Ephesians - Lesson 28

And then fourth, he turns to fathers, and he says, Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger. Do not make them angry, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. You have Paul given a general, what seems to be a proverbial statement that you can find in Proverbs, such as Proverbs 19, verse 18, discipline your son for there is hope.

Do not set your heart on putting him to death. The expectation of fathers as the leaders of the home is to train their children up in the Lord. Now, here's a question that I have exegetically.

What does it mean not to provoke your children to anger? Does it mean that you can never, in a loving way, aggravate your children? I remember when I was, when my son was smaller, and he would go to sleep, and I would love to go, in the daytime, he would take his naps, and I would want to wake him up to play with him, so I would just blow on his face like, to try to wake him up. And then he would do this, and I would blow on his face again. He would do that, but he wouldn't wake up.

Or times when he was smaller, we'd be playing, and I would just tickle him, you know, just playing with him, just play fun. I don't think Paul is saying you can't play with your children in a joking way, and it would tickle them, or whatever. That's not the issue here.

I think the issue here is, is that Paul is commanding us not to use our authority in an abusive way, not to be too harsh with our children. That's how we provoke to anger, is when we're quick to judge, slow to forgive. I think that is on the right track, because he says, don't provoke your children to anger, but instead, bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

So if we're teaching them the ways of the Lord, how to walk in wisdom, how to live a wise life, how to be godly, then what are we doing? We're not abusing our authority and stirring up in them anger because we're too harsh. Now, of course, there's a way to teach truth that stirs up anger, where we're hypercritical, hyperjudgmental of our children. If our children get a B+, we're angry because it wasn't an A+.

If our children read the Gospel of Mark, instead of reading Genesis, we get angry. That's harsh. But it's not harsh to lovingly, patiently, prayerfully, gently instruct and discipline in the ways of the Lord.

That's a means by which to deter anger. You know, there are a lot of preacher's kids. I'm a preacher.

There are a lot of preacher's kids who go up hating their fathers and hating the church because their fathers were too harsh and legalistic and mean and cruel and judgmental. God protect me from being that kind of father. So Paul says, fathers, don't provoke your children to anger.

Don't abuse your authority to stir up anger. Don't be too harsh, but rather instruct them in the ways of the Lord. Another way to translate this word for provoke to anger is don't rouse them up to wrath.

Don't exacerbate their anger. Don't provoke them. As fathers, it's wise for us to know when to pull back from saying things that are irritating our children.

It's good and right to instruct them in the ways of the Lord, but there are times when we do that in a way where we can overwhelm them. So don't stir up wrath or anger in them, but gently instruct and discipline them. One practical way of perhaps thinking about this is that if our children make a mistake, we ought not to call that mistake to their mind every single day.

Or when they do good things to remind them of that bad thing that they did or when they make a mistake that was similar to the one that they make in a more immediate present to remind them of how bad they were before, that just provokes things that are not good in their hearts and stirs up irritable behavior. And now he's going to turn towards slaves. In chapter 6, verse 5. So again, notice he's moving.

He's talking about the household here. He's going more narrowly from the congregation as a whole, the collective people. And he's talking about life on the ground and the context of the home, which does impact the church now.

Wives and husbands, children and fathers, now slaves. The ESV says bond service, but it's the word for slaves. And let me say this to you.

Of course, slavery in the ancient world and slavery in the more modern world were not the same thing. But slavery in the ancient world was also evil. It was diverse.

And slavery in the Greco-Roman, in the Greco part of the world was not the same as in the Roman part. It was diverse. It's complex.

This issue of slavery in the ancient world is very hard. And I'm not an expert on slavery. But you and I would make a mistake to say something like this.

Slavery wasn't that bad in the ancient world because it wasn't based on race. No, there are examples in the ancient world where slaves were raped, beaten. There are also examples where slaves were very educated and they were tutors and pupils and they gained their freedom and they had their own apartment.

Sure, that's there. But there are also examples where slaves were raped and beaten and abused. Children were raped and abused as slaves.

Those things happened in antiquity. So I want you not to read a verse like this and say, well, what Paul's describing wasn't that bad because, hey, it wasn't based on racial discrimination. It was bad.

Obviously, racialized slavery is awful and is an abomination. Any form of racism is evil. But understand that the slavery we find here is not some simple system that had innocence.

