Slaves, 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 slaves justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven.
Colossians 3:22–4:1
The typical way I think this passage is applied and preached is to exhort Christians to be better employees because they want to please God by obeying him. Since we’ve eliminated slavery as they practiced it in the ancient world and later, these texts are usually applied to the employer/employee relationship. But I’d like to do something a little different here. I’d like you to consider how the way you work to please your employer should influence how you obey God.
There is much people can do to better serve their employers by considering what God wants of them. The reference to “eye-service” in 3:22 makes the point that, while we can escape the observation of an employer, God is with us all the time. Obviously, embracing such a reality could and should affect how diligently someone works for an employer.
But there is another factor.
As Christians we all know that we’re supposed to obey God’s commands and not disobey them. It’s a very clean, binary distinction: Obey; don’t disobey.
But this distinction is overly simplistic in real life. We know that God wants obedience from pure motives, for example. But I want to talk about what I think is a more practical issue.
As a part time driver for a residential community, I recently had a job review and my supervisor said some things about my proficiency of responding to calls, picking up customers, and driving them to where they wanted to go. But much of the review was not really about my official job duties. It was about my ability to smile and be pleasant and give riders some kind of pleasant experience by how I acted in the brief time I was with them. And it was about my willingness to do other work outside of my official job duties when asked to do so. Or to work extra unplanned time to help out when something came up. I am always assured I can say “no” to such extra time and sometimes I do so. But my willingness to work extra pretty often obviously made me a more valuable employee to the business.
In real life the relationship between an employer and employee is often hard to pin down in terms of requirements and whether one has met or violated those requirements.
Every parent knows this. Half the time the issue with a son or daughter is not obedience versus disobedience, but obedience versus S L O W obedience. Or obedience versus obedience with unasked commentary about the assigned task. Or obedience versus obedience after you satisfactorily answer twenty questions about the reasons for the task. Or obedience versus obedience according to an unknown schedule.
So when Paul tells slaves “obey in everything those who are your earthly masters” and “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men,” he is revealing something about the quality of the obedience God wants from us.
And we find similar concerns about obedience to God’s commands in Scripture.
“Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain.”
Philippians 2:14–16 {ESV)
Notice here that the Apostle Paul stakes the witness of the Philippian church not just on their obedience—“do all things”—but on their cheerful obedience. Peter says something similar: “Show hospitality to one another without grumbling” (1 Peter 4:9).
Going back to the Apostle Paul, when he writes to the Romans to serve each other according to their gifts, he starts mentioning attitudes as well as actions: “the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness” (Romans 12:8). This leads into more general instructions:
“Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer”
Romans 12:9–12 (ESV)
I doubt Paul is trying to encourage Christians to literally compete with each other in “showing honor,” but telling them to “outdo one another,” gets the point that he doesn’t want us to be half-hearted, reluctant, or hesitating in doing what we should, but he wants us to perform our duties with alacrity.
This is how the Bible speaks. We are told that some behaviors should be done with alacrity—cheerful promptness—while others should be done reluctantly or hesitatingly.
“Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.”
James 1:19 (ESV)
So listening, taking time to evaluate, obeying God’s commands should be something we do promptly, without hesitation, automatically even. While speaking, especially speaking in anger, should be done, if at all, reluctantly. Slowly.
God himself is like this, by the way. On the one hand,
“The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”
2 Peter 3:9 (ESV)
In the language of the King James translators, God is not a slacker when it comes to fulfilling his promises. “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness…”
But while God is not a slacker in keeping his promises, his is slow in other ways. Over and over in Scripture we are assured that God is reluctant in another area:
The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness”
Exodus 34:6 (ESV)
Slow to anger. God wants us to be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger because that’s what he is like.
But our natural inclination is to do the opposite. Not only the perversity of sin, but the general inclination to relax rather than to expend effort leads us to be quick to anger and slow to listen. When we are angry we are already motivated. We are energized. When we have something to say we are usually energized to express ourselves. When we are being spoken to, we usually are not that energized.
So maturity means learning to be energetic, quick, about what we should do and learn to put the brakes on impulses that would lead us to do otherwise.
