Colleen and Nikki talk through Ephesians 6:1-9. This passage covers the relationship between parents and children, and bosses and employees among born-again Christians. Transcription by Gwen Billington.
Colleen: Welcome to Former Adventist podcast. I’m Colleen Tinker.
Nikki: And I’m Nikki Stevenson.
Colleen: Last week we discussed Paul’s passage comparing the husband and wife relationship to the relationship of Christ and His church. This week we’re going to look at the rest of Paul’s commands to household relationships, as Paul address parents and children, slaves and masters. Now, if you remember our series through Colossians, you’ll know we talked about some parallel passages out of the Epistle of Colossians. But just by way of review, in Roman times household slaves were a way of life. They weren’t the same kind of slaves that we are familiar with in the history of the United States and of England. Slaves in Rome were political and economic realities, not one group of people necessarily rounded up and owned by a more powerful group of people. Today our analog to the slaves and masters of Paul’s day may be thought of as employers and employees, but in short, Paul is not encouraging nor condoning slavery. In fact, in both the Old and the New Testaments, there are rules regulating the societal situations, such as divorce and slavery. God gave these rules not because He liked these things but because they existed, and they’re not His desire for mankind, but He gave guidelines to His people so they would know how to live godly lives in spite of the brokenness of society. And I think that’s important, as we walk through this, to remember Paul is writing to people who are living in a sinful society who have themselves been pagans and who are now born again. And how do you navigate the old things that were familiar in your life as a pagan when you’re suddenly not the same, and we as former Adventists often have to face similar kinds of situations. Living as born-again believers in Jesus means that we’re able to navigate the effects of living in a sinful world without tearing apart our households that exist when people come to faith. But before we delve into this passage, I want to remind you that we love to hear from you. Write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com. And you can ask questions, you can give us your comments. You can sign up for our weekly Proclamation! email magazine at proclamationmagazine.com, and you can also find links there for our FAF YouTube channel and for this podcast. And you can also donate by using the donate tab on the homepage. Please write us a five-star review if you love this podcast wherever you listen to it. It helps our podcast to grow. And don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Instagram. And now, Nikki, before we read our passage from Ephesians 6, I have a question for you.
Nikki: Okay.
Colleen: As an Adventist, how did you understand Paul’s saying to honor your father and your mother?
Nikki: So I understood that to mean unquestioning obedience –
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: – regardless of what’s being asked. I remember when I read this command in Ephesians, and I saw “in the Lord,” and that was new to me.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: The idea that we obey so far as it honors Christ was not something that I understood in Adventism. I understood that you kind of almost prop up the family –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – that you protect the reputation of the family. What happens at home stays at home.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: It was a lot of social norms that were created in Adventism, really, and not so much a study of the Scripture, a study of the passage. It was just “You do what you’re told,” and I understood that that is exactly how you honored them, even as an adult.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: You did not do something that would embarrass or shame the family, and if you’re presence is expected at family things, then you go. No matter how old you are. If you’re married, have your own family or other things that you’re obligated to, you do what you need to do because that’s a part of being loyal and in the family. So it was a lot of keeping people happy and protecting reputation. That was really how I thought about that passage. Whether or not they said that to me overtly –
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: – it was how I understood it.
Colleen: It was actually very similar for me. I understood – actually, it was overtly taught to me – that I was always to make the family look good. I was never to say or do anything that would bring shame to the family or that would embarrass my parents or that would somehow detract from their reputation in the Adventist community, well even the wider community we lived in, but our lives were consumed by Adventism, so it was primarily the Adventist community. Even my performance at school and my performance in music was part of how I honored my parents. If I did well, I made them look good, I made them proud, and then that, of course, made my life better because I wasn’t reprimanded or shamed. It was a very interesting circular system. I did well, as well as I could, worked as hard as I could, performed as professionally as I could as a child, to keep them looking good, never spoke about the family in public, except in any kind of a good way, and, like you mentioned also, as an adult, that needed to continue. I was expected to do things that did not embarrass the family. That’s a very interesting thing. And I realize that that’s very common in Adventism. I asked Richard about this question while I was preparing last night, and it was sort of interesting. He said as a kid he believed that honoring his parents meant he needed to live without fighting, that he needed to be good, he needed to be obedient, and that meant not fighting with his brother. And he said, “I always knew that as long as I lived at home with my parents I would fight with my brother, and maybe I would actually be a better person when I moved away and wasn’t fighting with my brother.” And it was such as interesting thing because I mentioned to him after that, “And just think now you and your brother are both born again, and you know you will spend eternity with him as not only your brother but your brother in Christ.” And it was an amazing insight. He just – he responded really warmly to that, and it’s like God has redeemed even that.
