Exploring My Strange Bible - Ephesians Part 5: A Household of Gospel

Episode Date: November 8, 2017

This teaching is based on the last chapter of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. Paul talks about how the good news about Jesus should influence the day to day relationships in the home. He talks about parents and children, and then he addresses slavery. How does slavery get re-examined and reshaped in the good news about Jesus? If the slave owner and the slave are both followers of Jesus, does that make them equal? We learn more about power and authority in this episode.

Tim Mackey, Jr. utterly amazing and worth following with everything that you have. On this podcast, I'm putting together the last 10 years worth of lectures and sermons where I've been exploring the strange and wonderful story of the Bible and how it invites us into the mission of Jesus and the journey of faith. And I hope this can be helpful for you too. I also help start this thing called The Bible Project. We make animated videos and podcasts about all kinds of topics in Bible and theology. You can find those resources at thebibleproject.com. With all that said, let's dive into the episode for this week. All right, well, this is the fifth episode of a five-part series we've been doing on Paul's letter to the Ephesians in the New Testament. We've been exploring major themes and key passages within it.

These were teachings I did a number of years ago when I was a teaching pastor at Door of Hope Church in Portland. This is a teaching based on the last chapter of Paul's letter to the Ephesians. a teaching based on the last chapter of Paul's letter to the Ephesians. It's about the wisdom and the guidance he offers about how the gospel, the good news about Jesus, should affect the day to day relationships in the home. And he talks about parents and children, and then addresses a first century Roman institution of slavery. How is it that this very oppressive power institution that was pervasive in all layers of first century Roman culture, how does it get re-examined and reshaped in the light of the good news about Jesus? If a follower of Jesus who's a master who owns slaves, and then if you're a follower of Jesus who also is a slave,

and if you're a part of the same community of Jesus where you are equal, have equal status in the church, how does that affect how these people were to relate to each other? It was an extremely complex issue, and what Paul says here is surprising. It's almost what nobody in our world quite would expect him to say. He had a different vision for how this new creation kind of community of equal humans in the Messiah Jesus should live together, but also thinking strategically about how to model that in the first century Roman world. And it gives us wisdom for how to think about similar issues of power and authority structures and rethinking them in light of the good news about Jesus in the 21st century as well. So there you go. I learned a ton. I talk a lot about slavery in the first century, how it's both similar to and different from slavery and different cultures throughout the centuries.

This is often a difficult topic for people, slavery in the Bible. And so I hope maybe this gives you some helpful ways to think about and ask new questions about this complex topic. So there you go. Let's dive into Ephesians chapter 6. Today we're wrapping up this portrait that Paul is painting about what it looks like to embody the gospel in what he called in chapter 4, what he called the new humanity. And so again, just to paint the big picture and that we're not taking passages out of context,

we've been trying to trace the flow of the stories that Paul's telling in this letter. And so the early chapters are encapsulating some of the most beautiful statements of Paul summarizing the story of the gospel about a world full of humans that are made in God's image and that are called to be and do so much more that we are, but because of sin and selfishness, individually and corporately, we've distorted what we are all called to become. So the end result being is like we're like the walking dead. Remember that from chapter two, like zombies.

And so what Paul says is in our zombie sin-focused state, God has done something great in an act of sheer mercy and love, that he's come among us to be the kind of human that we have clearly shown ourselves incapable of being in Jesus of Nazareth. And he lived for us. He died for us, absorbing both the consequence and the result, the collective result of humanity's sin into himself on the cross and his death on our behalf, and then in his love and grace, conquering death on our behalf for us and his resurrection from the dead. And he said this has released this like shockwave out into the world. And when people hear the story about Jesus and when they recognize that they actually need someone

to live and die and be raised for them, when they turn in faith to Jesus and when they join the community of his followers, Paul calls this group of people, he calls them many names, but he calls them in chapter four, the new humanity, new humans. And we are trying to model our vision of what it means to be a human being, not on how you grew up, not on like what your culture you grew up in, but by just looking at Jesus, looking at who he was and what he did and who he's calling me to be and empowering me to be

by his spirit. And so in chapter five, he began, I'm just kind of recapping here the main points of the last few weeks. He said the main ethic of this new humanity, the main points of the last few weeks. He said, the main ethic of this new humanity, the main mode of relating to each other, is love, which is not the warm fuzzy. It's concrete action that's seeking the well-being of other people ahead of my own and regardless of how they respond to me. And what story does he appeal to? Define love. He tells the story of Jesus, of giving up his well-being and becoming the servant who gave up his life so that others could have life.

And so he says, the new humanity, this is how we operate with each other. We're called to be holy, a contrast, what sociologists call a contrast community. So we don't withdraw out into the desert. You don't just blindly go and do what everybody else does.