Oh, it was a corrupt system which makes the exhortation, quite frankly, harder to heed. So if I could just speak a personal word here, as an African American who does have part of my heritage linked back to slavery, I want Paul to say, slaves, flee and go get your freedom. I think he's fine with slaves getting their freedom, 1 Corinthians 7. He says, look, if you can get your freedom, by all means, get it.

And you do have that passage in Philemon where Paul prioritizes kinship in Christ and he presses Philemon when he sends Onesimus, a slave who's now a Christian, back to Philemon. And he wants Philemon to receive him as more than a slave but as a brother. And that has massive, massive social and ecclesiological and theological implications for Philemon and his house church.

But what Paul does here is, he's operating as an apostle within a system that existed. And he's not justifying the system. He's saying, this is the system and this is where you find yourself as a Christian.

You are a slave. And so he says, slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling and with a sincere heart as you would Christ. He's basically commanding them to honor Jesus in their particular status as a slave.

Again, I just want to be very gentle when I talk about these things. He's in no way justifying the system. He's in no way approving of the system of slavery.

What Paul seeks to do as an apostle is help Christians understand how to honor Christ in their particular social context. So if you go to 1 Corinthians, for example, he's dealing with questions related to, now that I'm a Christian, 1 Corinthians 7, must I change my social location? And Paul basically says there, honor Christ in the context in which you were called. And as it relates to slavery, if you can get your slavery, if you can get your freedom, get it.

But he wants these slaves to glorify Christ. And as we'll see in a moment, he wants these masters to glorify Christ. So slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling.

That is, he wants them to honor them. But here's the fear of trembling. The fear and trembling could very well be directed toward God.

Because he talks about doing it with a sincere heart, as you would Christ. And remember, those who don't walk in a godly way will not inherit the kingdom of God. So do this as you would Christ, not, verse 6, by way of eye service.

Don't do it in order to impress, as people pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, as slaves of Christ. Same word, by the way. What does Paul want from these slaves? He wants these slaves to prioritize their slavery to Jesus and let their slavery to Jesus be the motivation for them to honor Christ in their current situation.

Now again, I cannot help, as I even say this, but have in my mind right now, images in my mind of the middle passage in our context. That horrific journey of slaves, Africans who were shackled, and many of whom died as they crossed the ocean. So I feel the weight of this as I'm talking about it.

But I just want you to hear my heart here. Paul is in no way justifying any form of slavery anywhere throughout history. The basic thing he's doing is telling these people who are slaves keep honoring Jesus Christ.

This has all sorts of social implications. But Paul is living in a world, hear this, where there is no concept in his mind that Christians could lead a revolt against this institution. So it's one reason why he's not giving us a step-by-step process how these slaves could overturn the institution.

There's no concept for how that could even happen. So we've got to keep those things in mind as we read these passages. And we have to admit, I know I have to admit, I feel all kinds of emotion when I read this passage.

But I have to bring my emotion to the text and ask the Spirit to help me see what Paul is doing as best as I can, and not lay my cultural context onto that text, but recognize I bring it to the text with me, so I'm feeling all kinds of emotions right now. But what Paul's desiring is for these saints to honor Christ in a world where slavery as an institution was a thing with no ability to turn it upside down within the Christian community. So honor Christ as slaves of Christ by obeying your earthly masters, doing the will of God from your heart, rendering service, verse 7, with a good will as to the Lord and not to man.

Now again, this command is hard here, but it's even harder when you're talking about wicked slaves. That's 1 Peter. He's talking about Christian slaves here, I do think.

But in 1 Peter, wicked, crooked. But even if you have, I mean, honestly, in one sense, a good master seems to me to be a contradiction in terms. How can you be a good master when you're complicit in an evil institution? But here's the point that I'm making, is that, let's say his master, this slave's master, is, as I believe, they're Christian slaves and Christian masters.

And within this wicked system, this Christian master is trying to behave toward his Christian slaves in a godly way. Paul's point to the slave is, serve well as to the Lord and not to man. Knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord.

Now this is another example, I think, where Paul emphasizes the reciprocal nature of the Christ gift. The Christ gift requires us to respond to Christ in a way of honor. And if we respond in turn, what's the result? We receive eschatological honor.

Whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bond servant or is free. So if you obey the Lord Jesus Christ, you inherit the kingdom of God. Because those who obey Jesus Christ are those who have faith.

The masters, he turns to the masters now. So this section is socially complicated for all sorts of reasons. He's telling slaves, okay, you do this.

But now, oh, I have a word for you too, masters. You do the same to them, and you stop threatening them. That word threatened there, don't overlook that.

Threatened verbally, physical threats. You treat your slaves in an honorable way. Knowing that he who is both their master and yours is in heaven.

Ah, what's the motivation for these masters to treat their slaves in an honorable way within a wicked system? The motivation is the threat of eschatological wrath. See, the Christian gospel does this. I don't think it provides a justification for slavery.

I do not. What it does is it breaks into this social situation and it turns the normal relations upside down between slave and master. So that what happens is the master who's a Christian here has a responsibility to say, you know what? I can't live in accordance with the same social structures as these who are not Christian masters.

In other words, I can't threaten my slaves, beat my slaves, it's ungodly. And the reason why he should not do that is because he's going to stand before Christ someday. And look at this, verse 9. Your Lord's in heaven, their Lord's in heaven.

Your master is in heaven, their master is in heaven. And Jesus Christ is one who does not judge with partiality. He's impartial.

Guess what? Slave and free will be judged by King Master Jesus. And therefore, a motivation for these masters to be godly masters insofar as that is possible in an ungodly system, the motivation is there's an eschatological judgment that is coming. And if they want to receive from the Lord salvation, they better treat their masters in a right way.

Otherwise, they prove they have no access to the kingdom of God or of Christ. So there are all sorts of things that I can say in terms of application. I have a lot running through my mind right now.

And I just want to lean into the application of the slave master thing. Number one, this is not comparable to the employee-employer context. It's not.

People apply it that way. But this is not the same sort of thing as an employer-employee. You have human resources, for example, at least in the American context.

If your employee is mistreating you, you can go to human resources and have some recourse legally. So there's not a direct one-to-one parallel as to how to apply this to the contemporary context. So I'm not going to disrespect what Paul is doing in the passage by pressing into an application that doesn't really fit the complexity of the text.

But I'll just say it this way in terms of general application. What God desires for His people is for us to honor Jesus Christ in all circumstances. Practically, as I've said numerous times throughout the lectures, I have a responsibility to tell the authorities when there's injustice that I see or hear.

You have the responsibility if someone is harming you, who's over you, to tell people who can help you and pray that those people are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law if there are criminal acts being committed against you. So hear that. But here's the point that I'm making.

In a broken world where there is going to be injustice that the people of God experiences, the call upon our lives as Christians is always to honor Christ, to live our lives in submission to Him. Sometimes honoring Christ means we need to make hard decisions to remove ourselves from situations that are difficult. But in all situations, here's the application I want to give and keep it general.

We need to act like we're Christians. The second thing I want to say practically here is I hope you see in the text how the Christian gospel, it does kind of disrupt the normal social rhythms of the present evil age. There are examples in ancient sources where you have non-Christians who write about slaves and slavery and they tell slaves that they are foolish if they don't try to get their freedom.

You have other examples where you have statements about masters who are wicked and crooked masters. One of my favorite authors, Frederick Douglass, made a point in his biography. He wrote more than one autobiography of himself.

He was a slave, got his freedom. He made the point that some of the meanest masters were Christian masters. They struck the whip more harshly, he said, than non-Christian masters.

Paul has given us an insight into what the gospel does. It takes these unequal social structures, slave and master, and it imposes a gospel mindset on this unjust system that requires master and slave to treat each other in ways that reflect the transformational power of the gospel. The audacity that he has to tell this master or these masters, treat your slaves the right way because Jesus Christ is going to judge you.

For the master to listen to that, that is a shift culturally that the gospel creates because of the Messianic age that has dawned in Christ and the transformational power of the Spirit. Here's my other application. I'll stop for questions.

I do think the gospel has a thing or two to say about current social injustices in which we see in the world. It doesn't mean that everybody's going to get saved and become middle class, or it doesn't mean that everybody's going to get saved and get out of poverty. But it does mean that the gospel takes slave and free and makes them brothers and sisters in Christ.

