Daily Bible Reading 2nd August 2025 // Colossians 3:22-4:1
22 Slaves, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. 23 Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, 24 knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. 25 For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality.
4 Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven.
From v 22 Paul addresses slaves and masters, and in so doing he sheds great light on the Christian's attitude to work. The apostolic injunction to employee and employer places work in its proper, God ordained, place and, once again, we must recognise the transformation and the restoration that Christ, in the new redeemed humanity, has brought to working. God's intention, in the beginning, was that work be a grace and a blessing for mankind. Work was meant to bestow dignity and purpose and worth. It was meant to be the arena in which mankind grew and matured in the service of the living God. This was how it was before the Fall. Work was not part of the curse of the Fall. In the beginning, before sin entered, Adam and Eve were given the responsibility of working and tending the Garden (Genesis 2:15). This was to be their dignified place in the service of the Creator, but sin entered and all was spoiled. The curse of the Fall twisted work into sweat and toil, full of frustration and drudgery. But Christ, as the second Adam, has reversed the Fall, and so Paul can urge the Christian to see work as God originally intended it. Once again Paul is affirming the harmony and order of the new, redeemed Creation. Christ, by his atoning life, death, and resurrection has, for the Christian, transformed the drudgery and toil and frustration of daily work into God's arena of service and sanctification.