Spirit‑Filled Labor Relations
Ephesians 6:5‑9
Ephesians chapter 6 is our passage for this morning, and we're looking at verses 5 to 9 and we're really going to cover what could be a long series just in a message. I was kind of ambivalent this morning in the early service, as to how far to go and you know, when you're taking off in an airplane there's a point called the Point of No Return, and once you get there, you've got to go no matter what happens, and I hit that point this morning, so I went. And that's why you stood outside for an extra few minutes. But we're trying to cover a lot of ground in a brief time on the subject of "Spirit Filled Labor Relations."
Let's 1ook at verse 5:
"Servants be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as unto Christ; Not with eye service, as men pleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; With a ready mind, doing service as to t e Lord and not to men: Knowing that whatever good thing any man doeth the same shall he receive of the Lord whether he be bond or free. And ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening, knowing that your Master also is in heaven: neither is there respect of persons with Him."
Now here we have a word from the Apostle Paul about how employer/employee relationships are to function. This is a needful subject today. I think it's obvious to everybody in our society that the struggle in the employment world has reached a monumental level. Strikes and walk‑outs and threats and management fights and so forth, literally fill the newspapers. The conflict rages on constantly and all people who are in the employ or who are the employment source are finding themselves fraught with multiple problems as we endeavor to unscramble all of the issues.
Basically, the problem in employment can always be reduced to one single sin and that is the sin of greed. Everybody wants more of everything for himself. The employee wants less work, fewer hours, more vacation, and higher pay. And the employer wants more labor from the employees, more freedom for himself, bigger chunk of profit, and on and on it goes. And at the bottom of the whole thing is greed. And that's the way it goes. The consumer is out there screaming for lower prices, and screaming for less taxation and at the same time screaming for more money.
Now it is an impossibility to have lower prices, less taxation and higher wages. It defies the simplest principle of logic. For example, a man say who works in the auto industry, he decides that he wants more money, so there's a strike. They strike for more money, the corporation is caught. The corporation has to renegotiate and pay them more money.
Where is the corporation going to get that money? Two places. One, it immediately raises the prices of automobiles. Secondly, it makes a big loan from the government. Well, the government doesn't have any money so the government just prints some, And when the government prints money without any source behind it, it inflates the money that already exists so you have more money worth less.
So that now when the employee wants higher wages, what happens is the product becomes higher, and by the way, the auto industry is interrelated with almost every single product that's in existence because it's all carried by transportation, so that everything goes up in price. His wages go up but so does the government's inflationary spiral and the end result is you wind up in the same situation. Except for one additional thing, in order for the government to pay back its debt it raises taxes.
So that all you have is a constantly ascending spiral based upon the fact that everybody wants more of everything. It can't happen. You cannot have everybody demanding more without having everybody losing out. And the greed goes on.
And that's what we're seeing in our country today. And by the way, I think the reason we see it so much more dramatically here is it is just a basic characteristic of human nature that the more possible materialism available the greater the greed. In other words, in a society where life is very simple and there isn't that much, the greed will only reach that level. But where you proliferate the potential attractions to greed, you proliferate the greed itself. So we might say that the greediest people who have ever been around would be the 1979 edition of Americans and maybe a few other select places in the world.
What is the solution to this? How do you resolve this? Because what happens on the job is you've got the employee wanting more money, you've got the management wanting more money, and bigger profits, and so forth, you've got all this conflict going on. You've got the employee who feels he's being abuse he's not getting a fair wage, or he's working too hard, you've got management feeling the employee's not doing what he ought to do, and the profits aren't good. And what do we o? How can we get an answer and a solution to this? A major problem in our world that continues to plague US.
Now some people say absolute government control is the answer. And what we need to do is to just abolish the free enterprise system and have some form of socialism or communism or... or an elitist kind of group that run what amounts to a welfare state.
Well, increasing government control would be a solution, and it may be that that's where we're going toward. In fact, it seems to me that that might be the logical thing because that will build the potentiality for antichrist to just take over the whole world. And if I read my Bible right, in the 18th chapter of Revelation, one of the things antichrist does is ride on top of a world‑wide economic system. It may well be that what's happening in the world today is the development of such a system with a greater and greater potential greed, there must be greater and greater restrictions on that greed, government takes more and more power, beginning to set the stage for one who can come and sit on top of the whole pile and dictate policy for the world. It's fast coming.
But I'm really convinced that God didn't design our freedom to be that way. I don't think he designed man's freedom and man's autonomy to work against man. But He designed it in order for us to...to earn our money to provide for our families to gain those things which our potential allowed us to gain, and to cooperate with each other for the good of all mankind. Unfortunately that just doesn't happen. Why? Because man is depraved and man is sinful and I suppose the single most obvious manifestation of depravity is selfishness.
