurable impact on the world around them, yet our focus should not be on these achievements. It should be on Christ in faith and on our neighbour in love. We do good works not for our status, but for the glory of God and the good of others. So that second principle is important for us to remember. Christian calling looks a certain way, but it's a very general shape.

You don't have to set the world on fire, but you don't have the choice to abandon the world either. Anything in between should be fine. The third and final principle that I want to point out briefly is really the most easily identifiable principle in the passage, and that is serve always with sincerity of heart. In verses six to seven, Paul writes that the slaves were to do the will of God from the heart, rendering service with a goodwill as to the Lord and not to man. Then in verse nine, to the slave masters, he writes, do the same to them.

Both slave and master are to render a service to each other from the heart, which means to serve one another sincerely. In our respective callings in life, we are to work with a genuine desire to be good at it. Why? Because that is a sincere thing to desire. To serve sincerely is to serve to the best of your ability.

To serve insincerely is to do just enough and to pretend that it was good enough, to pretend that you gave your best. That is insincere service. And so whether you are a slave or a master, a boss or an employee, a nurse, a vet, a lawyer, a business owner, a preacher, or a student, you give your best to your customer, your client, your employee, your teacher, your professor, because you are honouring and worshipping Christ as you do that. The passage tells us that one day we will receive the reward from our master, Jesus Christ. He is the one who will repay us.

The truth is biblical Christianity and the calling that we understand for our lives forms part of our worship, forms part of our honouring of Jesus Christ. Some of us will know that the word for worship and service in the Old Testament is exactly the same. To worship God is to serve God. To serve God is to worship him. Now we have to be careful because your work isn't all of your worship.

It's an important point to make. Congregational worship, family worship, intentional spiritual worship is different than just doing a day's work, but there is a service that Paul highlights here that is giving to the Lord something that is honouring and glorifying. And so to both masters and slaves, Paul can say, serve with a sincerity in your heart when you live out your respective calling because in doing so, you glorify Christ. And so in closing, friends, whatever you find yourself to do in the place that God has placed you, remember to give your best always. Make sure you study with discipline.

Give your best relational effort in your retail job. Give your best adherence to workplace health and safety. Why? Because you're serving none other than Jesus Christ when you do. As we live as servants of Christ, let us remember that we have been placed here by a sovereign God.

We understand what a calling can look like. Sometimes you are called to a high, lofty position, but most of the time, it will be humble. And in all of our callings, we are to obey those earthly authorities over us with respect to serve all of them with sincerity of heart. If we are in places of authority ourselves, if we are bosses, if we are business owners, we remember to treat others with gentleness and fairness. And in doing these things, we honour Christ, and we reflect his love to the world around us.

May we be faithful in our service to him and to one another, always remembering that we serve and worship the ultimate master who is in heaven. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, our heavenly master, we thank you that our life has purpose. Our life has meaning. That there is nothing in us and around us that is wasted.

Nothing in this life that we live as Christian is dead end. We pray, Lord, that we may see and understand our lives in that narrative, to understand the story behind the story. Help us to have vigour and enthusiasm because of it. Help us to pursue with joy our jobs, our studies, any type of calling that you've given us. Help us to enjoy being mums and dads who stay at home, to look after those kids.

Help us to understand the glory that you have woven into our daily actions and the glory that we can direct to you as we live those things out. Give us hearts of worship, Lord. Give us hearts that long to see you honoured. Lord, cause us to feel shame when we offer you and those around us less than our best. And yet, Lord, we are also reminded this morning that our occupation and our calling is not our God.

Help us to be careful to not fall into the trap of idolatry, to pretend that our work is a means to an end of glorifying you, and yet, really, it is the end in itself. Help us to hold that tension, Lord. And as fallen weak people, we know that that tension can sometimes and often be out of whack. So, Lord, help us to walk that line. Help us to have joy for those who are today not having joy in their work.

And, Lord, help us to have sobriety, a unselfishness for those who have made work and occupation too much. We ask these things in the empowering name of Jesus Christ who through His spirit will give us wisdom in all things. Amen.