Ephesians 6:1–9 · WEB Classic
1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2 “Honor your father and mother,” which is the first commandment with a promise: 3 “that it may be well with you, and you may live long on the earth.” 4 You fathers, don’t provoke your children to wrath, but nurture them in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. 5 Servants, be obedient to those who according to the flesh are your masters, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as to Christ, 6 not in the way of service only when eyes are on you, as men pleasers, but as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart,
7 with good will doing service as to the Lord and not to men, 8 knowing that whatever good thing each one does, he will receive the same good again from the Lord, whether he is bound or free. 9 You masters, do the same things to them, and give up threatening, knowing that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no partiality with him.
Paul’s household instructions belong to the ordinary social world in which these congregations lived. A household could include a married couple, children, and enslaved people under the authority of its head. The members did not enter those relationships with equal social power. A command addressed to the person with less power therefore has to be read alongside the obligation imposed upon the person able to enforce his wishes.
The repeated appeal to the Lord changes the basis of judgment. Paul does not ask merely whether a household functions efficiently or protects the reputation of its head. Its members belong under Christ, and conduct must be evaluated according to his claim. A home can be orderly because everyone is afraid and still fail the moral demands Paul gives.
Children and parents
Children are to obey their parents in the Lord, for this is right. Paul cites the command to honor father and mother, including the promise associated with well-being and long life. Family obedience belongs within God’s moral concern. Parents are not merely obstacles between children and whatever they want to do.
The phrase “in the Lord” also places family authority beneath Christ. Obedience to parents is never permission to commit evil. Honoring parents continues to matter beyond childhood, but the particular command to children does not make every adult decision subject to lifelong parental control. Marriage itself involves leaving father and mother and forming a new household (5:31).
The promise draws upon the covenant command in Exodus 20:12 and Deuteronomy 5:16. Paul applies its moral wisdom to Christian children. It should not be turned into a mechanical guarantee that every obedient child will outlive every disobedient one. Honoring the family order God gives ordinarily serves life and well-being; the promise does not cancel the realities of suffering in a fallen world.
Fathers must not provoke their children to wrath but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Parental authority has an obligation to the person under its care. Constant humiliation, unpredictable anger, and demands designed to protect a parent’s ego can produce the very resentment Paul forbids.
Discipline should train rather than merely discharge adult frustration. Children need correction, explanation, consistency, and an example worth following. If every mistake produces an explosion, they may learn how to conceal mistakes more effectively without learning why the conduct was wrong. The Lord’s instruction requires more from a father than possession of the loudest voice.
Deuteronomy 6:4–9 places the teaching of children within the daily life of a household. God’s words are to be upon the parents’ hearts and spoken of while sitting at home, walking along the way, lying down, and rising. The instruction is woven into a life lived before God. A child learns what a command means through explanations, habits, and the example of the adults who give it.
That makes consistency a matter of substance. A father cannot effectively teach truthfulness while expecting the child to help conceal his own deception. Nor does a lengthy lecture about respect erase the effect of contemptuous speech. The Lord’s instruction belongs to the parent’s conduct as well as the child’s. Authority has to undertake the patient work of teaching, even when an explosion would use considerably fewer words.
Slaves addressed as responsible disciples
Paul addresses slaves and tells them to serve their earthly masters sincerely as to Christ, doing God’s will from the heart rather than working only when watched. These are people living under an actual institution of slavery. Reducing the passage immediately to modern employment conceals the severity of their situation.
Roman slavery involved ownership of human beings. Conditions and assignments varied: some enslaved people worked in households or skilled occupations, while others endured severe manual labor. Skill, education, or a comparatively comfortable assignment did not remove the underlying loss of freedom. Their situation was determined by another person’s power in a way that a free employee’s contractual obligation is not.
The legal tradition is explicit about that power. Gaius, writing in the second century, describes slaves as subject to their masters and explains that acquisitions made through a slave belong to the master (Institutes 1.52). He also records imperial restraints upon excessive cruelty (1.53). His account is later than Paul and should not be treated as a complete statement of the exact law governing every first-century household. It nevertheless exposes the ownership relation and the need for legal limits upon the master’s power. Protection against particular abuses did not make the enslaved person free.
Seneca’s Letter 47, from the first century, gives another window into that world. He criticizes masters who humiliate the people serving them and describes the fear and harsh treatment associated with domestic service. His appeal to recognize their humanity is evidence that the cruelty was not morally invisible even outside the church. It also shows why we should not imagine Paul as the first ancient person capable of objecting to mistreatment. His distinctive appeal here is to the shared Master in heaven and the impartial judgment of Christ.