Now this brings the Christian into the picture in a very strategic way. I believe that as the only hope in the world for marriage is going to be found in Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. And the only hope in the world for the family is going to be found in Christ and the Holy Spirit. I think the only hope for the labor situation is to be found in Christ and the Holy Spirit. I think that's what this is saying right here. That God has a divine design. You know, if you study the Bible you can study all the way from Genesis to Revelation and you can study biblical economics. You can study the whole process of employment, of wages; it's all through the Scripture. But God, as He has done in other parts of the 5th and 6th chapter of Ephesians has boiled it back to some very basic principles. There are very basic things that are related to this issue. And they are built upon the same two pillars that all of God's systems for man are built on; authority and submission.
You have it in government. Somebody leads and somebody follows. In marriage, somebody leads and somebody follows. In the family, somebody leads and somebody follows. And in the business world or the economic world, somebody has to be in charge and somebody has to carry out the orders. This is the way it is. And the authority/submission principle as designed by God is evident in verses 4 ... or rather verses 5 though 9. You have the masters in verse 9, the employers. You have the servants in verse 5 though 8, the employees. And this is God's design for how it is to work.
But as we have said before, this is all a response to chapter 5 verse 21. Which says, "Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God," so that there is a mutual submission just as in marriage and the family. Yes there are employers and employees, but both learn to submit to each other. Both have a point at which they submit. Both must be conscious of the needs of others. So that none is given the right to oppress. None is given the right to lord it over in an abusive way. There is a beautiful mutual submission within the leadership and the follower that brings about the good of both.
Now just the text itself is dealing with a domestic situation. All of chapter 5:22 through 6:9 pictures a family. Where the parents are there, the children are there, the husband, the wife. And here the servants, in the employ of the family. And it is a domestic scene that is in view.
In fact in I Peter in a parallel passage, where there's a discussion of the same truths, Peter uses the word oiketes for servant, which means a household servant. And that, I think, is the intention here, though a different word doulos is used, it is in view particularly in a home.
But I believe we want to see the principle extend itself from a household servant to any person in an employment capacity. So what we have here, then, is God's divine standard for employer and employee relations.
Now keep in mind that Paul is dealing with the practical affect of a spirit field life. Apart from Christ this can't happen. But with Christ, and as we are filled with the Spirit, we not only are to have model marriages, and model families, but model employment relationships. If you're an employee there is a standard for your employment, just like your home and your marriage. If you're an employer there is a standard for your employing practices just like your family and your marriage.
So this is God's divine standard. Now if you'll notice in verse 5, you'll notice the word servants. It could be translated slaves because it is the word doulos. And doulos is a word translated slave, bondslave or servant. Now we need to mention, also, the word masters in verse 9 is the word lords. And when you see the term lord and slave, or lord and servant, you immediately think of a slavery system. And people have asked the question ‑ Why would the Apostle Paul regulate slavery? Why wouldn't he just abolish it? Well, that's because we don't have a comprehension of the terms as they're used biblically. They are simply a reference to the one who leads and the one who follows. The one who gives the orders, the one who obeys them.
And by the way, such concepts are very germane to the whole teaching of the Bible. If we didn't understand an employer and an employee concept, if we didn't understand a master and a slave, we would never understand our relationship to Jesus Christ. Or we would never understand His relationship to the Father in His incarnation either, right? So there is validity in the divine concept of a master and a servant, of a leader and a follower. That's ... that's all right, God has ordained some to be leaders, some to be heads and some to be those that respond and obey, that's part of God's design. We see it in marriage, we see it in the family, we see it in the employment world. So we shouldn't be concerned about it. We see it in government as well as the home.
The point is this, at that day and in that time employees were servants. And employers were masters. Most economic issues result ... revolved around the home. Whether it was an agrarian agricultural situation where a householder had servants and stewards who did ... who worked in his fields and took care of his crops and his animals. Or whether it was a business of manufacturing or making something and the servants would work around the home in that capacity. The home was pretty much the center of the employment situation. There were those people who then had a shop in the marketplace which would be operated by another employee, but the home was pretty much the center.
And since most marketplaces were fluctuating, in other words, on market day the market went to the market. And then it went back home and still some places in the world, that's done. Rather than having permanent shopping centers as we do today, the home was the center. So he's regulating employment in line with what it was in that day.
The Bible does not defend an oppressive slavery system, but employing people is a normal procedure in human life. And so that is not spoken against.
