Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.

Ephesian 6:5-9

5 Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. 6 Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. 7 Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people, 8 because you know that the Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free.

9 And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.



Today’s title is “Serve wholeheartedly as if you were serving the Lord”



People tend to judge others by outward appearances such as position, power, or wealth. So everybody wants to have a better position and more power. Many Christians have the same wishes. We often pray for better positions and more wealth. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. God often blessed His servants with better positions and more wealth. But such higher positions or more wealth should never be the main goal of the Christian life. As much as God blessed His servants with such things, God didn’t really have many others with such material possessions or positions. These servants with much less possession or positions were as beloved to the Lord as those servants who were blessed with such things. What really matters to the people of God is to serve God wholeheartedly no matter what positions or how great possessions we have. Today’s passage shows such a mandate to serve faithfully and diligently regardless of our positions or possessions. In today’s passage, Apostle Paul equally addresses the slave and master to have fundamentally same mindset before God. He says to the slaves, “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.”. What he said to masters is more remarkable, “And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.”. Remember that this was said 2000 years ago when slaves were generally treated like possessions of the masters. For many masters and slaves, this must have been indeed revolutionary ideas. But many genuine believers tried to obey such revolutionary ideas. I personally believe that biblical truth such as we see in today’s passage greatly contributed to the abolition of slavery. It basically says that all men are equal before God regardless of positions or possessions. God has no favoritism as it clearly declares. At the same time, all men should equally fulfill their tasks wholeheartedly as if they are serving the Lord whether they are masters or slaves. So we should be more concerned about how wholeheartedly we work not so much about what position or possession we have. If only everybody abides by this principle of equality of all mankind and stewardship of all workers, we will have a much nicer world. Obviously, we still do not have such a perfect world yet. God wants us to follow His will first. Are you master or slave? Are you serving wholeheartedly as if you are serving the Lord?

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