Nikki: You know, the way that we often interpret this as adults, I think, has a part to play in people hesitating with leaving Adventism or speaking honestly with their family about it because, like you said, you don’t do anything to bring shame to your family. It’s a shameful thing in Adventism when one of your children leaves Adventism, even if they go into Christianity.
Colleen: Oh, yes.
Nikki: If they leave Adventism, yeah, that’s a very shameful thing, and you know it and you feel it, and you know that, depending on how committed your parents are to Adventism, they may think that you are receiving the Mark of the Beast and that you’re going to hunt them and kill them –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – and so it becomes a matter of who do I obey, Christ, who’s calling me out, or my parents, who don’t want this for me? So getting this command right, as a former Adventist, I think is really important to our journey.
Colleen: I agree. It has far more complications and tentacles into our root of who we are than it looks like on the surface. Why don’t we read our passage, so we all know what we’re talking about, and talk our way through these commands that Paul has given, see what he’s really saying and if we really understood it as Adventists. Would you mind reading Ephesians 6:1-9?
Nikki: “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother (which is the first commandment with a promise), so that it may turn out well for you, and that you may live long on the earth. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Slaves, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in the sincerity of your heart, as to Christ; not by way of eyeservice, as people-pleasers, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart. With goodwill render service, as to the Lord, and not to people, knowing that whatever good thing each one does, he will receive this back from the Lord, whether slave or free. And masters, do the same things to them, and give up threatening, knowing that both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no partiality with Him.”
Colleen: It’s actually a really beautiful passage, isn’t it, when you look at it from the perspective of being born again and knowing the Lord. But as Adventists, this was a set of demands, in my mind.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: So, Nikki, let’s look at those first three verses, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this right. Honor your father and mother (which is the first commandment with a promise), so that it may be well with you, and that you may live long on the earth.” Right there in that first verse, the first word is “children.” Now, I know, like you mentioned, a whole lot of Adventist adults feel like this command still applies to them as adults. They still are obligated to obey their Adventist parents, who never fail to remind them of their obligation to do what they want, even though they’re adults.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: What does that word “children” actually mean?
Nikki: Well, the word used there is referring to children who are fully dependent upon someone else, and it was interesting to discover that this is the word that’s sometimes used of believers who are children of God, we are fully dependent on God. But the context here is minors, is the word we would use.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: These are to minors. And the thing that I notice is a lot of times people will conflate obedience and honor, and they’re not the same, they’re different. So here we have minors who are being told literally, “Do what you’re told. Respond to what they say to you. Obey your parents in the Lord.”
Colleen: I think it’s interesting that he says, “in the Lord,” even here to children. Number one, this assumes that children are present when this letter is being read with the church, when the letter comes via the apostles who bring it or the messengers, the teachers, who bring it, and it’s read. Children are present, so children are being taught the word and the gospel right along with their parents. But then in the second place, right in the command it says, “Obey your parents in the Lord.” This command is saying to even minors, if your parents are telling you to do things that are not contrary to Scripture, that are not contrary to the will of God, you obey them. It’s assuming that children can know the Lord and can know Scripture and can know the difference between obeying the Lord and doing what is contrary to the will of God because an ungodly parent may be asking something of them. It goes on to the second verse, which seems to have some implication beyond minors, “Honor your father and mother so that it may be well with you, and that you may live long on the earth,” and it also adds that little phrase, “which is the first commandment with a promise.” So is Paul saying in this verse that this is his way of telling the Ephesians that they have to keep the fifth commandment?