Now slavery was wide spread in biblical times, and in many cases it was bad. There's no question about that. Now the Bible speaks against that. But where it was good, where a servant was serving a just and fair and equitable master and giving a fair service to that master for a fair wage and properly cared for, it was no different than employment. So that in some cases slavery would be just like employment today.
On the Other hand, there are some cases of employment today that would be more like slavery then. Where there is oppression, where there is inequity, where there is injustice, where there is an unfair treatment. Where there are people who are literally intimidated to doing things they didn't want to do. Where they are in hock to the corporation through blackmail or whatever else so they could never get out of their job without being blackballed all over the place.
In other words, the very terms today ‑ employee/employer don't tell us anything about the relationship. And the terms master and slave or servant don't tell us anything about the relationship in the past either. We've got to see the character of the individual relationship to know whether it was right or wrong. When we think of slavery in the sense of stealing people and shipping them across the ocean or in the case of the *blacks or as the case may be in our own country of little tiny white children being used as child labor forces, when we see that kind of slavery we all are against that. And the Bible speaks against that.
In fact, the Bible says that if anybody ever stole a man or a woman to make them a slave he would pay with his life. So whatever was done in capturing slaves in Africa and other parts of the world, if you were living in the time of Israel and the Old Testament had done that, you would have paid with your life and in I Timothy chapter 1 verses 9 and 10 it says that the ungodly of the world are characterized as kidnappers, or man stealers. So that kind of slavery is spoken against in Old and New Testament texts.
But just the terms themselves don't need to give us trouble because the; can only be defined by the individual relationships themselves.
Now among the Greeks slavery was oppressive. No question about it. Among the Greeks it was oppressive. That's why Paul regulates it here. In fact, we know on the island of Delas in one day as many as ten thousand human beings were sold into slavery. And this occurred several times.
And among the Romans it was even worse. In fact almost the whole Roman Empire was functioning on the basis of slave power. There was a flaw in Roman thinking and that was it was beneath the dignity of a Roman citizen to work. So all a Roman citizen wanted to do was sit around in their orgies and watch their games and they got slaves to do it. And there were literally millions of slaves in the Roman Empire. And they were thought of simply as instruments of work, like a hoe or a beast of burden, nothing different than that. They had no rights, no protection, were treated with no kindness and so forth. And there was an oppressive element to it.
Now in the Old Testament, did you know that the Lord advocated a certain kind of slavery? Yes He did. Because in and of itself, you see, the terms used don't really define the relationship. For example, in Exodus chapter 22, just to show you an illustration, people in that day would serve someone as their servant or their slave. The term didn't carry any connotation about whether it was good or bad kind of a situation. The term was just a definition of the fact that they served another person. They were an employee. That's all.
And here we find that some of those things are even advocated. "If a man steals an ox or a sheep or kills it or sells it, he shall restore 5 oxen for an ox, and 4 sheep for a sheep. If a thief be found breaking in and besmitten that he die there shall be no blood shed for him." In other words, if you're trying to steal something and you die in the act, there's no price to pay, you shouldn't have been doing it, you're guilty. Now verse 3, "If the sun be risen on him there shall be blood shed for him. For he should make full restitution. If he have nothing then he shall be sold for his theft." Now there's the point. If a thief steal$ something and he can't make restitution, then he has to work back that restitution.
In other words, he simply moves into the employ of the person he has taken from and he renders due service until such time his restitution is paid. So you can see under some terms the Bible even advocates a kind of slavery or service) But the serv ... but the term slavery doesn't mean that it's oppressive evil kind of brow‑beating chaining and whipping kind of relationship. No. It's simply servitude for a purpose. Servitude in the employ of another person. Sometimes voluntarily, sometimes to pay back restitution or whatever.
In Leviticus chapter 25 we find several statements but in Leviticus 25 verse 44, "Both thy male and female slaves whom thou shalt have shall be of the nations that are round about you." In other words, you have a right to hire people in the nations around you to work. You can buy male and female slaves from them. And the buying idea was the idea that you literally, somebody had some people in their employment, you literally wanted them, and so you purchased them. Or in the case where a person made himself available you... you literally paid that person for his service sometimes, of course in all cases you would pay the person, but sometimes you had to hire him away from someone else, there might be a price to pay. It's exactly what we have in baseball, basketball, football or whatever else today if one team wants the services of another person, they will take the contract to pay the person they want but they'll also pay something to the team that gives him up. So it's not unlike that kind of a thing. If a person had a good servant and was willing to make that servant available to you, you might have to pay a little to get him. It works in the business world today.
