The Equality of Christian Work

As always, we must set the scene. Christians are those who have been raised up with Jesus Christ. Dead to sin and alive to righteousness. We’ve seen that true Christians put their flesh to death and live lives of virtue. We’ve seen that marriages look different for believers and families look different for believers. Today, we come to a third group and see how Christian faith makes a difference in the common relationships of our day.

Let’s read our verses together and we’ll get started. Colossians 3:22-4:1, “Bondservants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality. Masters, treat your bondservants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven.”

Teresa would tell you that I am a skeptic, sometimes even a cynic. I’ve never really been one to take someone else’s word for something. Maybe it is because I naturally do it, but I see questioning and doubting as beneficial and healthy spiritual characteristics.

I see myself a lot in the character of Gideon in Judges. You know, God tells him to do something and he says that’s great. If this is really God talking then prove it by making the fleece wet while everything else is dry. Then God does it and he says, that was too easy, how about you make everything else wet and keep the fleece dry. I do that with God and I do it intellectually as well when I watch a movie or read a news story. I want to see things from other perspectives. I want to be well informed.

When I bring my skepticism to this passage, I see that many teachers will just pass over the first word hoping that no one will notice and they just start talking about employee/employer relations. While there are principles which can cross the gap of time and culture, we need to deal with what is present right in front of us.

I know that many people see this passage talking about slavery and the skeptic in them immediately pushes back and says this is a reason why I can’t trust the Bible. How can I trust a document that doesn’t condemn slavery as deplorable and unethical? Well, let me say that I appreciate your questions and I never want to gloss over them.

Southern Gothic writer Flannery O’Connor was a skeptic like me and she pushed against the sentimentality of Christianity, that desire to turn your faith into a comfortable blanket. Instead, she focused on the cross and believed that Christian skepticism kept us looking at the reality of what’s wrong with the world around us rather than glossing over it in the search for comfort. This is simply seeing things as they are and not how we would prefer them to be.

O’Connor said that the cultivation of Christian skepticism is a sacred obligation because it keeps us asking questions. And questions keep you free, not free to do anything you please, but free to be formed by something larger than your own intellect or the intellects of those around you.

I love the idea that God welcomes questions and doubts. God has never struck anyone down for questioning his words. He is patient to show himself to them. I have questioned God and I have doubted my faith. But I have found that even when I am faithless, he is faithful. He is strong enough to stand up to my doubts. Because of this, I have come to trust God’s word more than I trust anything.

So let’s ask this question, Why didn’t Paul condemn slavery here and tell the slaves to revolt? I think it’s interesting to see in 1 Corinthians 7:21 that he tells them to leave if given the opportunity. Galatians 3:28 and Colossians 3:11, There is no slave or free… you are all one in Christ Jesus. Even Paul’s chosen title for himself was not church planter, or preacher, or apostle. But he introduced himself and others as Slaves of Christ.

In the Greek world, people saw the gods as these harsh masters who they were forced to serve, but Christianity answers that by showing God not as a capricious task-master but as a loving father. We have a God who frees from slavery. Remember Exodus? That was God hearing the cries of his people in oppressive slavery and coming to deliver them with his mighty hand. We have a God who hears the slave and the free equally. We have a God who himself emptied himself and took the form of a servant so that he might free those who were captive to sin.  

But, let me be as honest as I can. Nowhere in the Scriptures does the Bible universally condemn slavery. There is not one verse in all of the Bible that says, “Slavery is evil and should not be practiced.” If you start looking, you will look forever. It’s not there.

Not only is there not a blanket condemnation of slavery, but human beings are considered to be property. This is found in Exodus 12:44, Exodus 21:20-21 and Leviticus 22. Slaves within Israel were used to produce offspring for their infertile owners. You’ll see that in Genesis 16, Genesis 30 and also in Genesis 35.

There is definitely the presence of a system that we would call unjust and unequal. Slave owners were permitted to beat their slaves without any penalty, provided that the slave survived. That’s in the Bible, Exodus 21. Biblical legislation contains inequality in the value placed on a slave’s life compared to a free man’s life. In the spirit of skepticism and honesty, I don't want to gloss over that. All those things are in the Bible, every one of them.