Nikki: It’s saying that they have to honor their parents. [Laughter.]
Colleen: Yes. [Laughter.] Yes. It’s interesting, I heard one commentator saying that in the Jewish tradition, Jews understood this fifth commandment, which I know as I grew up as an Adventist I learned that the commandments could be divided into two parts, our duty to God, commandments 1 to 4, and our duty to man, commandments 5 to 10. But this man was saying that the Jews understood this fifth commandment as being one of the commandments that directly applied to honoring God. It was primarily a command about honoring God and God’s authority, not about just taking care of man. In the context of this passage, and remember we started this whole context back in Ephesians 5, where he says in verse 18, “Be filled with the Spirit and not drunk with wine,” and then he goes on to say what the characteristics are of being filled with the Spirit. And he ends in verse 21 by saying, “Be submissive to one another,” and then “as wives are to their husbands,” and now this is still continuing, “Children obey your parents in the Lord, honor your father and mother.” So these are commands that reflect being filled with the Spirit. These are not commands that say, “Do this if you want to be saved and live long in the land.” And in Israel that fifth commandment, living long in the land, was part of the covenant with Israel, that they were going to inherit the land of Israel that God was giving them. But in the New Covenant, that isn’t the application. Paul isn’t talking to Israelites, he’s talking to Gentiles who are believers, and he’s basically saying, “You honor your parents because you are filled with the Spirit, and your inheritance is even greater than the land of Israel. You have eternal life. Honor your parents as part of your honoring the Lord, who has given you this eternal life, and you want to live reflecting that.”
Nikki: He makes it clear here that obedience, for children, is a part of honoring parents, but it is really important to point out that “in the Lord” like you did, because you run into passages, like in Matthew 10, where Jesus says that He didn’t come to bring peace on earth, but to bring a sword –
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: – that He came to turn man against his father and daughter against her mother and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. He goes on to say, “The one who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, the one who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me, and the one who does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.” Just like we read in Colossians and in Hebrews, Christ is supreme. He is supreme, even over our parentage and our family connections. We honor in the Lord, we honor Him first. And so when we do have situations – I’ve heard a lot of former Adventists struggle because they feel convicted by God and by His word that they need to leave Adventism, but it would destroy their parents or it would kill their elderly parents or it would bring dishonor to their parents. And so they don’t respond to the conviction of the Lord, and I understand the weight that they carry. I think that that was, aside from the Sabbath, one of the commandments I heard the most of when I was an Adventist.
Colleen: Absolutely.
Nikki: It’s definitely something that we struggle with, but the command is to do this in the Lord, and we are told that those who leave their father and mother and lands and children for Christ and for the gospel will receive 100 times all of those things now and eternal life in the age to come.
Colleen: I’ve also known former Adventists who struggle with this because they have very Adventist parents who really want to be honored and cared for and catered to in ways that are actually quite self-serving and manipulative. They actually want their adult children to pay attention to them at the expense of their own adult spouse and their own family of children at home. And I just want to say, when God gave Adam his wife Eve, He said, “Be fruitful and multiply and for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife.” That is still the command in the New Testament, in the New Covenant. When a couple marries, their first responsibility becomes each other and not their parents, although they still honor their parents, they still acknowledge who they are and what their needs are, but they don’t have prime allegiance in their lives, God does. And their spouse is the next one. According to this whole set of authority delegation that Paul has written about here in Ephesians 5 and now 6, this is the way the Lord set it up for families to operate.
Nikki: Because we’re talking to people who are either examining and leaving Adventism or who have left Adventism, can we address the issue of dishonorable parents?
Colleen: I think we need to.
Nikki: I know that this is something that is a little clearer for those leaving, let’s say, the Jehovah’s Witnesses –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – or Scientology, you know, where families cut you off if you leave for the sake of Christ. But in Adventism, the severing is far more covert.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And it’s a struggle. And then you have the dysfunction within a lot of family systems, not all of them, but many of the people we’ve talked to. So what do you say to people who want to honor the Lord, who love the Lord, and who want to please Him, and then they come across passages like this, and the only parents they’ve ever known have been dangerous?