In the story of God and the two angels visiting Abraham in Genesis 18:1-8, we are told multiple times that Abraham acted “quickly” to welcome his guests. He didn’t even ask them if they could stay until dinner time. He made dinner available right away, as fast as he could do so.
Abraham wasn’t slack towards his guests but served them with alacrity. Like Peter, the author of Hebrews commands Christians to be generous and welcoming, and he invokes this example of Abraham. “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares” (Hebrews 13:2).
You want God to find you not slack in your efforts but quick and cheerful to do what you know God wants.
Obedience, as you practically experience doing it, isn’t an on and off switch. It’s a volume knob.
These passages about how Christian slaves should act toward their masters, and how we as Christians should act as employees have something to say to us about how we should grow and function as God’s servants. When a young man gets his first job, it will go dramatically better for him if he has been trained to keep the basic commandments. It’s a great start if he doesn’t lie or steal.
But that’s hopefully just the start. He has to learn how to proactively make himself operate efficiently and spontaneously as an employee. He has to figure out not only how to meet the minimum requirements of the job, but hopefully how to even exceed his employer’s and his customer’s expectations.
Lots of economists and public policy thinkers consider the youth unemployment rate a disaster, not just because of lost income, but because it affects income later in life. Learning to be a helpful and productive employee takes some training. So young people don’t just miss out on a job, but they miss out on learning how to do a better job—how to put up with frustrations, stay on schedule, and remain happy to serve customers.
These things require commitment, but they also require experience. Learning to work a job is like learning to play a musical instrument in that way. It’s not a question of whether you can play at all, but how well you can play and if you a practicing enough to be able to play better.
So when Paul tell slaves to obey with “sincerity of heart” or to “work heartily” he is telling them to do something that has no practical upper limit. There will always be challenges at work and in life in general, and, when you develop the attitude and habits to deal with the challenges you are most aware of, you’ll find new challenges that require more change on your part. Christians in general are supposed to “Do all things without grumbling or disputing.” Yes, that means to not complain out loud or argue about what you know you’re supposed to do. But what kind of performance will you display if you are mentally obsessed with these complaints or questions even if you don’t articulate them out loud? That is virtually never the mindset of someone doing anything promptly or cheerfully.
And so people need to change. They need to be capable, once they’ve decided what God wants them to do, of doing it wholeheartedly—without wavering and hesitating. We need to think about how we act as employees when we are trying to impress the boss.
Should we think of God as a human boss? Well, obviously our relationship to God is more complex than that. It’s richer than that. The Bible presents God as our Father, husband, king, master, and uses other relational names. No, God is not an uncaring master who wants us for what we can do for him.
But just because God is better than our bosses doesn’t mean that he deserves half-hearted service, does it? Why should we exert more effort for people than we do for God?
Think of an executive who gets his son his first job at his own company. If he’s a good and loving father, then of course he is more interested in his son for more reasons than the other entry-level employees. But for that very reason he wants his son to learn to excel at his job. The last thing he wants is for his son to be a slacker because he’s the son of the owner. Not only would the father be personally embarrassed by his son’s behavior but he would be concerned about his son’s character—how he was failing to grow as a person.
And precisely because God loves us and wants better things for us—which includes wanting us to be more mature, productive, and capable people—he wants our obedience to improve. He wants us to grow into people who can do more, do it more easily and quickly, and do it more spontaneously.
And the Bible assures us that God is patient toward us. Since we’re justified in Christ, we have been reconciled to to God so that he is our loving Father. He has promised to forgive us. So realizing that you need to change and become a more obedient person shouldn’t make you discouraged. God’s intention is to motivate you to diligently continue in the process that the Holy Spirit is working in you.
We know that no sin is excusable. Thank God for forgiveness! But at the same time we know that people don’t often change their habits and attitudes instantaneously. You know there were Christian slaves who, until they heard Paul’s directions read out loud, were not even thinking of Paul’s description of obedience as their goal. How many of them immediately transformed their behavior? Maybe none of them. But those who listened were challenged to change the way the acted and change their attitudes in the ways they immediately recognized as contrary to what God wanted. And once they had developed new ways of behaving, other areas opened up for them to improve.