You intentionally situate yourself in a culture, but you don't take on that culture's core values and worldview. You live differently. A community of holiness. And then look down in chapter 5, verse 21, just to kind of frame this here. This was where he issues into this last section that we're in right now. And he says, out of love and living differently from our culture,

the new humanity is a culture of what he calls mutual submission. In chapter 5, verse 21, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. And so if the story of the cross is our main story, it's our foundation story that shapes our ethic and how we operate around here, then checking my agenda, my selfish ambitions, what I want to do, coming around to the needs of others and in love, putting myself under them.

He says that's what we're about here in the new humanity. Now here's where he goes from here. In chapter five and then in six. So here's what he does. He translates the story, right, this grand universal story, and he translates it into the day-to-day life of a first century Roman household. And so who does he address first? Just keep looking. Chapter five, verse 22, right after the mutual submission. Who does he address first? Wives. And then down at verse 12, who does he address?

Husbands, right? So he lays out this gospel-infused scriptural vision of marriage, right? And of what that looks like. Where does he go next? Look at chapter 6, verse 1. Who does he address? Kiddos, right? Children. And then verse 4, fathers. So he's describing what the new humanity looks like when we do family. And then, so okay, so we might, we're looking at that, and here we are in 21st

century America, 2,000 years later. We're reading these passages, and there's some cultural bumps. We're like, whoa, we don't really use language like that when we talk about marriage. But when you get into the meat of what Paul is painting, it's this beautiful vision of mutual love and care between a husband and a wife. And we're like, man, that's super challenging. But it's this really beautiful, profound vision of marriage. When Paul starts talking about parents and kiddos, he does the same thing. He appeals to the ancient scriptures and he paints this really beautiful

image that we'll explore about parents and children. And so we read that and we're like, oh, that's really challenging, but it's also really powerful what he's doing here. And then we get to chapter six, verse five. And who does Paul start talking to? And then look down at verse nine, who does he talk to? Masters. So we're like, okay, slaves and masters. He's talking about slavery. And then I'm right here. And then I'm like, I don't, what? No, that's weird.

I'm going to, that's weird. I don't like this anymore. You know what I'm talking about? If you had the experience when reading the Bible, right? about if you had the experience when reading the Bible, right? And so these are instances of what I call where the culture gap between us and the Bible becomes very clear and very apparent. And if you're paying attention to the culture gap, it actually occurs quite often. I mean, the book's like between 3,000 and 2,000 years old, for goodness sakes. And so there's going to be a culture gap. But sometimes it hits us more than others.

And so then the question becomes like, okay, totally catching this. This is really powerful. It's like, oh, no, what? No, I don't like this part anymore. And so what do you do here? What do you do here? And there are silly cases of this. And then this is a pretty

serious issue. So a silly case where this happens, for example, is at the end of four of Paul's letters, he ends with kind of a challenge to these communities. It's his parting words in four of his letters. He says, hey, when you're gathered together, greet one another with what? A holy kiss. Greet, and it's as, like you read it, and it's as much of a command as like, love your neighbor as yourself or something like that. Greet one another with a holy kiss. Now, if we like did that, if we did that one, that's weird. You know what I'm saying? Like some of you would never come back because you're like, a stranger kissed me at church. That's weird. And I wouldn't, like

I said, I don't want somebody who's not my wife or my kids to kiss me. I think that's weird. And so we get that. We come across those parts of the Bible and you probably, you're not thinking to yourself, hmm, I'm totally disobeying God's word right now because I've never kissed any, like, stranger at church or something. No, we don't think that. We don't think that at all. What we think is, oh, the gospel infuses the family of God's people with an ethic of love and welcome and hospitality. And in the first century Mediterranean cultures where Paul planted churches, these are totally cultures where you do the kiss. Have you had that moment before with the Italian or something, your Italian friend or something? and it's not on the

lips, is it? No, it's the double cheek, you know, this kind of thing. And it's practiced still in many cultures here, you know, in our world here today. But we don't roll that way here in America for the most part. And so, are we in violation of Scripture or something? No, though I do think that stands as Paul cared deeply about reminding churches to do something that shows welcome and hospitality and family connectedness when God's people gather. And so Paul translates that here into holy kiss. We translate that here into, I don't know, a handshake or something like that. I don't know.

So anyway, you guys get my point here. So that's a silly example, but this is not a silly example. This example is not silly at all. For lots of different reasons. 150 years ago, in our country, in America,

the battle was raging about the abolition of slavery. You would have Christian pastors and leaders, there's whole books written on the topic, that would use the paragraphs we're going to study tonight to say very clearly, slavery is a God-ordained institution. It's talked about in the Holy Scriptures. It's not abolished or set aside. And so therefore, abolition It's not abolished or set aside. And so therefore, abolition is completely an evil against God's will.