Colleen: My response to that is what you said earlier, our first responsibility is to honor the Lord. And if we have dangerous parents, parents who were abusive or who might be dangerous to their grandchildren, our responsibility is to protect the ones that God has given us to care for and to keep us out of the reach of those who will perpetuate evil. If a dangerous parent has never acknowledged what they’ve done and is not repentant and is not a believer in the Lord, we can’t trust them to be behave in a loving manner to our families, and we have to put up certain boundaries to keep our families safe. Something you said earlier, Nikki, really kind of rang a bell with me. What is implicit in that word “honor”?
Nikki: Well, when I looked it up, the word is “timaó,” and it means to properly assign value as it reflects the personal esteem attached to it by the beholder.
Colleen: So there you go. If we know that somebody has been dangerous or has been absent or neglectful or in some way very damaging, we have to respond to them according to what’s real, knowing that God is the one who protects us, God is our true parent. He will fill the hole in our hearts left by an abusive or an absent parent. And if that parent is not repentant, is not a believer, has not acknowledged his sin, then we have to see that our responsibility is to receive God as our parent. In fact, David said in the Psalms that “when father and mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up.” And there is reality in that. And you know, if that weren’t true, it’s not just the fact that somebody gives birth to somebody that makes them a parent. If that were so, what would all adopted children in the world do? Who would they honor, the parents that conceived and birthed them or the parents who adopted them and raised them? And the Lord has given us the incredible picture of adoption as His relationship with us when we trust in His Son. So that’s not a negative thing, that’s not a shameful thing. God doesn’t ask us to put ourselves in harm’s way or to put our children in danger. That’s not honoring a parent. Truly honoring a dangerous parent is to turn them over to the Lord, asking the Lord to take care of them, to take care of you, and to do what’s necessary in their lives, and we can’t bring them to repentance, only the Holy Spirit can. And we have to honor the Lord and take care of what He puts in front of us to do. There’s a related command that we find now in verse 4, “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” And I think that it’s fair to say that this is actually also applicable to mothers, especially when you look at the pattern of authority that Paul has already established, that husbands are the head of the wife, and the wife submits willingly to her husband, and somewhat as his agent, as his partner, as the one representing the authority in the household, she also has the responsibility of rearing the children along with her husband. When we look at this, we can’t just say, “Yeah, man, look what it’s saying. He’s not telling mothers anything.” He actually is talking about childrearing in a broader sense. Nikki, as you look at verse 4, what do you see Paul saying here?
Nikki: I see him talking about intention, not outcome. So, provoking your child to anger means getting in their face, creating anger intentionally. But that doesn’t mean that our kids are not going to be angry when we set boundaries and limits. And so it’s not so much, I don’t think, about the outcome. I think it’s about the intention, the heart. And it’s funny, as we were talking about this before we started recording and you were talking about the fact that this presupposes the children are present, I couldn’t help but laugh thinking about these kids who suddenly their parents are Christian, and at the time maybe they even heard that their parents are in a cult [laughter], The Way, and they’re being brought to these meetings, and their whole life up to that point – Dad had the power to kill them. They, you know, may or may not have actually known their father very well because they’re raised by pedagogues, and so here they are sitting in this church and they hear this letter read, and Paul says, “Father’s don’t provoke your children to anger.”
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: And the image I had were just these little kids whipping their heads over to look at Dad, like, “How’s he going to respond to that?”
Colleen: [Laughter.] That was a very possible scenario.
Nikki: [Laughter.] It was a new structure, a new social structure, top to bottom, brand new.