It’s like Paul telling husbands to love their wives as Christ loves the Church and gave himself up for her. That is not something that any man can do or even comprehend all at once. He can only learn what such a commission requires by changing the parts of his behavior that he realizes don’t fit that model. But that’s just a beginning. Learning to love one’s wife as Christ loved the church is a lifelong endeavor.
I probably should mention that this is one of those areas where God wants us to exercise a sanctified double standard. We should be tough enough on ourselves to improve, but it is not necessarily our place to judge anyone’s else level of improvement. I’m not saying that we must never evaluate someone’s growth. But at the very least we should be quick to look for ways to improve our own behavior and slow to work on improving others.
Even Jesus, though without sin, went through this maturation process. “Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him” (Hebrews 5:8–9). Jesus learned through life to turn up the volume knob of obedience.
Jesus said that we should regard ourselves as unprofitable servants who have only done what they were supposed to. This wasn’t the point of Jesus’ telling of the parable, but the story raises the possibility that we can always work on being more profitable or less unprofitable. We can develop an attitude and habits that make obedience easier. We can become quicker to obey.
But if we are easily satisfied with our obedience when we are less mature then we are less likely to feel any need to get out of what has become our comfort zone. It should be obvious that God would rather have us grow into better people than be comfortable.
Let’s share God’s attitude and grow quicker to obey.
I’ll end this post with a quotation from the Reformed minister and theologian Cornelius Van Til in his work Christian Theistic Ethics:
That the ethical ideal for man should be self-realization follows from the central place given him in this universe. … Man was to gather up into the prism of his self-conscious activity all the manifold manifestations of the glory of God in order to make one central self-conscious sacrifice of it all to God.
If man was to perform this, his God-given task, he must himself be a fit instrument for this work. He was made a fit instrument for this work, but he must also make himself an ever better instrument for this work. He must will to develop his intellect in order to grasp more comprehensively the wealth of the manifestation of the glory of God in this world. He must will to be an ever better prophet than he already is. He must will to develop his aesthetic capacity, that is, his capacity of appreciation; he must will to be an even better priest than he already is. Finally, he must will to will the will of God for the whole world; he must become an ever better king than he already is. For this reason then the primary ethical duty of man is self-realization. Through self-realization man makes himself the king of the earth, and if he is truly the king of the earth then God is truly the king of the universe, since it is as God’s creature, as God’s vicegerent, that man must seek to develop himself as king. When man becomes truly the king of the universe the kingdom of God is realized, and when the kingdom of God is realized, God is glorified.
Self-Realization
But what then, in more detail, is involved in this goal of self-realization that man must set for himself? We can bring this out by working out the idea expressed above, when we said that man must learn to will the will of God. Man must work out his own will, that is, he must develop his own will first of all. Man’s will needs to become increasingly spontaneous in its reactivity. Man was created so that he spontaneously served God. For this reason he must grow in spontaneity. Whatever God has placed within man by way of activity must also be regarded by him as a capacity to be developed. Man was not created merely with a will to will the will of God. In his heart there was an inmost desire to serve God. But just because man was created with this will, God wants man to develop this will.
In the second place, man’s will needs to become increasingly fixed in its self-determination. In other words, man must needs develop the backbone of his will. Not as though man was created a volitional amoeba, which had to pass through the invertebrate stage before it finally acquired a backbone. Man was created a self. He was the creature of an absolute self and could not be otherwise created than as a self. But for this very reason again man had to develop his self-determination. Man’s God is absolutely self-determinate; man will be God-like in proportion that he becomes self-determining and self-determinate under God. In proportion that man develops his self-determination does he develop God’s determination or plan for his kingdom on earth. God accomplishes his plans through self-determined characters. An unstable man would be useless in the kingdom of God.
In the third place, man’s will must increase in momentum. Man’s will would naturally increase in momentum in proportion that it increased in spontaneity and self-determinateness. Yet the point of momentum must be separately mentioned. As man approaches his ideal, the realization of the kingdom of God, the area of his activity naturally enlarges itself. Just as the manager of a growing business needs to increase with his business in alertness, stability, and comprehensiveness of decision, so man, with the development of his progress toward his ideal, would have to develop momentum in order to meet his ever increasing responsibility.