As we talk about slavery, it’s important that we read this with 1st-century eyes, not antebellum eyes. When we see reference to slavery in the words of Jesus, Paul, Peter, or other New Testament writers, they were referring to Greco-Roman and Jewish Slavery, not the slavery of the pre-civil war American South, and there are some major differences.

For you and me, our idea of slavery is built around European colonialism. What we think of when we think of slavery is the Africans being abducted or traded for in Africa and then brought over to work the cotton fields where they were mistreated and oppressed and beaten. That is our framework for slavery. It is accurate. But historically, the British were the last ones to get involved in the slave trade. And even when they did, they knew it was shameful.

At no point did slavery really take root in England. It’s always distant from them. It’s easy to enjoy the sugar for your tea and your cakes and candies when you don’t take a moment to realize that the slave trade as we know it was built on shipping Africans to the Caribbean to grow sugar. The same Brits who enjoyed the sugar in their tea colonized the new world and realized that they needed cheap labor to grow and harvest the cotton and tobacco that would bring them economic prosperity. So they began to really build up the New World with slaves.

That’s our mental framework for the word slavery. The problem is that this doesn’t help us at all with how slavery was viewed in the Scriptures. So let me just give you a couple of differences between colonial slavery and what the Scriptures are speaking to when they address slaves. And I acknowledge out of the gate that the Bible is clear that one human being can own another human being. But there are some pieces that help us process this and watch the line of redemption.

So let’s go. An enslaved person generally could not be identified by clothing, ethnicity or socioeconomic background, whereas in colonial America, the slaves were Africans, they were blacks. If you saw a black in South Carolina in the 1700’s, he wasn’t in business. He was a slave. Slavery was marked by an ethnic group. That is not the case in the ancient Near East. Anybody could be a slave. You’ll see that more as we work through.

Also, in the ancient Near East, the education of slaves was seen as a smart business practice. So slaves were educated by their masters, most times to the point where they are smarter than and more educated than their owners. Let me give you two examples of where this plays out in the Bible itself. Joseph was a slave who ended up being second in power to Pharaoh in Egypt. Daniel was a slave who ended up second in power to Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon. These were slaves who were so educated and so trained and so smart in how they did things that there was an acknowledgment among their owners that, “This is an extremely gifted individual. Let’s let him rise all the way up to the top if they can.” You’re not going to see that in colonial America. There is no black man who is a congressman in the 1700’s. But in the ancient Near East, it’s not uncommon to see a slave rise to an unbelievable amount of power to be able to own land himself and even have slaves that work for him. You had the ability to save your own money, purchase yourself out from slavery and then run the business with the slaves that you had purchased, whom you are educating.

Because slaves were owned by persons across a range of economic levels, they developed no conscious awareness of being a class or a group of people. So in colonial America, they are almost exclusively black men and women who were dressed similarly, began to develop their own culture, began to develop their own class and began to look around and go, “We are an oppressed people.” Like Israel in Egypt, they began to sense the heavy hand of their master as a group. That is not the case in the ancient Near East, because you could be doing very well and have a slave as your neighbor living in a house nicer than yours and not even be able to tell by how they dressed, where they lived, how they walked or how they talked that they were a slave. This is because of my last difference.

In the Ancient Near East, people often sold themselves into slavery to pay a debt or to avoid poverty. If they owed debts, they would offer up themselves to work off those debts. They weren’t kidnapped from another land and forced into labor. They sold themselves into slavery to cover debt or to learn a trade and make a better life for themselves. No African did that. No African went, “I’d like to try to survive a long six weeks at sea in the hopes that I would be forced into an ungodly amount of labor until I died. I would like that as opposed to running free in my homeland.” I don’t know that there is any historical record of an African going, “I’ll take slavery in the New World.”