Colleen: Absolutely. Yes! It’s interesting that Paul is really making it very clear here, children are to be treated tenderly. I heard one commentator say, and this actually surprised me, that we often think of the Puritans and the Reformers as being somewhat stern and harsh, and you know, people think of John Calvin in somewhat harsh terms sometimes, but even John Calvin wrote that children are to be treated tenderly. They’re people. They’re not little hopeful-to-be people; they’re truly fully functional humans that need to be loved in the same way an adult does. But they are children. They need to be trained, they need to be taught to love the Lord, they need to be taught the ways of the Lord, but our job is to teach them with love and from the position of our own selves knowing we are loved by our heavenly Father. It doesn’t work to try to teach a child the ways of God by shaming him. And it just takes me back to the Adventist framework. I grew up with the Ellen White admonitions in the back of my head, without knowing they were from her. I grew up believing I had to be good. I had to be good to please Jesus, I had to be good to be accepted by God, I had to be good to get to heaven, and I had to be good to make my parents happy and keep them looking good in the public eye. And this is the inside-out opposite of what Paul is saying here. I have a couple of quotes from Ellen White that I found that have just shed so much light on the way I always thought about this as an Adventist. This first one is from a letter written in 1860, Letter #3 it’s called on the Ellen White website, and she’s writing to her young son, Willie. Now, some of you have probably read this. Ellen White is gone, as was often the case when her children were growing up. She and James went off on their trips and left their children in somebody else’s care, and then she would write these shaming letters to them. And she says, “Learn, my dear Willie, to be patient, to wait others’ time and convenience. Then you will not get impatient and irritable. The Lord loves those little children who try to do right, and He has promised that they shall be in His kingdom, but wicked, naughty children God does not love. He will not take them to the beautiful city, for He only admits the good, obedient, and patient children there. One fretful, disobedient child would spoil all the harmony of heaven.” My goodness, Nikki! One child will spoil the harmony of heaven? And getting a letter like that from your mother, the prophet? Oh, my.
Nikki: Terrifying.
Colleen: Terrifying.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But, you know, this was in the back of my head. I just didn’t know she said it, but this was what was taught to me, I have to be good because God will not take me to heaven if I’m not good.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: She wrote another letter. Apparently she and her husband had the care of two small girls, named Mae and Addie, for a period of time, and as usual, she and James were traveling and Mae and Addie were left in the care of a Mrs. Hall. But she would write to Mae and Addie, and this is from one of her letters to them. This is from Letter #50, and it was written in 1874. “We hope, dear children, that you are well. We were very sorry to hear that Mae had an earache. We hope, dear children, you will eat only those things that are the most healthful.” And I just have to point out, here she is, writing to these children who are far distant from her, who did not grow up in her home, and of course, the health message is the primary message here. “Meat is not good for either of you. Cattle are greatly diseased, and much diseased meat is brought into market, and in eating meat that is not healthy but that is diseased, you will become sick and may suffer much pain. I do not want you to eat butter because it is not good for you. You have humors, and butter will make your blood impure. Now, my dear children, Aunt Ellen and Mrs. Hall are very anxious that you should be” – what do you suppose? – “good children that God can love. We want you to try to overcome everything, like a willful, passionate temper. The precious Bible says a meek and quiet spirit is in the sight of God a great price. Addie will please to remember this and not talk too much. Think much and talk little. I hope my little girls will try to be useful and thoughtful. It is wrong to forget. God wants that we should remember. It is a sign of thoughtlessness and carelessness to forget what is told you. Try to remember your duty and not neglect it. I hope Mae will not let her naughty temper get control of her. The dear Savior is looking down with love and tenderness upon you. He will bless you and care for you if you will try to be good and do right, for Jesus loves and blesses little children. Will you now try and ask God to help you to be good? He loves to have children pray to Him. Now, goodbye my children.”
Nikki: This is spiritual and emotional abuse.
Colleen: Absolutely! And this is Adventism. Whether we read her or not, this is the way we were taught we had to live because we didn’t understand the new birth, our parents didn’t understand the new birth. Adventism didn’t teach the new birth. All we could hope for was to get good.
Nikki: To be saved.
Colleen: To please God. And you know, I didn’t want God up there putting black marks next to my name, like Santa Claus, ticking off my bad deeds so I’d get coal at Christmas. But that’s how I thought of Jesus.