And at the same time, 150 years ago, you have other pastors and Christian leaders, and they're also appealing to the very different Bible verses, but in the same letter collection of the Apostle Paul, using those Bible verses to say slavery is a great evil and a great injustice. And so this is a huge issue. The culture gap between us and the Bible is sometimes silly, mostly not, actually. And this was a huge, raging, raging issue in our culture just a few generations ago. And so what do you do when you read these, come across these passages in the Bible? And so what we're going to do tonight is I'm trying to pass on some values,

like what do you do when you come across these passages? The first thing you do is like really be careful and humble yourself and refuse to give in to the culture of Twitter theology, which is the soundbite, simplistic, shallow readings of the Bible that pass for theology in popular culture. So the gospel is simple. The Bible is not simple. There's nothing simple about the Bible. I'm sorry. It's actually really difficult to understand. And this is one of these really complex, difficult issues. And so you have to think through it. You have to think with humility. You have to recognize the cultural glasses that

you're wearing as a 21st century Western American, as you come to this conversation about slavery and so on, and the issues are already preloaded before they come. And what we have to do is somehow try and imagine ourselves into the shoes of a first century Roman household and try and hear what Paul is saying, not what we think he ought to have said, but what was he doing in his setting. And when we do that, when you patiently read these passages carefully in their context, they say things that are utterly shocking and surprising and that you never thought were actually in the Bible. But you will never actually have the patience to do that if you get your theology from Twitter or whatever. You guys get my point here. So we're going to read

carefully. There's like Bible study time right now. We're modeling what it looks like to deal with these difficult passages. You guys with me? Okay. So here's where he's going. So he's described this, he's translated this vision of the new humanity into marriage. And just to summarize what Paul did, because it's the same technique he's going to have when he hits this topic right here. He's addressing the day-to-day life that the majority of these new Christians living in Roman cultures, this is day-to-day life right here. And so he hits marriage. And so he first addresses wives, and he plays out their role as a wife in light of the story of the gospel and what it means to respond to the gospel and coming under the leadership of Christ as a wife coming under the leadership of her husband. But then he immediately, and even,

I think, more heavy-handed, lays into the husbands who are in this place of God-given leadership. And he says, our Roman culture does leadership a whole different way. We roll, this is our ethic here. And so what does leadership of a husband look like in the new humanity? And what does he do? He tells the story of the cross. He says, Jesus led precisely by giving up his own well-being and coming under his wife to care for her well-being. And so he paints this beautiful picture of like, I call it the gospel marriage dance, right? Where the husband and the wife are mutually

coming under one another in love and respect and care. And it's the fact that the husband's the leader means he's the first one responsible before God to lay himself down for the well-being of another, which is absolutely frightening. And so you realize like, holy cow, that is beautiful and profound. It's subversive in a million things all at the same time. And this is exactly what he's going to do with the kiddos. Chapter six, verse one, let's dive in. So he says, he addresses the children, which assumes, this is interesting,

it's addresses, assumes that there's kiddos, at least of some age, in the gathering where this letter would have been read. And I guess it assumes that they could comprehend what he was trying to say in chapters one through three. I don't know, at what age can you understand election and the Trinity? Okay, there you go. So anyway, he addresses kiddos.

And they're sitting in their midst and this is what he has to say to them. So anyway, he addresses kiddos, and they're sitting in their midst, and this is what he has to say to them. He says, Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother. It's the first commandment with a promise, Paul adds, so that it may go well with you

and that you may enjoy long life on the earth. There's a couple cool things about what he's saying right here. So he addresses children as people who have at least the dignity and the status to be addressed. He doesn't just address the parents and be like, tell your kids what to do. He actually addresses the kiddos. doesn't just address the parents and be like, tell your kids what to do. He actually addresses the kiddos. And he challenges them to, now look at what he says here. Obey your parents in the Lord. In the Lord. What on earth does that mean? Obey your parents in the Lord. He doesn't mean your parents in the Lord, i.e. Christian parents. His point is, is your obedience is in the Lord, i.e. Christian parents. This point is your obedience is in the Lord. This is really profound. It's what he said here. It's the point Josh just shared about in a moment,

and it's something he's going to share here, is that in the culture of mutual submission and of love, actually when I put myself under one another, out of their role over me, or it's this coming underneath them, what I'm actually doing is something that's being done to Jesus. So when a Christian who is a child, has parents, when they're obeying their parents, Paul's saying you're actually obeying and respecting Jesus. You respect and obey Jesus

by coming under your parents' authority in place of authority over you. And you honor your parents and respect their authority by obeying Jesus. Do you see how those work together there? And so he says, children, obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. And then he gets his little wiki quote on here. What does,

you guys know wiki quote? It's really handy. Okay. Anyway, if you're looking for good quotes, just go to wiki quote. Anyway, so Paul starts quoting, quoting. And where is he quoting from here? Where does Paul almost always quote from when he has something important to say? He quotes from the Old Testament scriptures. And here he's quoting actually from the Ten Commandments, which also have an interesting history here in American culture. And so he quotes from the fifth of the Ten Commandments, which is honor your father and mother.