So, now that we can see that there is a difference between the default picture that comes to our minds when we use the word slavery and what Paul would have been thinking when he wrote the word doulos here in this passage, which gets translated all over the New Testament as either slave, servant, or bondservant, let me just go through a couple of biblical insights for you regarding slavery. Hopefully this will help you to see God’s overarching design to eliminate injustice and oppression once and for all particularly when one ethnicity suppresses and relegates another as lesser.

First, holidays for festivals and the weekly Sabbath rest were extended to slaves in Israel. That was not true in other cultures. If you’ll remember the passages in Leviticus that begin to unpack the Sabbath and the New Moon Festivals and the Festivals of New Grain and Wine, it was commanded in all those festivals that the Israelites weren’t allowed to shut it down and party while the slaves continued to work. He said, “Everybody parties or I kill everybody.” So on the Sabbath, the slave gets off too. On the New Moon, the slave is off too. In the Grain and Wine Festival, they’re shutting down the field, they’re putting down the oxen and nobody works. They all celebrate. There were other areas in which they were treated differently, but as for holiday and festival observation allowances were made to ensure their inclusion.

Second, you might have heard that Jews were not allowed to charge usury or interest on loans. This was an effort on God’s part to reduce the amount of slave debt and make it easier to pay back your financial obligations and earn your freedom. So, if I owed you $100 grand and I came and said, “I can’t pay $100 grand. Please don’t send me to prison. Please don’t have me arrested. Let me work off my debt,” you could not biblically go, “Okay, but at 20% interest per year.” You were not allowed to put interest on my debt if I put myself into slavery under you to work off a debt. That was also not the normal way of doing things in the ancient Near East.

Third, maybe the coolest of all laws relating to slaves and debt were the time limitations and the year of jubilee. Hebrew debt-slaves were released in the 7th year and this seems unique. And all other slaves were freed in the year of Jubilee. If you go look at some old negro spirituals, they would sing about the year of Jubilee, because biblically the year of Jubilee was the year when everyone was set free. If you were a Hebrew slave, you were set free from someone else’s ownership of you. In addition to that, in Deuteronomy 15, the owner of that slave, upon setting him free, was required by God to give material assistance to the man or woman that he was releasing so the man didn’t go right back into slavery. So once again, this is vastly different.

Fourth, limitations were placed upon the severity of beatings, and freedom was granted to any slave who was permanently damaged. So if you snapped and beat your slave to the point where he didn’t heal, walked with a limp or you hurt him in a way that he or she did not recover, then they were free and material assistance would be required of you. You would have to enable them, help them begin a new life.

There’s one last distinction that I want to mention here. Israel was a safe zone for runaway slaves. So if you escaped Gaza, if you escaped Tyre, if you escaped any of the neighboring countries and made it into Israel, Israel had non-extradition treaties with any of those countries. If you made it into Israel, you were a free man or woman. They would not send you back to your master, and they would not enslave you when you got in.

What you’ll see over and over again in the Old and New Testaments is the command put on God’s people to serve, to feed, to love and to embrace the alien stranger and sojourner. This is the slave that escapes oppression and lands in Israel. I love the picture that paints of our own redemption. Think of the redemptive themes when God says, “If you make it into Israel, you’re free. If you make it into My people, you are free.” This is a shadow of what is to come.

So although there is no text in the Bible that universally condemns slavery as a whole, the colonial slavery that we picture and the modern day sex slavery that is going on is explicitly condemned by the Scriptures repeatedly. But there are some people who will use the fact that the Bible does not specifically condemn slavery as an excuse to not submit their lives to Jesus.

The ironic thing is that as history progresses, we find that it is largely the influence of godly, ferocious men who, at great peril to their own lives and personal safety, preached the truths of Scripture, to not only end slavery altogether, but end segregation, to end oppression and begin to create an environment in which equality under the gospel of Jesus Christ is a norm and not an exception.

In Britain, you had Christian men like William Wilberforce and John Newton who fought the system that has been created because they recognize that it is deplorable. Wilberforce specifically fought for fifty years against the slave trade. It cost him money, energy, political power and persuasion, but he saw it through to the end and died just 3 days after the law had been passed ending Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade.