Enslaved people could be vulnerable to punishment, separation, and coercion because the power governing their lives did not depend upon their continued consent. Some obtained freedom, and prospects differed, but the possibility of manumission cannot be used to soften ownership into something equivalent to an unpleasant job. A person may hope eventually to be released and still be unfree today. Paul’s commands are addressed to people living within that vulnerability.
The words “according to the flesh” limit the earthly master’s claim. He possesses social power in this present arrangement, but he does not own the believer’s ultimate allegiance or stand in Christ’s place. Service “as to Christ” makes the Lord the judge of the enslaved believer’s conduct. It does not make every instruction from a master righteous. The broader rule of obedience to God above human authority remains necessary here as elsewhere.
Service and brotherhood under Christ
The commands regulate conduct within that existing situation; they do not command the church to establish slavery or grant Christians a right to own other people. Paul addresses enslaved believers as responsible disciples whose service is seen by Christ. Their earthly status does not determine their worth before him or prevent him from rewarding what they do.
Other passages must remain part of the picture. First Corinthians 7:21 is naturally read as encouraging a person to take freedom when it is available, although the compressed wording has also been read as making use of one’s present condition. The surrounding argument certainly does not make slavery a superior spiritual standing. Paul tells believers that the one called while a slave is the Lord’s freed person and that the free person is Christ’s slave, then reminds them that they were bought with a price (7:22–23).
Philemon 15–16 calls for receiving Onesimus no longer merely as a slave but above a slave, as a beloved brother. The appeal profoundly changes the moral terms of the relationship. It is not, however, an explicit legal emancipation formula, and we should not quote it as though Paul wrote a sentence formally declaring Onesimus free. The force of the appeal lies in the brotherhood Philemon is asked to recognize in practice. Our explanation should preserve that force without supplying an instruction the letter does not expressly give.
Neither letter presents a comprehensive legislative program for abolishing Roman slavery. That limitation must be admitted honestly. It does not follow that ownership becomes an enduring Christian entitlement. These texts give obligations to Christians living within an existing institution and bring that institution’s relationships under claims that refuse to recognize a lesser humanity or a separate moral worth. Ephesians addresses the person under power as Christ’s servant and the person exercising power as someone answerable to the very same Lord.
For a free employee, honest service under Christ’s lordship remains a real application. Work should be trustworthy when no supervisor is watching. But the employer cannot then borrow the enslaved person’s lack of freedom as an argument against the employee’s contractual or legal rights. Applying a moral principle does not make the two social conditions identical. A worker asking for agreed pay has not rebelled against Ephesians by declining to be treated as someone else’s property.
Masters have a Master
Masters must do the same things toward their slaves, giving up threats because their own Master and the slaves’ Master is in heaven, and there is no partiality with him. Paul’s instruction confronts the use of power. The earthly master cannot treat his social position as immunity from divine judgment.
Threats make the command concrete. A person able to punish can often secure outward compliance by reminding someone of what will happen if he displeases him. Paul tells the master to abandon that instrument of intimidation. The heavenly Master sees both people without being dazzled by the earthly master’s position. What passes for effective management in the household may therefore be precisely what its head must stop doing.
“Do the same things to them” brings the master under the sincerity and concern for the Lord’s will required of the enslaved believer. It does not mean the social arrangement suddenly gives both parties identical legal power. It means the master must act from the same allegiance to Christ and recognize the same divine accountability. Paul then makes the command concrete by forbidding threats, a means through which superior power commonly enforces itself.
No partiality means the Lord’s judgment is not tilted toward the person with money, citizenship, or household standing. The enslaved person’s faithful service is seen, and the master’s threatening conduct is seen. The social world may grant one the ability to silence the other, but it cannot control what the heavenly Master knows. That truth gives dignity to the vulnerable and removes the powerful person’s claim to moral exemption.
Employers, supervisors, and anyone whose decisions affect another person’s livelihood should hear that accountability directly. Fair pay, truthful expectations, and humane treatment belong under Christ’s authority. If an owner enjoys a new boat while paying his workers so little that they cannot meet ordinary needs, the profits do not settle the moral question in his favor. He must ask how those profits were obtained and whose deprivation helped produce them. The Lord sees the worker as clearly as the owner, and the owner does not receive a separate moral standard because his name is on the building.