So honoring being similar as obeying. Honor being treating someone in a way that's consistent with their status or their position in relationship to me. So my parents have this role of responsibility for me. Honoring them is recognizing that role and behaving accordingly. Now look what he says. So he quotes it and then he says, now, hey, have you ever noticed this about the fifth commandment and the 10 commands?

Do you ever notice this? It has a little promise attached. Isn't that interesting? And then he quotes the promise. He says, here it is. So that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth. And little Jimmy might read that and he's like, sweet. Like, that's a good incentive. You know what I mean? Like, I'm going to live to be 98, you know, if I obey my parents or something. So no, no, no, that's not what Paul's saying. Anytime Paul quotes from the Old Testament scriptures, you got to stop, put your thumb,

and then go look up the passage that he's quoting from. And then read the five pages before that and read the five pages after that. Because Paul assumes that you just know all of that too. And so what he's doing here, he's appealing to a moment in the story of Israel. They've been redeemed from slavery in Egypt. They're parked at Mount Sinai for a year. And God reveals the commandments to his people as a part of joining,

binding himself to them in a covenant relationship. And the whole point is that Yahweh is now their God who rescued them by his grace. This is how we relate to Yahweh, and one of them is children honoring their parents so that it will go well for these kiddos that they may enjoy long life. Where are the Israelites going? Where are they on their way to?

They're on their way to the promised land, and so the whole point is Paul's saying this is the first of the Ten Commandments that actually has this internal benefit and blessing built into the command. If Israelite children are honoring their parents and respecting them, that's one of the core building blocks of Israelite society and of their family as they lived in the promised land. Things will go well for you. And so he uses that as this analogy for Christian children obeying and respecting their parents. It has this inherent benefit

within it, namely the peace and the well-being and the flourishing of your life in the promised land, so to speak. And it's not rocket science. Like when, you know, in my worst years as a teenager, I introduced huge amounts of distress into my parents' life, right? And that was, and it's horrible. And most of it was selfish on my part. And so what did I benefit from that? Nothing. I got no benefit. Instead, I created this culture of disconnect and stress in my home. And Paul's saying, why would you do that? You're making life worse for yourself when you treat your parents that way. It's the first command with a promise. Your life will be better if you put yourself under your parents' responsibility and respect them. That's what he's getting at here.

Okay, so he addresses the first group of kiddos, builds this kind of scriptural vision of obeying and honoring your parents, and then who does he hit next in response? So he says, verse 4, he addresses the fathers. And so he says, fathers, don't provoke your children to anger. Or some of your translations have, don't exasperate So he addresses this issue. This is all about authority here. And so he talks about provoking your kids to anger. You're all children of somebody. We do realize this. Yep, so you all have parents, right?

You're all raised by somebody, poorly or well. And so Paul's addressing, what does the culture of parenting look like in the new humanity? And he says it's something where parents don't provoke their kids to anger. Now, what does that mean? He doesn't specify what that means. We can pretty safely assume that he doesn't mean like asking Jimmy not to hit his sister in the face. That might really tick Jimmy off, you know what I mean? Because that's what he really wants to do right then. But no, actually, you need to do that as a parent.

So that's not what he's saying about like the general clash of wills when like Jimmy is out of control or something like that. So he's obviously talking about provoking your kids to anger by your own just crap, like as a parent and being a messed up parent and selfish stuff going inside of you. So being arbitrary, being inconsistent. And so you address some issue one day, Jimmy, like don't get into the tool drawer or whatever. And then the next week, I'm so tired. Jimmy's in the tool drawer. I don't care. I can't deal with it. And then the next week, Jimmy, get out of the tool drawer. And Jimmy's like, what? Like, yes, no, yes. What is this with you? You know? And so it's that kind of thing. Inconsistency,

arbitrariness. Kids are being kids, but dang it, I want the house quiet. It's been a hard day. Everybody in your rooms right now. It's I want the house quiet. It's been a hard day. Everybody in your rooms right now. It's that selfish exercise of authority. It's that lack of attentiveness to the temperament and the traits of my kiddos and how they respond. It's not paying attention to the huge impact that words and actions have on kiddos as they're forming and developing. That's what he's getting at here. And so you think, what's underneath that? He's actually saying, listen, parents, yes, you have a role of authority, but it's not like limitless. Like there are limits on your authority

as a parent, which is exactly what he goes on to say next. He says, listen, like this isn't about your selfish agenda and your kids just happen to tag along. You have a responsibility for them, and it's not to be arbitrary and selfish. Rather, it's to bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. So whatever guidance you're giving these little humans as they grow up, it actually doesn't originate with you. Whatever authority a Christian parent has, it's authority that is, first of all, submitted to the authority of Jesus.