Nikki: I wonder if the health message came up because she had an earache. As you read that, I couldn’t help but think of 1 Corinthians 10:25, “Eat anything that is sold in the meat market without asking questions, for the sake of conscience, for the earth is the Lord’s and all it contains.”
Colleen: The terror and the control and the manipulation and the shame and the guilt which Ellen White used to train the children in her life is the way she taught Adventists, in Child Guidance, to train their children.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Now, she did say that a gentle and quiet spirit is to be the way a mother reacts and functions in the household, but that was a guilt-producing thing too. I remember, as a young wife, realizing that Ellen White put it all on me to keep the household calm and peaceful, that if I got upset, it was my fault if my husband was upset and my fault if my children were out of control. I needed to have a quiet, modulated tone, and I’m telling you, it never worked for me! [Laughter.]
Nikki: It’s no wonder there are so many personal boundary issues in Adventism. She made people responsible for other people’s feelings and reactions.
Colleen: Exactly.
Nikki: And so we were programmed to be sensitive to whatever was going on around us so that we could control and manipulate it.
Colleen: And keep ourselves safe from any kind of negative reaction. I did not learn as a child that if my mother was unhappy or some other person was unhappy, that unhappiness was not necessarily my fault. Their feelings are not my responsibility. And I never learned that the parent was responsible for teaching the child to learn to modulate their feelings, to learn to self-soothe. It was never safe to be naughty. I had to be good, and if I wasn’t good, then it was my fault my mother was upset. And it’s just not what the Bible says.
Nikki: No, but I remember reading some of her letters to her sons and thinking, “Of course there are so many dynamics like this inside of Adventism.” The prophet wrote like this. This was normalized. The fact that she said, “God does not love naughty children.”
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: That was a huge moment for me as I was leaving Adventism. When I saw that, I thought, “That’s absolutely contrary to Scripture.” And we looked at that as we walked through Ephesians.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: In chapter 2 it says that we “were by nature children of wrath…But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our wrongdoings, made us alive together with Christ.”
Colleen: He loved us. He reached down and made us alive, and now He sanctifies us. It’s His work sanctifying us. We learn to trust Him, and as we trust Him, He sanctifies us and changes our hearts. It’s completely the opposite of what Ellen White taught us, and even here in Ephesians 6, where Paul is talking about children obeying and fathers not provoking children to wrath and to anger, it’s such an interesting thing that it’s completely the opposite of how I thought of this. And these passages remained, if I may say, triggers to me long after I left Adventism. I had to learn to remember, these are things that Paul is writing to believers, who know the Lord, who have already been made alive and adopted and know the forgiveness of the Lord Jesus. He’s writing to people who are equipped with the Holy Spirit to love their children, and children equipped with the Holy Spirit to obey their parents. It’s a beautiful thing that’s an extension of the order of Christ being head of the man, the man being head of the woman, and then the parents loving the children and the children obeying the parents. It’s a completely different scenario than Adventism taught us. Well, we finally come to this section here where he talks to slaves, and we’ve talked about that. Nikki, you looked up our past podcast where we talked about this. Do you want to share which one it is if people want to go back and listen. We will not cover all the things we covered in that podcast because you can listen to it.
Nikki: So that was podcast episode #74, and it’s titled, “Did Ellen White Teach Racism?”
Colleen: Okay. But what we will cover in this is thinking about this idea of slaves as being employees. In the culture in which we live today, it’s employees and bosses that we deal with, not slaves and masters. So as an employee, Paul is saying, “Be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in the sincerity of your heart, as to Christ; not by way of eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart. With good will render service, as to the Lord, and not to men, knowing that whatever good thing each one does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether slave or free.” Nikki, what is Paul saying to people who are working for somebody else in this passage?
Nikki: I think he’s talking about the nature of obedience –
Colleen: I think so.
Nikki: – what that obedience ought to look like.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: It’s ingrained inside the Adventist culture, I believe, especially if you’re multigenerational, to be committed to eyeservice obedience and people-pleasing because for the very reason that you just read from Ellen White’s letters, you have to be essentially perfect in your character, and people are watching. It’s not just the recording angels –
Colleen: No [laughter].
