Lesson 15 – Spirit Filled Households (Ephesians 6:1-9)
Whereas Paul does not command the wives to “obey” their husbands in Ephesians 5:21-33, he does command children to “obey” their fathers (and honor their parents) and for enslaved people to “obey” their earthly masters. How, then, does the call to mutual submission in Ephesians 5:21 function in this insistence on obedience for children and enslaved people? And, further, is Paul endorsing slavery and accommodating the powers?
Ephesians 6:1-9 is a continuation of what it means to be filled with the Spirit as a community that praises God, giving thanks, and mutually submits to another. Just as the instructions to wives and husbands hang on the participles in Ephesians 5:19-21, so do the instructions in Ephesians 6:1-9 as this is the conclusion of the section that began in Ephesians 5:15.
When the community of God is filled with the Spirit, it is filled with praise and mutually submissive relationships. Paul applies this to children and fathers in Ephesians 6:1-4 and to the enslaved and their masters in Ephesians 6:5-9. What does that look in those relationships that in Greco-Roman culture were characterized by dominance and coercion?
Perhaps the most striking aspect of Paul’s instruction here is that he addresses both children and the enslaved. He assumes they are present in the community (they are listening to this read in their assembly), they have agency (decisions to make about how to act), and they are responsible to live in a way that imitates God (Ephesians 5:2) and serves the Lord Jesus. They are members of the community, and therefore they are to walk worthy of their calling (Ephesians 4:2), be kind to one another (Ephesians 4:32), forgive one another (Ephesians 4:32), and submit to one another (Ephesians 5:21).
That Paul addresses them at all is startling since this is not the case in standard Greco-Roman household instructions. Paul gives them dignity and honors them with these instructions whereas in the ancient world they were non-persons without rights or agency. Given this dignity, Paul expects them to live worthy of their calling as members of the body of Christ.
Whatever say about these relationships, they are followers of Jesus the Messiah and share a kinship with the rest of the body of Christ: “we are members of one another” (Ephesians 4:25). The familial relationship in Christ transcends the wife/husband, child/father, and enslaved/master relationships. They are sisters and brothers first, and then whatever relationship connects them. Consequently, there are responsibilities to each other that shape how we live with each other, and one of those is mutual submission. This is true even for enslaved persons. Paul, for example, expected Philemon to receive Onesimus “no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother” (Philemon 16).
Children must obey their fathers and honor their parents, and fathers train their children rather than exasperate them. “Obey” was not used for the relationship between wives and husbands, and here it is appropriate because of the nature of the dependency between children and parents.
The enslaved must obey their earthly master as slaves of Christ, enthusiastically serving them in a way that recognizes they are serving the Lord Jesus when they obey their earthly masters. Masters are to do the “same things” for their charges, and do so without violence or threats as both have the same Master (Lord) in heaven. The mutuality of this relationship is seen in the mutual service both rendered to the Lord Jesus, and they both act without partiality toward the other.
Many modern believers are disturbed that Paul does not command the masters to free the enslaved persons in their charge. Paul does command the masters to treat their slaves with fairness, without coercion (threats), and to have the same attitudes (including service!) toward his charges as they were to have toward him (“do the same [things] to them”). This is a very different relationship than Greco-Roman enslavement practiced where masters had the right to abuse, coerce, and even kill their charges. Threats and punishments were how masters controlled their them. Enslaved people had no rights in the Greco-Roman world, though many were equipped with education, skills, and even could earn money to purchase their own freedom. Whereas Greco-Roman masters had no obligation to treat them fairly or as persons, Paul insists serving the Lord Jesus means something radically different.
But still, why did not Paul command believing masters liberate the enslaved people in their house? The Ephesian house churches lived in a social world where slavery was unquestioned, integral to the economy, and part of the social order of the empire. Followers of Jesus were in no position to challenge that social reality. They could not change the legal system; it was not a democracy or even a Republic. There was no legal recourse. Slaves made up about 10% of the population of the empire, and 30% of the people who lived in Rome itself.
Paul could not call for a wholesale movement to free enslaved people in the Ephesians house churches as this was illegal and would have involved severe sanctions and hindered the opportunities to proclaim the gospel. Freeing slaves in large numbers was regarded as a danger to the social order. For example, during the reign of Augustus, Lex Fufia Caninia was passed in 2 BCE that placed limits on the manumission of enslaved peoples: one could only free some slaves and not all of them. For example, if you had 10 slaves, you could only free 5, and if you had 30 slaves, you could only free 10. The empire discouraged freeing slaves, and no person could be freed under 30 without appropriate legal procedures.
Rather, Paul encourages the Ephesian house churches to change the social order within the community of faith. They can act toward each other in mutual submission rather than living in a social hierarchy within the house church itself. No longer would there be male or female, slave or free, or Jew or Gentile (as Galatians 3:28 says). Rather, they are sisters and brothers as part of the family of God the Father. They are a new creation in an old, sinful world, and their relationships within the community bear witness to the new reality created by God through the death, resurrection, and enthronement of the Messiah. Change begins at home—between wives and husbands, between children and parents, and between the enslaved and the masters.
Does this constitute an endorsement of slavery? I don’t think so. It is more a social realism as well as a missional strategy. Paul suggested that enslaved people seek freedom when they are able (1 Corinthians 7:21). The church cannot revolutionize the empire’s slavery practices in any immediate sense. It can change the dynamics within the community of faith so that there is justice and equity for all (cf. Colossians 4:1). Just like Christians cannot change the practices of oppressive authoritarian regimes but must live within that social order (think about Christians in Iran, for example), so Paul does not call for a social revolution that would hinder the proclamation of the gospel. Instead, he calls for a revolution within the community that will bring light into the darkness of the social world in which the church lives. A revolutionized community of faith might ultimately effect some social change as leaven leavens a whole lump. However, ultimately, the church failed to change the social order when it became a Christian empire, and this is a stain on the witness of the church through the centuries. Enslaved people were not liberated—not until worldwide movements by Christians in the 18th and 19th centuries led an abolitionist movement.
In effect, I think in Ephesians 6:5-9 Paul recognizes that the believing community of Jesus must live within the social order of its environment even as they subvert that order in their own practices within the community.