And so it's how do we do conflict resolution? How do we deal with emotions? How do we deal with broken relationships and words that hurt me and so on? Like it's the teachings of Jesus that are to shape and guide how you do this. Not, you don't take as a guidepost how you were raised when you were a kid. That may have been great. It may have been horrible. And so that's not always going to be a reliable guide. It's

turning to this and allowing this to so shape me that I begin to shape my kiddos in light of this, this world. So do you see this here? It's this beautiful image here of a family, of raising kids. And so some of you, this is like a ways off, but it's this beautiful, profound, again, it's the same kind of thing of urging children to recognize the role God's given their parents to be responsible for them, but at the same time challenging and reshaping that responsibility of the parents in light of Jesus. Paul is brilliant. He's brilliant. Come on, anybody. How you guys doing? Okay, so there's that one. Let's move into the real whopper.

Verse 5. He moves into the next relationship. Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear and with sincerity of heart just as you obey Christ. Now, just pause.

Let's pause. And I want to pause because we need to especially kind of frame this one, but also pay attention to what just happened in your own head, like your own imagination or emotions right there. So that word, slave, in this setting right here for us is just a charged word, isn't it? And it's charged because it links to a whole story world, a world of images, a world of movies that we've seen, of things that we've learned and

read, people that we've met, family stories that we've heard that bring all kinds of meaning to that word. And all of that, I mean, it's not a mystery or a secret. It's all related to one of the saddest chapters in the story of the country that we live in. The story of the Atlantic slave trade into Britain and then into the American colonies. And the whole thing was about the emerging wealth and productivity of the colonies all being done on the backs of Africans who were kidnapped, essentially, on a large scale and against their will and brought to the colonies. And so that's the story in our head. And it's a tragic story and it's an embarrassing one, I think, for our country. But it's there and you can't get around it. And so what we have to do is very difficult

and say, okay, we've been shaped by this understanding of slavery. We have to, as far as we can, take off our cultural glasses and step into this story of slavery and try and figure out what on earth Paul was doing and why he's saying the things that he's saying. And so first century Roman slavery was in some ways similar, but in some ways super different, which a lot of which explains why Paul is doing what he's doing right here. And so while the African, the Atlantic slave trade of Africans, it's about one ethnic group capturing and enslaving another and segregating them outside of the rest of that society, the slave-owning society. Roman slavery was different. Roman slavery, on a given day, like if Paul were to cruise to Rome,

he would have found, as best as scholars can guess, somewhere between 30 to 50 percent of the whole population of Rome would have been slaves. It's huge, huge numbers. And it was not based on any kind of ethnic designation at all. We're enslaved to other Romans. Slaves were integrated into almost all levels of society, some holding even really influential positions. And it's because the origins of slavery were different. Some, it was prisoners of war, a lot like the Atlantic slave trade. There was also a whole form of slavery that was super different that we don't have categories for. And it's called bond slavery. And it's essentially, it's our equivalent of going bankrupt. I'm really glad this practice

is gone. So it's essentially like you're a family, you have a blacksmith shop, you're married and you have three kids and you have your shop or whatever, and everything just goes under. You lose it all. You go bankrupt. Huge amounts of debt. There's no unemployment. There's no welfare. There's none of that social safety net. There's no like federally insured banks you can go get loans from.

There's one recourse that you have and that's you hit up someone in your friendship network who's wealthy and they buy you. and that's you hit up someone in your friendship network who's wealthy and they buy you. You sell yourselves to them and you sell your family to them and all of your stuff. And you are a slave. You're a debt slave. And you're a debt slave until you can finally earn up enough money to buy back your freedom, which happened very often. It happened all the time. And that was what all Roman slaves, it's what they were dreaming, had their dream towards. It was called their manumission or their freedom. Not all got it, but many did. So that was a reality that's very different.

But the similarities are exactly the same as the slavery even in our own day. One human's the property of another. And slaves in the first century Rome, they had no rights whatsoever. The moment you were a slave in the property of another human, they had no rights whatsoever. The moment you were a slave in the property of another human, you have no legal rights.