Nikki: – it’s the people at the academy –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – and at church, and I know so many Adventists who would go out of town to buy alcohol or go out of town to watch a movie maybe before the sunset hours or order meat. In fact, they have their own website where they make fun of themselves, and they have this spoof on getting an app that lets you know, if you’re at a restaurant, that there’s another Adventist, so that you don’t order meat in front of them. I mean, they laugh about this.
Colleen: An internal joke.
Nikki: Yeah. So it’s this eyeservice obedience, it’s people-pleasing, and so, integrity when no one was looking really wasn’t something I saw a lot of, either in the families or in the workplace.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: And I’m not saying that there are not people there who live more committed to what they believe than others. I’m just talking about the majority of what I was exposed to, this commitment to the image, to protecting a reputation, a false reputation, they actually ended up, from my perspective, looking like marks of honor and loyalty within a lot of these family and employee systems, which I think is also why, you know, somebody would get caught in sin and rather than expose it and deal with it, like we were commanded to earlier in this chapter or at the end of last chapter, they would just get moved around.
Colleen: That is a great point. You know, it’s also striking to me that Paul differentiates between the relationship between slaves and masters, or we might say employees and employers, and the authority and the control and the obligation to command, one human to command another. He differentiates between that and the chain of authority in the family. We’ve already talked about the fact that he sets up a system of authority in the family from husband to wife to children that reflects Christ and the church and the Father with Christ and the church. Right here in verse 5 he points out that slaves are to be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh. The authority inside the family seems to be according to the Spirit because it’s compared to the relationship of Christ and the church and God the Father to God the Son. But this business of authority among humans in delegated situations where we have a boss and an employee, these are things that we have to honor, but they are according to the flesh. They do not reflect our innate value to God when we are born of God. When we are born of God, as Paul says in Galatians, there is no slave or free, male or female, Jew or Greek. In God’s eyes we are all equal. But here on earth we have to live with one another in a system that is not entirely the kingdom of God. We are living in a world that is fallen, and we are interacting with people that are not born again as well. And there’s a way we live, honoring God, even in a human system according to the flesh.
Nikki: Um-hmm. And isn’t it also a requirement for elders that they are thought well of in the world and in their workplace, not just in the church?
Colleen: That’s right. So this kind of respect and even obedience within a work situation is something expected of a follower of Christ. Not because the person is superior to us, but because we are working and answering to our own master, the Lord Jesus, who is in heaven, and we work for Him. It reminds me of a colleague I had when I taught at Arrowhead Christian Academy. He was in the English department, he was a teacher in the English department, and I would come to school in the morning, I would see his car parked in the faculty area, and he had a bumper sticker that said, “My boss is a Jewish carpenter.” I always liked that because, you know, clearly this man was a teacher. He served teenagers. He answered to a superintendent and a principal, but his true authority was the Lord Jesus. And that’s what Paul is basically saying here. We serve our masters as the Lord Christ, from the heart.
Nikki: That’s what I keep thinking about. He says to do it in the sincerity of your heart as to Christ, which means there’s no room here for grumbling and complaining and gossiping. We go in there and we do this for Christ.
Colleen: And sometimes we have really bad bosses. Sometimes we have actually unfair, even cruel, unbelieving bosses. And as long as the Lord has us there, we still have to serve Him in responding to the boss. It doesn’t mean we do immoral things or shady things or dishonest things to honor that boss’ wishes, but we pray. We pray for them, we pray that the Lord will give us wisdom, we pray for our own protection, and we honor the Lord with integrity, even in a situation that’s difficult.
Nikki: It’s interesting, as he goes on in 7 and 8 he says, “With good will render service, as to the Lord, and not to people, knowing that whatever good thing each one does, he will receive this back from the Lord, whether slave or free.” So “with good will render service.” He’s telling them to serve in kindness.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And I find it interesting that the second part of that sentence kind of lets you know how you do that. It’s “as to the Lord, and not to people.”
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: It’s like you’ve said before, you look over their shoulder and see Christ.
