Daily Bible Reading 4th 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.
The startling thing, however, and the focus of Marxist scorn, is that in urging slaves and masters to live holy and godly lives, Paul seems to condone the practice of slavery. Similarly in his letter to Philemon, which was sent along with this letter to Colossae, the apostle sends the runaway slave, Onesimus, back to his master. Paul never says 'slavery is an abomination'. There is no hint of condemnation for the slave masters and there is no cry for the slaves to rise up in rebellion. In a day and age when the cause of liberation for the oppressed rightly appeals to our consciences, many Christians, as Dick Lucas puts it:
...have expressed feelings ranging from uncertainty through embarrassment to downright disappointment that the apostle appears so content with the status quo, and so apparently unwilling to call for some measure of social change.
It is a bold man, however, who will suggest that the apostle Paul was blind to and unaware of the moral implications for slavery of the Gospel he preached. In this whole section of his letter to the Colossians, Paul is precisely concerned with the social and moral implications of the Gospel for the individual believer. The fact of the matter is that it was as the Gospel was preached and as its message and power laid hold of men's lives that the evil of slavery was finally broken and it became morally impossible. It seems to me, therefore, that Paul's reticence to militate for social action, in the midst of his imperatives for Christian living, reveals a very significant corrective to attitudes which are prevalent within the Church today. The priority of the Gospel and the indirect influence of the Church on society is revealed, acting as salt and light and leaven. More tomorrow...