And so a master can, whatever, deprive his slaves of basic provision. He'd be stupid to do that because they're his property and they're his means of making wealth. But some people did it because humans are really screwed up. And so they could deprive, they could abuse. You could murder your own slave just in hot anger. He ticks you off. You could murder your slave and there would be no legal consequences whatsoever. And so this is an institution that is rife for the human condition to just be absolutely its darkest and worst. And it was. That was the setting into which Paul says what he says.

Now we might look at that scenario and we think, Paul, dude, you've got the message. Look at this right here. Abolition, you know, like, let's go. You've got this. Like he clearly didn't have any problem being in prison or risking his life. Right. And so we come at this and we're like, dude, come on, Paul. Like, why didn't you just say what needed to be said? This is unjust. This is against God's will. And so again, that's importing our cultural glasses here. And so just think, think of the heroes

that are in the stories of the amazing story, abolition of slavery, William Wilberforce, the battle against segregation and racism like Martin Luther King Jr., both of those deeply devout Christians. But also, they lived in a time and a place and in a culture where there was actually like a process for them to gain momentum and have influence. It's called democracy. So, no, no. There's one guy on top. There's one guy on top. His name's Caesar. You don't protest in Rome. You

die if you protest in Rome. The moment Paul and his small little communities of 30 and 40 in these house churches, like stand outside in the front of home down with slavery or something, you know what I mean? Like what? I'm joking, but dude, you don't like gun. A legion right there, like they have no qualms about crucifying people in large numbers. So what do you do? What do you do? You have the message that as we're going to see

actually has the seeds for undoing the very basis of slavery itself. What do you do? There's no prayer that you're going to influence people in the top seats of power. Not a prayer. And you're already a small persecuted religious minority. What do you do?

What do you do? So this is what Paul did. Let's read very carefully here. Verse five again. Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear and sincerity of heart just as you obey Christ. And this is key.

Remember, Christ is not Jesus' last name, is it? What does it mean? It means king, anointed messianic king. So just as you obey your king, obey them, obey them not only to win favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of the king Messiah, doing the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly as you are serving the Lord,

not people. Because you know that it's the Lord who will reward each one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free. Now just stop right there. Now you could hear that paragraph to be saying two very different things. And it depends on your cultural glasses

and your ability to take them off and walk a mile in someone's shoes right here. So there's two themes Paul's getting at. One is clearly, if I'm a slave, I'm in the position of a slave, however I got there, and I become a Christian, what's my relationship to my master? And Paul says, over the top, like, integrity and work ethic and hard, and you honor them and respect them, and you'd be like the most hardworking person

under that guy's responsibility. But what's the motivation for it? This is where it gets very interesting. Four times he said something that is very powerful. Did you catch it? Who are you actually obeying? If I'm a Christian slave, who am I actually obeying when I follow the orders, the instructions of my master? Who does he say? Look at verse 5. Who are you actually obeying? As you obey your king. Your king. Obey them, not just when they're eyes on you,

but remember, whose slave are you actually? To whom does your entire life and well-being belong? That guy? Who do you use your life actually belong to? What does he say? Verse 6. You're actually a slave of the Messiah, king. And last time I checked,

the way he treats his slaves is by giving up his life for them and forgiving them and healing them and promising them his presence to become a whole new and different kind of human. Who are you actually serving when you serve wholeheartedly your master? What does he say in verse seven?

You're serving the Lord. Who are you actually accountable to for your day-to-day decisions as you go about working? For your master, what does he say in verse 8? The Lord. He says it four times. Listen, okay, so yes, like respect and honor your earthly master, but who do you actually belong to? That guy? No, you belong to Jesus. He bought your life with his love and life that was given for you. Who are you actually serving? Jesus. Do you see what he's doing right here? Now, if he just said, listen, slaves, do you know who your real master is? It's Jesus. He bought his life. He bought you with his life. Your identity is defined. You would be so easily misunderstood, wouldn't it? Because he could, you know, because then you have a Christian

who's a slave and he's looking at their master and going like, like, you're not the boss of me. You know, like Jesus is the boss of me. Like I'm not, scrub your own toilets this week, you know? So, and he's like, no, that's not actually the most effective way to release the new humanity out into our culture. He says, it's actually a more powerful statement of the gospel. If your identity is so shaped by Jesus' love for you and what he did for you, that you realize your freedom in Christ

by fully giving, like this guy doesn't control my destiny. He's just my master now, whatever. Like he doesn't hold my life in his hands, whatever. He might hold my physical life in his hands, but Jesus rose from the dead. It's a statement that even that is not an obstacle for me anymore. This guy doesn't own me. Jesus owns me. You see what I'm saying here? This is a reshaping of identity. And instead of going the abolition or the revolution, there are many slave rebellions that the Romans put out in a flash. The moment you go that direction, you're seizing authority into your own hands and you're betraying the identity of the one who loved you and gave his life.