You're working for a company for 25 thousand dollars as a Junior Executive; another company really wants you bad. In order to get you they're going to have to pay you 30 thousand dollars and maybe just shove a little bit of money under the table to the people you used to work with to let them...to make them let go if they catch you in a ... well, if they find that company in needy problem or a needy situation, they may be able to buy away an executive. Those kinds of things happen
They do it necessarily mean slavery as we think of buying someone, putting them in chains and whipping them all the time. And the slaves could be bought. It goes on to say that they could even use their own people in Israel as employees, the end of verse 46: "But do not rule one over the other with rigor." Now that's repeated twice in the Bible, at least that I know of. Don't rule over one another in some kind of wild or violent or oppressive or intense way. This is an employment situation; you have the right to ask them to do things but not to be oppressive.
Exodus 21, as I told you earlier, said whoever steals a man and sells him or is found in possession of him shall be put to death. So yes, in the Old Testament there were servants and masters. Yes. But God...God didn't say it was wrong to do that, somebody's got to run things and somebody's got to work. He just regulated it. You see? So that it wouldn't be oppressive in any way.
And the New Testament does the same thing. For example, if you ever hit your servant and hurt his eye, he was free. If you ever hit your servant and injured him in any way, he could go free. If you laid a hand of cruelty, Exodus 21:26 and 27 says, if you laid a hand of cruelty on your servant and affected him in any way, he was free from you. That's right.
In Deuteronomy chapter 23 verse 15, just going a little bit further in our thinking, it says this: "Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant who has escaped from his master unto thee." In other words, if a master's been oppressive to a servant and he escapes, don't take him back to that master. God doesn't have some kind of a system where if a guy's beating you up you just stay there and take it. Let him go. And if he comes to you, and dwells with you, and in that place chooses to be in your gates where it pleases him best, let him stay and don't you oppress him. In other words, God is regulating things.
In Leviticus 25 he talks about the fact that it's not to be oppressive servants. In the seventh year, every seventh year in Israel, all the slaves were set free. And they could go anywhere they want; they could work with any...for anybody they want. And if they wanted to they could stay with their original master. In fact, they might just say ‑ I don't want to go free, I want to stay. And very often they'd lean them up against a doorpost, take their ear lobes, stick it against the doorpost and punch a hole in it with an awl. And if a slave had a hole in his ear with...where...that an awl had made he was saying ‑ 1, by my own choice out of love' choose to serve my master for the rest of my life.
So in the Old Testament time and in the New Testament time you have employment situations, under the terms of masters and slaves Or masters and servants. But that does not have anything to do with the fact that they were oppressive. God tries to regulate against that, constantly. In fact anytime you ever sent a servant away, according to Deuteronomy 15, he had to be fully supplied. And if he was done serving you, you had to give him literally, severance pay, to fill in the gap until he could next be employed. They were to be that cared for.
And so those kind of ideals are upheld in the New Testament. Luke 7, the Centurion comes and he pleads with Jesus to heal the servant whom he loves. God has always wanted a right relationship in that area.
So I just want you to understand that because you see this term servant and master, you don't need to panic. God is not defending an evil slavery system. God does ... God speaks against kidnapping, against stealing people to be sold into slavery, but God realizes there will be employers and employees and those are just the terms that are used biblically. Whatever the terms are the relationship is what God is after. And now as we look at the text let's see what God's terms are for this relationship of employees and employers.
First, the submission of the servants in verses 5 to 8, the submission of the servants in verses 5 to 8. And here is the pattern for all employees, and we're going to go through pretty quickly.
This is for all ... from Paul's time till today. And some people have said ‑ You know, well why didn't Paul wipe out the slavery system? Why didn't Jesus come in and sweep away the slavery system in Rome? You want to know the facts, just between you and me? They did. They did. The Roman Empire came to a screeching halt; the slavery system came to an end. And I really believe it was directly through the influence of Christianity that that happened.
But the point is this, people, their focus, the focus of Jesus and the focus on...of Paul was not on the system. Because the system is never the issue. You could have that system and if the right attitude was there, coming out of the hearts of the right people, it would work well. Remove slavery as a system and have the same rotten corrupt people, inventing another system, and all you're going to have is a different kind of oppression. Right? All you're going to have is a different set of problems.
And Jesus and Paul knew that if they focused politically and socially on those issues, that all they would do was change...would be change the political‑social situation which doesn't ultimately do anything for anybody because man's problem is not political or social it's spiritual. Right?
