Parents, Children, Slavery

The reciprocal nature of submitting to one another applied also to parents, and children, to masters and slaves. The secular legal structure appeared to be maintained, but those who under the legal system would be totally dominant (husbands over wives, fathers over children, masters over slaves), were to act with care and service towards those legally in their charge.

Slaves, be obedient to those who are your earthly masters, with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as to Christ... as to the Lord...

Masters, do the same to them, and forbear threatening, knowing that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and that there is no partiality with him.                                                                         (Ephesians 6:5,7,9)

Paul’s teaching about how slaves should behave was in the context of a fully established but often cruel system.  Paul sought to change it in the only possible way by instructing Christian masters to behave kindly towards their slaves.  What was being enjoined was the application of the Golden Rule, which is the basis of what today are called “human rights”:

So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law and the prophets.                                           (Matthew 7:12)

In applying the Golden Rule today it is not necessary or right to re-institute slavery, nor to go back to the ancient legal systems concerning marriage or families. Those who follow Christ seek to serve one another and to fulfil one another’s needs, material and spiritual. The exercising of authority over one another is not an essential part of these relationships, nor is it desirable in itself.  Mutual cooperation for each other’s good is the divine ideal. This teaching of Jesus is applicable, of course, to all human relationships, not just within the family or within the ecclesia.  In applying the Golden Rule in the modern world we need to take account of unfair treatment which people suffer indirectly at our hands where, for example, in developing countries they produce goods for our use at unreasonably low wages.