Do you see this here? And so this is the first revolution. It's the revolution that revolutionizes revolutionaries. Because the revolutionaries were saying, just off with the master's heads, let's start an anti-slave colony or something like that. And so you're using the violence and the arrogance and the same resistance that Rome is using

to keep the engine of the machine going. And so he says that the cross is where it stops. The cross is where the violent accomplishment of humans dominating each other stops, and we declare our new identity in Christ. You don't own me. You're not the boss of me. Jesus is. Therefore, I love you and give up my life for you. It's the revolution that revolutionizes revolutionaries. Okay, so that's addressing slaves. Then look at what he does. Now he really, it's kind of like the way husbands get the harsher treatment and the parents kind of get the intense, like, don't provoke your kids. Now he

lays into the masters. This is just brilliant how he frames this. Look what he says in verse nine. He says, okay, so masters, Christian masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Or some of your translations have, it's even more literal, and I think it kind of gets the punch of it. He says, and masters, do the same thing to your slaves. Now just stop right there.

What on earth does that mean? That's as ambiguous and loaded of a statement as he could say in this context. You know what I'm saying? Do the same things, the same, are you you treating me as equal? Are you saying I'm accountable to the same level of authority and behavior as my slave? And Paul's like, yeah, all right, do the same thing. He keeps going. Don't threaten them. Abandon the threat of violence to accomplish your will. The moment you slip into that mode, what you're really showing is that you believe they belong to you.

And if I'm a Christian, I know that no human belongs to anybody. My identity is so shaped, I belong to Christ, and every human, like they're on their own journey, whether they're Christians or not, but they certainly don't belong to me. So I don't have the right to tell any other human being what to do. I don't, I'm so stop giving up threats. And look what he just says. He says, listen, you know that the one who is both their master and yours is in heaven and he doesn't play favorites. Have a nice day. Right? I mean, that's intense. He's at the same moment. He's not flying the abolishment flag,

but he's undoing the very basis of the nature of slavery, right? You don't actually own them. Who's their real master? It's not you. That person belongs to Jesus. And so do you, by the way. And Jesus doesn't play favorites. And so do you see the balance beam? He's walking here. He could fly the flag of abolition and we wouldn't be sitting here likely as a result

because he planted so many churches among the non-Jewish people. And instead, he was convinced that if he could get these communities of Jesus to so ingrain the story of the cross and the ethic of love and holiness and mutual submission all flowing out of the gospel, if he could reshape how people think, then whatever it is, like you're a slave master out there in your day-to-day work world, but when we're together as a family of Jesus, like it doesn't, that doesn't matter at all. The ground is level at the foot of the cross. And so underneath this is a principle that he says clearly in many of his different letters. And I just love reading all of these texts aloud at one

go because they're just so breathtaking. You get the point. I just want to read them aloud. There's some of my favorite passages in Paul. So Galatians 3, he says, so in King Messiah Jesus, you are all children of God through faith. For all of you who are baptized into Christ, you've closed yourselves with him. Your identity is fully immersed and reshaped by him. And so there is neither Jew nor Gentile, ethnic divides, there's no slave or free, economic, social divides, there's no male or female, gender abuse and leadership abuse. You are all one in Messiah King Jesus.

1 Corinthians 12, for we were all baptized by one spirit so as to form one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free, we're all unified together in the same spirit around the same story. Colossians chapter 3. Sorry if you guys in the front row just listen. You all have put on this new humanity, uses the same term, which is being renewed in the image of its creator, resulting in a whole new way of thinking. which is being renewed in the image of its creator,

resulting in a whole new way of thinking. And here in this new humanity, there's no Gentile or Jew. There's no circumcised or uncircumcised. There's no barbarian or Scythian or slave or free, just King Messiah. He's all and he's in all. Can I get an amen? So what he means right here is not that there's no,

therefore we're just anarchists for Jesus or whatever. Like, no, that's ridiculous. No. So Paul is saying, no, there is, there's order, there's authority, right? And in the way that we relate to one another, but it's order and authority and responsibility that's completely redefined around this story right here. And so leadership in a marriage looks totally different than it did in the first century and in the 21st century. How you parent your kids is completely shaped by the gospel and it did look different then and it ought to look different now. So we look at this relationship and we're like, okay, I can see the brilliance of what Paul is doing here.

