6:1
The church included members who were slaves, and those who were slavemasters. Now our immediate reaction is that “they shouldn’t have slaves”. Indeed, atheists often make the charge against the Bible that it promotes or condones slavery. This is to misunderstand the situation. First, the situation we are dealing with is not like the slave trade that was common in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. Rather, it was an integral part of the economy. Slaves could sometimes buy their way out of slavery. It was certainly no bed of roses, but it was not quote the same as the slave trade. Furthermore, the church was in no position to institute radical social change! Rather, it was a small, often oppressed group. So what does the New Testament do? It instructs both slaves and their masters on how to act, so that the the effects of slavery are at least ameliorated. It also gave value to slaves.
Now look at how Paul goes about this. He instructs slaves to respect their masters. In other letters masters are instructed to treat slaves well. The key thing is that our first concern should be to fulfil our responsibilities, before we worry about getting our “rights”.
6:2
Those who had believing masters were to still show them respect. Within the church they would be considered equals, but this does not mean we ignore the structures and hierarchies within society. The slave should not take advantage of this, but instead serve their masters all the more diligently. Notice that it then talks of the masters as “fellow believers”, and “devoted to their welfare”. There are no instructions on this in this letter, but there are elsewhere. It seems that in Ephesus the masters were acting properly (see Eph 6:9), ie they were looking after the welfare of the slaves.
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