⁵ Bondservants, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ, ⁶ not by the way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, ⁷ rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, ⁸ knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or is free. ⁹ Masters, do the same to them, and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and that there is no partiality with him.

In this next section, Paul is talking to bondservants. In Paul’s day, slavery was a common practice. By speaking to bondservants, Paul is not advocating slavery. It existed, and so he is addressing those who are bondservants. In 1 Corinthians 7:21, he tells bondservants that if they can gain their freedom, they should avail themselves of the opportunity, and in verse 23 he tells his readers not to become bondservants of men.

Given the reality of servitude, what is his instruction to them? A further question is, “What is the application to employees in our culture?”
First, he says that they should serve their earthly masters in the same way they would serve Jesus Christ. In our situation, I would take that to mean that an employee should work for his employer and boss with the same attitude that he would if serving Christ directly. We often work under contracts and there are laws and regulations that apply. If we feel unfairly treated, and if our contracts and laws speak to that situation, certainly we should avail ourselves of the process. We also have the ability to quit our jobs and look for a different one. So the bottom line here is to do your work as though you were working for Christ directly.

Verse 6 amplifies the standard to say that our work should not be merely with eye-service as people pleasers, but serving God from the heart. Often we have a temptation to work well and efficiently when the boss is around, but not so much when he is out of sight. But we know that our actual master knows everything we are doing at all times, and therefore, we should be giving an honest day’s work for a day’s pay. Our work is to be done with good will and from the heart.

This kind of thinking is contrary to the way most people, including Christians, think about their work. In responding to our work in this way, we know that our real reward will be from the Lord. He is the one who ultimately rights all wrongs and rewards us for what we do right.

Verse 9 changes the focus to the masters, the bosses, the employers. Their way of supervising is to be in a way that avoids threatening because Christian employers should realize that they serve the same Lord that their Christian employees serve. Just think what the workplace would be like if these principles were followed!