He's sowing the seeds that will eventually undo, right? I mean, you saw it on the board, that undo the basis for slavery. But he was not in a place or in a time where he had any power or influence to carry that out except this. All right, so we look at William Wilberforce. He was in a time and a place, Martin Luther King Jr.,

he's in a time and a place where they saw a moment, they sensed a calling from God. They were both devout Christians and momentum's growing. And they felt the call from God, I need to act and I need to do this. And history played itself together. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, the arc of history is long. You know this quote, but it bends towards justice, he said. And so the Apostle Paul is, what's the most effective way for these Jesus communities to begin to reshape and influence Roman society? Not by a protest and not through a political process that they had no access to. It was by starting little communities of Jesus'

followers that they just do it differently. And so like, yeah, you might be a slave and master out there, but actually it's completely redefined here. And so Paul even, and in the shortest letter of the New Testament, this is more like a lecture than a sermon, but I don't really care right now. So in the shortest little book of the New Testament, what is it? It's Philemon. It's like a third of a page in your Bible. It's the shortest book in the whole Bible. And you're like, why is this in here? Skip, you know.

But no, that's the most explosive thing Paul ever wrote because he's appealing to a Christian slave owner, a guy named Philemon, who has a runaway slave who stole from him and who has ended up on Paul's radar and has become a Christian now. And that was caused, Philemon had legal recourse to like capture, hire bounty hunters.

He could have this guy branded. He could murder, he could kill him in hot anger, whatever. And Paul has the audacity to write this letter to Philemon. And he's like, he just, it's so full of rhetoric and buttering him up. And he's like, so you remember, like, you're a Christian because I shared the gospel with you, you know, just to put that out there. And, you know, I don't want to compel you to do anything, but you know, you've got this

Onesimus guy and he stole from you. And so you could take matters into your own hands, but why would you do that? You're a Christian, aren't you, Philemon? And then the letter ends. He says, you know, I'm not going to compel you, but out of love, I urge you to do the only right thing, which is to take him back. He says, it's amazing. He says to take him back, not as a slave, as more than a slave, but as a brother in Christ. I know you'll do the right thing.

And by the way, I'm showing up in a month. And then he ends the letter. And it's like, wow, that's so amazing. It's the most explosive document, I think, in the New Testament in terms of its social implications. Paul is saying, dude, in this humanity, there's no basis for this. It's undone.

And so I know you've probably heard sermons or maybe if you've heard messages on this passages before and you just say, oh, it's undone. And so I know like you've probably heard sermons or maybe if you've heard messages on this passages before and you just say, oh, it's really just about work ethic and you should honor your boss or something like that. But really not like the whole point is that slavery doesn't exist anymore because it's inconsistent with the gospel. And Paul in his context was being wise and showing people how to navigate and learn to understand every relationship. And this is the whole point, just to land the plane. The point is that every relationship in what we call day-to-day life, right? And so the way we rearrange day-to-day life is a little bit

different than how they did it. But the whole point is that every relationship, family and marriage and work and community, that every single one of those gets run through this story. And my life becomes about telling this story in every one of those relationships. Here's, I think, a good place to land as we go in to worship here, is that when it comes to marriage or family, so it's December, and Paul's's asked I would just encourage you like get a person in your head is there someone if you're married

think of your spouse I guess that's what I'm telling you to do think of your spouse if you're not married think of someone maybe who could be someone that you're dating someone that's rocky

someone that you have really difficult you parted ways or broke up and it's really frustrating to think through. What does it mean for you in that relationship to tell this story of showing love and graciousness, whether either of you deserve it or not, right? Of showing holiness, not resorting to treating that person the way all your friends think you ought to treat that person, but doing it the way Jesus does things and bringing yourself under them to seek their well-being or care, even though they may not deserve it.

Is there a family member? Is there maybe some event where we're going to be around our families in a couple of weeks or something, right? And so is there some tense relationship there, right? And whether it's your parents or whether it's the weird uncle or something like that, and you need, it's a tense, it's a wounded relationship, whatever. And Paul's encouraging

you. He's not encouraging you. Paul's inspiring us to rethink that relationship in light of the gospel. What would it mean for you to actually, instead of shutting that person out and not talking to them the whole time, the holidays, actually like being the bigger person inspired by the love of Jesus for you and moving towards that person, just being kind to them this Christmas season, you know? You know, is there some area in our, I think the closest parallel

would be in our work situations or something where you need to recognize like they don't own you, they're just your employer, you work for Jesus and therefore you need to be working a lot harder than you are. This works out in so many practical ways. And so as we close, I just encourage you, get a person, get somewhere in your life, in these relationships where it's tense, where there's conflict, where you don't want to deal with it. And what does it mean for your life to tell the

story of the gospel in that relationship in the next couple weeks? All right. Well, thank you for listening to Exploring My Strange Bible podcast. I hope this series on Paul's letter to the Ephesians has been helpful for you. It's a perfect introduction to Paul's thought and theology and his mission and his view of the church. It's just this short and deep six-chapter letter in the New Testament. We're going to move on to a new series coming up next in the podcast, and you'll find out what that is when you hear it. So, cheers. We'll see you next time.