So, with all that in mind, knowing full well that this passage is referring to the proper relationship between Christian slaves and their Christian masters, if we cross the years from Paul’s time to ours and change the setting from the Ancient Near East to America. Then we can see that much of the relationship between slave and master is echoed in our employer/employee relationship. And these same principles can be applied to the student/teacher relationship. There are obviously some key differences. Namely, that if I cannot serve in the way that God commands me to, I have the ability to leave a job and find another.

So, what principles are there in the text for employees to follow?

Be Obedient with Integrity and Sincerity

Let’s re-read Colossians 3:22, “Bondservants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord.”

First, Notice that Paul says “obey in everything those who are your earthly masters.” This is a reminder that while obeying the boss here on earth is important, there is another obedience that takes higher priority. We also have a master that is not of this world, that is not according to the flesh. Our allegiance is to the Lord God first and foremost. We cannot violate His commands regardless of what earthly authority figures including our employer’s demand from us.

But as long as you are not asked to violate any of God’s commands, you obey your boss. How your employer treats you or how you feel about what you are asked to do is not an issue. 1 Peter 2:18-20 makes it clear that this is to be true even if they are unreasonable, “Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the unjust. For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God.”

We are not only to be obedient, but Paul gets into attitude again. Our obedience needs to be marked with both integrity and sincerity. Because the purpose of the Christian’s life is different from other people, the true believer can behave differently.

If your boss wants you to do something that you do not think is best, then certainly appeal to them and ask them if they would consider something different, but leave the matter in their hands and make sure they know you will do it whatever way they decide. Don’t argue, don’t get mad, don’t sulk, don’t talk behind their back, don’t be disrespectful in anyway. Our quest is to demonstrate Christ honoring behavior regardless of any short term consequences to ourselves.

It has become common for employees and students to give eye service as people pleasers. These are people that give the appearance of being a good worker, but the truth is that they shirk their work. They are the mice that play when the cat is away. The minimal work they do is a facade giving a false impression. You know the type. They use their company computer for personal purposes and to play games. I have noticed in the past that some computer games have a key that will quickly kill the game screen in an emergency such as the supervisor comes in. Interestingly this is often called the “boss key.”

Christians are to approach their work differently. They are to be gracious even to an irritating employer and give the same diligence in following the boss’ directions and toward the work whether the boss is present or absent, good or bad. Why? Because the Christian works with sincerity of heart in fear the Lord. This not the crippling fear of fright, dread and panic. This is the motivating fear of respect that strives to honor and please. The next verse explains further.

Work Like Jesus is your Boss

In Colossians 3:23, Paul expands the net from just slaves to all believers and all types of work when he says, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.”

Christians are always to do their best because everything we do is to be service to the Lord. There are no sacred professions. Being a pastor is no more God honoring than being a godly accountant, lawyer, politician, or plumber. God instills in you your temperament, gives you spiritual gifts, allows you to be trained and equipped and by His sovereign providence places you where you are working and serving Him. The truth that you need to understand is that regardless of whatever you do to earn your paycheck, it is just as sacred and can potentially be of more service to the Lord than being a full time minister.

What impression does your conduct and character make on unbelievers concerning Jesus Christ? Sadly, there are many professing Christians that bring shame upon the name of Christ because they act like everyone else and are men-pleasers.

Consider as well that because it is the Lord that we serve, then He is our true boss and therefore we should do all our work heartily. What kind of job would you do if the product you were making was to going to be given to God? How would you treat your customer if it was Jesus Himself? What kind of work would you do if it would be the Lord that would grade your paper? How would you use your time on the job if Christ was your supervisor? If your labor would change in anyway in answer to these questions, then you need to change it now because the Lord is all those things to you.

The Christian is to be a God pleaser, not a man-pleaser. You are to strive to do the will of God heartily, that is, from your innermost being – your heart, your soul. Everything you do is to be done as if it were unto the Lord for the reality is that you work for Him regardless of who signs the paycheck. Every Christian is a slave of God and righteousness (Romans 6:18-22) for we have been bought with the price of Jesus’ blood (1 Corinthians 6:20; 1 Peter 1:18). The standard of what other people do is never good enough for the Christian for other people are neither our benchmark nor our motivation. We go beyond the common to do the extraordinary because we are the Lord’s and He is our benchmark and motivation. We work for Him, not just mere men.