Colleen: And you work for Christ, honoring Him, no matter who is your boss. And it’s also so interesting that the Lord sees and knows, like it says in verse 8, we will receive back from Him. It takes me back to 2 Corinthians 3, where it talks about the fact that believers will receive rewards for the work done in the flesh. The Lord knows. He knows the work He gives us to do. He’s with us, He equips us, and when we’re faithful to Him, we are, as Jesus said, laying up treasure in heaven. And to be honest, we don’t know exactly what that looks like, but the Lord knows. He sees, He doesn’t forget, and He does reward us for being faithful to Him.
Nikki: To Him, yeah. I know it’s easy to feel invisible at work, especially if you’re a believer and you’re working for an unbeliever. It can feel like no one sees you. I read this quote today that Tim Challies shared by J.R. Miller that says, “One may be a hero in God’s sight and yet never hear a hurrah from any human lips.” And we just remember that He sees and He knows. We’re not invisible to Him.
Colleen: And you know, we all have aspects of work and our labor in the world throughout our lives that is difficult. We all have things, even if we’re working with and for believers. It’s not easy to work in this world, but we’re serving the Lord, and He equips us, and Paul is here just admonishing all of us who have people we answer to that our true boss is the Lord. We work for Him, and He glorifies Himself through us, and He doesn’t forget what we’ve done for Him. And then he ends with this little verse for masters. “Masters, do the same things to them” – to the slaves or “bosses do the same things to your employees” – “give up threatening, knowing that both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no partiality with Him.”
Nikki: Wow.
Colleen: He’s saying, be kind, don’t function with threats. It’s kind of like what he said to the fathers, “Don’t exasperate your employees, don’t shame them, don’t guilt them, don’t manipulate them. Treat them with respect because your Master is in heaven, and He’s watching what you do to your employees just as much as He sees what the employee is doing as he works in answer to you.”
Nikki: These are just paradigm shifts on top of paradigm shifts. It’s a completely new social order within the church, and it helps me understand why the Christians made such an impact on society when it came to family dynamics and even slavery.
Colleen: That’s true. When we look at our lives as being all about reflecting the Lord, answering to the Lord, serving the Lord, submitting to the Lord, it doesn’t matter what our situation is. We are going to encounter people, we are going to encounter hostility, whether we live in a free country or a not-free country. And the fact is that the Lord equips us for what He puts us in. He determines the times and places that we live. He sees where we work and what we do. And He’s the one that gives us His insight how to navigate, and He’s not primarily interested in our coming out and being social activists, although sometimes He does ask us to do those kinds of things, but primarily He’s asking us to honor Him. That may look like social activism sometimes, but the real issue is our honoring Him is a way of living out the gospel, and He gives us the ability to do that. He doesn’t ask us to work primarily to make our situation better, although he did say, “If you can obtain your freedom if you’re a slave, do that.” The most important thing is to remember that you’re working for Him, and whatever your situation is, the Lord sees, He will provide, and He will honor Himself in you. Just like you said, Christians made such an impact in the social structure of the world. So if you have never trusted Christ, if you have never understood what it means to be a parent, a child, a boss, a master inside the family of God, with God as your Father and the Lord Jesus as your head and your life and your righteousness, if that has never been something that has made any sense to you, we ask you right now to look at what He’s done. Look at how He came and became a man and lived among sinful men in the really terrifying and wicked Roman Empire, and He showed us the love of God, and He took our sin into Himself, died a death to pay for our sin, and rose and broke the bonds of the curse of sin so that we can live, so that we can live in a still-sinful world with hope and with power and with protection from God, who is our Father, and from Him, Jesus, who is our head, and with the indwelling Holy Spirit. We ask you to just trust the Lord Jesus and know what it means to be born again.
Nikki: If you have questions or comments for us, you can write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com. Visit proclamationmagazine.com to sign up for our weekly emails containing online articles and other ministry news, and if you’d like to come alongside us with your financial support, you can find a donation button there as well. Don’t forget to like and follow us on Facebook and Instagram, and please leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. And join us next week as we finish up chapter 6 of Ephesians.
Colleen: We’ll see you then.
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