Slaves and Masters

Col 3:22-4:1

Big idea: work as for the Lord and not for men.

This talk is really an extension on my sermon from Colossians 3:18-21. In that sermon I talked primarily about the first two pairs of relationships in the passage: husbands and wives and parents and children. Now we will look at the relationships between slaves and masters in 3:22-4:1.

The context of these verses is very important. Paul is unpacking Christian love from Col 3:14. What does it mean to really love one another in three important areas: the context of church (3:1-17), the context of the Christian household (3:18-4:1) and the wider community (4:2ff)? This section is part of Paul's instructions to Christian households-- remembering that it was common in Colossae for domestic slaves/servants to be part of the extended household grouping. We get a bit of an insight into this arrangement in Paul's letter to Philemon regarding his wayward slave Onesiphorus.

So we are looking at God's basic pattern for household relationships; marriages, families and work. It is a model of relationship, a way of relating; it is not condemnation or judgment. It's not there to say, 'I told you so.' Paul is saying, "Here are the maker's instructions: 'other-person-centredness', for the sake of Christ, is the way to go." This is the basic expression of love that is to govern all household relationships.

Work relationships (Col 3:22-4:1)

Now it's time to get our heads into our everyday world to see how this all works out.

Can I ask you to put your hand up if in the past few months you have experienced conflict with a work colleague or boss or someone else in your place of work. Also raise your hand if a relationship with a client or competitor caused you some kind of grief. Raise your hand if you or your spouse thinks your work had a negative impact on your home life.

Now I want you to know that my hand is up too: we are all fellow-travellers in this.

Dysfunctional relationships in the workplace seem endemic, but not just in this room! It probably won't surprise you to learn that Australia has the second highest level of litigation for unfair dismissal in the world[1]. We're so messed up we're ending up in court.

OK, so we agree that work is a place of dysfunctional relationships and, on top of that, work is the cause of relationship stress at home.

Now if work is supposed to be such a good gift from God, why isn't this working?

The Diagnosis

I want to put forward a tentative suggestion that may help; it's been helping me this week. What's the problem behind the symptoms? It seems to me that our problems stem from the fact that we have made ourselves slaves to something or someone who is not worthy of our service, something or someone who is less than God. The diagnosis is that our service is being given to the wrong master.

The Christian Distinctive: Col 3:22-24

Let's have another look at Paul's instructions to the slaves in verses 22-24 again. He calls them to obey their human masters and yet to serve God.

Col. 3:22 Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to win their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord. Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. (Col 3: 23-24)

Now our position as workers today is going to be different to the 1st century slaves of the Roman Empire, but depending upon your work, maybe not that different. What I'm suggesting is that workers today can learn by analogy from God's word to the slaves of those days.

From these verses it seems to me that the solution to our problem is to rightly recognise who we are serving in our work. This gets our motivation right. All our work is to be in service of God[2]. Getting that right will help us with all the other issues that spin off relationships and work.

Slaves and Masters in the world

That might seem like a pretty simplistic answer to a complex problem, but let's consider some alternatives. If you are not ultimately serving God through your work, to whom have you made yourself a slave? Whose slave are you if not God's?

Slave to my job?

First, let's consider the possibility that you have made yourself a slave to your job.

My brother in law holds a senior position in the banking industry. I remember at one stage he was interviewing for one of the very top jobs in a particular bank. In the final interview the interviewer said to him, 'You do realise that if you take this job you must marry this job. This job, this bank, must come before any other commitment in your life.' What would you say? My brother in law said nothing. He just left. Game over. He would not make himself a slave to the job. I really respect him for that.

Not many employers will make this kind of claim on our lives up front. But that doesn't seem to stop some people becoming slaves to their job.

You don't have to work for a bank to be a slave to your job. You could be a volunteer at LinC, Anglicare or Taronga Zoo and still be a slave to the job: it consumes your life. Your identity, your sense of self and security might all be bound up in your role. It has taken such a stranglehold on your life that you feel you are nothing without it.