Work for the Reward

Colossians 3:24, “Knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.”

The Lord is a better boss in all respects which includes His faithfulness to reward us for our work. I love the addition that Ephesians 6:8 adds, “knowing that whatever good thing each one does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether slave or free.” This helps to even the playing field as we will see when Paul speaks to the masters about the fact that they have a master in heaven as well.

It was very seldom that slaves would receive compensation for their labors much less just compensation, and it would seem that workers have always found something to complain about regarding their pay. In general, workers rarely think they are paid enough and employers often think they are paying too much. But the Christian is to work heartily as for the Lord because he knows that he will receive a proper reward from the Lord at the proper time.

In other words, the compensation package should not be the biggest factor in choosing to take or keep a job. Jesus has already promised to meet the needs of His followers. We do not need to fret about the things we need for life. As Paul pointed out in 1 Timothy 6:8, “if we have food and covering, with these we shall be content.” Contentment removes us from the temptations and snares that come with the greedy quest to become rich.

This is possible because Christians should be living with an eternal purpose in view, not just a temporal one. We are working toward and living for eternity’s reward, not just what occurs in the here and now. According to Jesus’ teaching, we are seeking to lay up incorruptible treasures in heaven, not on earth where they can be destroyed or stolen (Matthew 6:19-21). We understand that there is no profit in gaining even the whole world at the cost of your soul (Matthew 16:26). We do all for the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31) including our work knowing that is the Lord that we serve and at the proper time we shall receive from Him the promised inheritance.

God’s Justice is for Everyone

As Paul transitions to speaking to Masters, he quickly expresses the idea that God doesn’t care whether you are rich or poor, slave or free, black or white, Israeli or Palestinian. Colossians 3:25 says, “For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality.”

Paul’s warning here is not in reference to our salvation in Jesus Christ, for there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). Jesus suffered the consequences of all the sins the Christian has committed when He died on the cross of Calvary as the price of our redemption that delivered us from the domain of darkness and reconciled us with God.

This is a warning to workers who would do wrong without thinking about the consequences of such actions. Do not allow yourself to be tempted to do your work the same way everyone else does it. They will compromise moral practices in order to gain short term profit and advantage. They will eventually reap the consequences of the wrong they do both here on earth and in eternity. You are to work for the Lord from whom you will receive a better reward of an eternal inheritance.

This warning is also for Masters, employers, and teachers. God is not a respecter of persons. If you are a harsh taskmaster and you mistreat or beat your subjects, then God will repay the wrong you have done.

Masters are Servants too

Paul’s final word on this matter is to Masters as a reminder. Colossians 4:1 says, “Masters, treat your bondservants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven.”

And employer’s attitude toward their work is to be the same as we have already seen for employees. They are to be respectful and run their business and direct their employees according to God’s standards of righteousness, truth and honesty. Their first priority is also to be doing everything as unto the Lord seeking His will above their own.

The employer is not to let his authority go to his head and feed his pride. He is to care personally about his employees and their welfare understanding that the business is for their benefit as much as it is for his own. The employer is to lead his workers without threatening them.

I love that the word for fairly in Colossians 4:1 is sometimes translated equality. The employer may own the business, sign the checks and have the responsibilities, power and authority over what happens in the business, but they are equal with their employees in that they are also accountable to one who holds all power and authority – the Lord Jesus Christ.

This is the case whether you have a Christian boss or not. Ultimately, there is no partiality with the Lord. He plays no favorites. He will judge all with righteousness and justice. The non-Christian employer should obey God’s commands out of fear of that. Christian employers should recognize that they too are slaves of Christ and they should oversee their employees accordingly because their purpose and goal is to please the Lord Jesus Christ in all that they do including their business.

We all have the same Master. Let us be sure that we do all our work for Him, whether employer or employee, so that He is glorified.