But if you can change the heart of a man, then he's going to change everything. And if a man is a slave or a servant to a master: but the master loves the Lord Jesus Christ with all his heart and walks in the Spirit, nothing will be as wonderful as working for that man.
On the other hand, if you have a free enterprise system like we do, and we're working for an employer and have total autonomy, but that is a Christless, Godless, anti-biblical perverse man, slavery to a Christian would be better. Right? So it isn't the system. It's the ... it's the individuals. And so our Lord came to change the hearts and He knew that when men's hearts were changed, the system would be changed. And Spirit‑filled people make right relationships, it doesn't matter what the system is.
I've seen situations in the armed services of our own country where there couldn't be any worse kind of slavery than there is right in there. Because the attitudes aren't right.
And so they came to change the hearts of men. You know, you look in our own country, people say ‑ Oh, you know, what a great day it was when we had the abolition to the slaves. You know the great contribution to the abolition of the slaves was not the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln, the greatest contribution to the abolition of the slavery in America was the preaching of John Wesley and George Whitfield. Because that's what changed men's hearts. That's the key.
And in Paul's day it was the hearts that he was after. Oh, the system was oppressive, there's no doubt about that. It was a horrible system.
Varro divided what he called agricultural instruments into three classes, he said the mute instruments are vehicles, the inarticulate instruments are cattle and the articulate instruments are slaves.
And Cato said, "Old slaves should be thrown on a dump, and when a slave is ill don't feed him anything, it's not worth your money, take six slaves and throw them away because they're nothing but inefficient tools."
And so it went. And when a slave ran away he got branded with an F on his forehead for fugitivus and he was cursed the rest of his life, Augustus had a slave who accidentally killed his pet quail, so he crucified him.
Vitruvius Pollio found a slave that had dropped a crystal goblet and threw him in with some lamprey eels in a pond that he kept and he was killed.
Juvenal tells about one master whose greatest delight was the sweet song of flogging his slaves.
So it was oppressive. And I believe that's why Paul writes, what he writes here, to the masters. He says ‑ you'd better do the same th ngs unto them and you'd better not threaten them knowing that your Master is in heaven. And He doesn't respect persons.
And, of course, he's talking to Christian masters because those in the world wouldn't listen anyway. Right? And they not only wouldn't listen but they wouldn't have the resources to obey the call of the Holy Spirit,
But to the servants he has something to say, first of all also. Let's see what it is. "Servants," and here's the right behavior, that's where he starts. "Be obedient ‑ Be obedient to them that are your masters." Same word used to speak of children. We are to respond to their commands and their directions, A Spirit‑filled Christian, chapter 5:18 is where this all begins, be filled with the Spirit, and if you're Spirit‑filled, you will respond. And it's a continuous present in the Greek, keep on obeying, be an obedient employee. When you go to work, do what they tell you to do. Really important.
You might say ‑ Ah, you don't know my employer. He's unjust and inequitable and all of this. Well, the Bible has something to say about that. You say ‑ We have every right to protest, we have every right to walk out, we have every right to strike and so forth and so on because our boss is so‑and‑so. Well I Peter says what you need to hear, I Peter 2:10: "Servants," and here he uses the word for household servants, "be subject to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle but also to the perverse." You mean I'm supposed to be submissive to some perverse boss? "Yes, because this is worthy of thanks. If a man for conscience toward God endure grief and suffer wrongfully."
In other words, God says ‑ Obey. So you say ‑ Even if he's perverse ‑ I'll obey. And even though you suffer, your conscience toward God is right. And God will reward that, verse 20, "For what glory is it when you are buffeted for your faults you take it patiently. But if when you do well you suffer for it and take it patiently this is acceptable to God."
When you're working as hard as you can, and the guy's oppressing you and you're doing it unto God, blessed are you. The Bible says whether your employer is a perverse man or a Godly man, you are to be obeying him.
Now of course that comes to the point where if he asks you to do something that is evil, immoral, against the Word of God, that's when you have to stop right there and say We ought to obey God rather than men at this point. But anything short of a moral issue, you are to respond.
Now imagine what this was like, because in...in Paul's day and Peter's day, slaves became Christians. And all of a sudden slaves becoming Christians were raised to a nobler standing before God. They now knew the beginning and the end of the universe, they had divine truth. They were sons of the King, they had been lifted up and elevated and glorified and their natural response would be to say ‑ Man, I'm not taking orders from that guy anymore. I'm a believer. I'm a child of the King. I'm a son of God. I am a... going to reign with Him forever. I'm going to judge the earth. I'm not going to listen to this guy telling me this ... this perverse master of mine. And you know what would have happened? They would have absolutely destroyed C