Now we do get security and significance from all kinds of things-- from friends, family, achievements at work-- all sorts of things that aren't wrong in and of themselves. But ultimately they will all let us down. They are really only the icing on the cake. If you are a slave to your job, what will you do if you get retrenched? What if your company goes under? And even if not that, one day you will have to retire. No job is forever. No job can provide you with everything you need. Ultimately, no job can take the place of God. Your work is vehicle for serving God; it can never replace him.

And if you are a slave to your job, your relationships will suffer. Our passage in Colossians 3 shows us that we are whole people with an integrated set of relationships: wives and husbands, children and parents, slaves and masters, friends and neighbours, and so on. We live in networks of relationships where some have priority over others— the very nature of some relationships demands that.

When you are a slave to your job, your family, your spouse and your friends suffer. The love you owe to each is compromised to some extent. I would even go so far as to say that the love you owe your brothers and sisters in Christ is compromised by your slavery to your job. So don't let your job replace God.

Slave to my ego?

Well, let's consider another master. What if, through your work, you become a slave to your ego? I'm a baker, a mother, a plumber or a teacher because I need this for me, for what I get out of it, for what this does for me. In my work I am a slave to my ego.

Maybe you work with someone just like this. If I am a slave to my ego, I am driven to come out on top in all my relationships at work: climbing the corporate ladder means workmates become a threat to be managed and mastered, competing businesses and people become enemies to be conquered and killed off, relationships become means to an end, used for my own advancement.

You see, ego slaves tend to view work-mates as functions rather than people: he's just the print-boy, she does the number-crunching, that's the photo-copier man, they do the dishes. People are valued only by what they can do for me-- obviously this is wrong. When we recognise that God is our master, when we consider that God's calling for all men and women is to wholeness in relationship with him, then we will relate to our work-mates as human beings— human beings that God loves so much he became one so he could die for them.

If you suspect you might be a slave to your ego, that your own success at work, building your reputation, is what ultimately drives you, then as a brother who shares that very same weakness, I want to encourage you to repent. Get off the throne of your life and hand it back over to Jesus: die to yourself and live for God.

Slave to the World?

Well, in your work, you might not be a slave to your job, you might not be a slave to your ego, but are you a slave to the world? This kind of worker has isolated and insulated their work from God— or at least they are pretending that this is the case. Every morning the slave to the world adopts the world’s principles of ethical compromise and deception, but each night, they pick up their brief case, their conscience and their halo, they re-adjust their breastplate of righteousness and head home. Christians who are Slaves to the World live this kind of double life.

And the world tries to make us its slave every day. In every kind of work our commitment to truth and integrity is challenged. Parents doyou lie to your kids? Accountants do you dance with the tax laws? The Police are offered bribes. Ministers are tempted to soft-pedal the gospel.In every situation we must decide whether we are serving God or the world[3].

It all comes down to who you are trying to please: God or the world?

Slave to my boss / shareholders / client?

There is one more kind of workplace slavery I want to consider. You might not be a slave to your job, to your own ego, or even to the world, but are you a slave to your boss, to your shareholders or to your clients? This kind of slavery is perhaps the hardest one to be free of because in the end, these are the people who pay you.

And so to get this right we are going to have to think a little more carefully about the bible text in front of us and how it might apply to us today.

The first instruction to Slaves is that they are to obey their earthly masters in everything. I don't want to move past this too quickly, other than to say that in most situations you face as Christians at work, your aim should be to diligently carry out your master's wishes ineverything. Yes, obedience; but not blind obedience. Notice the way that this obedience is qualified. Slaves are not to be merely man-pleasers but they are to live obedience designed to please their heavenly master, with pure motives and a sincere heart[4].

See at the end of verse 22, the slave is to work, literally, 'fearing the Lord.' This is then explained and unpacked in verses 23-24: the slave is to work wholeheartedly, as working for the Lord and not for men. And there is a lot riding on that little word 'as', isn't there? Working as for the Lord and not for men.

You see both the slave and the master are ultimately accountable to God for their work. In the immediate, his master rewards the slave for his work-- obedient service or otherwise. That's what the masters are commanded to do in 4:1: 'Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair.' But in verse 24 it is God who will ultimately reward the slave with an inheritance, since it is the Lord Christ he is serving.

Notice also the warning that follows in verse 25: but if you, Mr Slave, do wrong you will be repaid for it. You can't go blaming your master for the wrong that you did, even if you did it at his command, because with God there is no partiality, no one is let off the hook because of their position.

This same message of responsibility to God is also directed to the masters in the second half of 4:1: Master, you also have a Master in heaven to whom you are accountable for your work.

So this message of double accountability, slaves are accountable to both their earthly and heavenly masters, means that when the two masters come into conflict, the slave must obey God first[5]. Even though you will normally work for the best interests of your boss, your client or your shareholders, when they demand that we compete outside the rules, when they lead us to sin, or cause others to sin,then is the time to obey God rather than men.

And, let's be honest, this is where it gets really hard. In my time as an architect, I saw council officers bribed to get development applications through. I was asked to fudge the building laws. My boss sent me out to design renovations for a 'private hotel' in Kings Cross. How can we design a casino so that people will become dependent upon gambling? Sooner or later every Christian seems to end up in a situation of conflict with our boss or our client: we cannot do what they want, we cannot please them, because they are asking us to disobey God.

Fortunately for us, there is a difference between the kind of 1st century Slave / Master relationship Paul was addressing and our Employer/Employee relationships today. There are awards, laws and other avenues of appeal. And at the end of the day, we can respond to an unfair or ungodly master by leaving-- an option that wasn't open to 1st century slaves.

That is an extreme step, and one that I'd never jump to lightly. And long before you get there, there is your character and your manner of dealing with people. In situations of conflict, respect is going to be key. We can disagree, with respect, without bringing the gospel into disrepute. Even though they may not like what you say, they will respect you for saying it well.

Working for the Master

So we can be slaves to our job, slaves to our ego, slaves to the world and slaves to the people who pay our wages: our bosses, our clients, or our shareholders; but we can only do this if we have put them in God's place. You see, even though we may work for many masters, we are to work as for the Lord God himself. He is the one master worthy of all our service, and if we get that right, all sorts of other things will fall into place as well.

Doing our work for God, and not to serve our own egos  frees us from competitiveness: we will treat people as people. We will find satisfaction in God instead of our performance or our achievements.

If all our work is done as to the Lord, then we will do it in ways that please him; not with compromise or outside the rules. Working as for God means our work practices will reflect his ways and not the world's ways-- whether anyone sees them or not.

Working for the Master will also mean that we learn when to say no, even to those people who pay our wages. They may not like us for it, they may like us more for it-- that is outside our control; but they will know that they too have a master to whom they will render account for all that they do.

So if we get our motivation right, that we are working to please God first, then this will help us get all our relationships right too.

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] http://www.discoveringpeople.com.au/email%20newsletter%20May%202002.htm

[2] This makes sense given our vocation in life: we have all been called into relationship with God through Jesus Christ. (Eph 3:17b-19 says: 'And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love,  18 may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ,  19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge — that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.') It is this vocation, this calling, that shapes our whole lives, even our work.

[3] For many of us, the hardest part of being a Christian in our work is working in the world, but not being part of the world, not operating according to its standards. Work for many of us involves competing in a market: buying and selling commodities in order to advantage your client or company more than others operating in the same market. The problem seems to be that competition seems to lead us into compromise: it needn't, but it does. Serving God rather than the world means competing according to rules of the competition.

For example, is it wrong for a professional rugby player to throw a dummy? That is, if George Gregan became a Christian would it be wrong for him to try to deceive the other team by only pretending to pass the ball? No, deception in this case is not wrong. All the players on the field have agreed to be bound by the rules of rugby, which includes the elements of competition and of hiding your strategies from the opposition. So if this analogy holds for our work situations, then the thing that matters is competing according to the rules[3].

But what about when the commonly accepted practices and rules of business run contrary to the word of God? Then it seems it's time to make a stand.

[4] In verse 22 there is a play on words not immediately evident in the English translation. Paul acknowledges that there are two 'lords' with authority over the slave: in verse 22 there is the earthly or human lord as well as the heavenly Lord, God himself, who is to be feared.

[5] Cf Acts 4:19.