The gospel takes rich and poor and makes them brothers and sisters in Christ. The gospel takes uneducated and educated and makes them brothers and sisters in Christ. The gospel takes those who are disabled in Christ, who are disabled, and those of us who are able to walk and hear and see and makes us brothers and sisters in Christ.

And we share equally and mutually in the promises of God in Christ so that the kingdom of God is, in fact, filled with people from every tongue, tribe, people, and nation in Christ Jesus. And the gospel also does this strange thing, like it enables those from different social classes, different ages, to love one another. So the gospel is big enough to transform every tongue and tribe and people and nation.

Questions? In noting that Paul just kind of assumes the slavery system is already in existence, and he doesn't, at least here, doesn't, there's no text that tries to beat the system down or make it go away. It seems to me like there's a similar thing that happens with something that God is displeased with and it's polygamy in the Old Testament. For instance, Solomon had all these wives, and if you read it casually, you might think that it's approved of by God.

But I don't think it is. You know, it's one man and one woman. You know, it's a little confusing to me like why that wouldn't be denounced more.

And just like in this passage that we just read, the system of slavery isn't really, it's not denounced in the way you might think it would be. You know what I mean? So polygamy is another practice that sort of skates by, you know, somehow. I don't know.

I don't know if there's a question in there or not, but it's just a connection that I saw. Yeah, yeah, that's a good observation. I think, I speak for myself, when I come to certain texts, I want, like texts like this, I want Paul to operate within a democratic system where he can rally Christians to go vote and overturn this evil system.

That's not his framework. And he's, and not to mention the fact, he's a slave in one sense because he's incarcerated if he's writing this letter as an imprisoner of the Lord, which I think he is. And so he's chained, he's in prison, although this could be a more loose imprisonment.

He's nevertheless imprisoned, and at some level he's in bondage, and he's trying, what is he doing? He's writing letters to churches, he's redeeming the time, he's trying to honor the Lord, and he's trying to give instructions to these slaves as to how to honor the Lord well. And I want him to say, though, slavery is evil, and you should do everything you can to overturn this system, but he's just operating as a Christian within a world that this is the way it is, and there was no way in his mind that it could be any different. And so then what Christians need to do in any situation in which we find ourselves is honor Christ, and when the government allows space for us to try to change things, we do that.

Or if it's so bad that the government doesn't, then we practice civil disobedience and deal with the consequences, right? American Revolution and all sorts of things that were good things that were as a result of civil disobedience. But yeah, we know the slavery passages, if anywhere you get the rallying of the troops together and say, let's end this thing, you expect it to be there. But yeah, you don't, it's just this is the way it is, so be godly.

When you talked about people in different situations, different backgrounds, and how we're supposed to live as believers in all those situations, I mean, it seems like that should be a motivation for us to be curious and give grace to people and reach out to different people in an inclusive way to try to do the best we can to understand where they're coming from and to be a part of their lives in a positive way. I mean, isn't that a part of what it means to be in the body of Christ, to be curious about things in a way that's going to be helpful? Yeah, yeah, I think so. Loving one another is something that I'm expected to do even when there is difference within the body.

And how to love well, again, it takes wisdom and discernment, patience. But I have to learn this better, just the importance of asking questions. Help me understand why you think that way or help me understand why I don't understand what I need to understand on this issue.

And then trying to figure out, even if we have to agree to disagree, how can we still work together in terms of unity in the body? Good questions of curiosity are helpful in this process. And so we know how to help people in a way that's going to be helpful to them and their context and their place, and not just make assumptions from our point of view. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, as a professor with the privilege of teaching at a seminary, I have students who are from many different contexts all over the world, and there are times where I just have to say, hey, help me understand what this would look like in a Nigerian context or in Japan because my whole framework is my world, my context. So when we talk about things like honor-shame, I'm thinking about that as someone who studies honor-shame in the ancient world, but a student who's from an honor-shame context can give me in the class more insight into what that means practically for them. It's helpful to have a posture of wanting to learn and figure out how to apply that in that space by a person who is in that space and then how to love folks who are in those spaces and be more aware of how I might unintentionally shame people by not accepting an invitation to dinner, for example.

If someone from that context invites me and my family to dinner or accepting a gift, which unfortunately I've done before, there was a dear student. He wanted to honor me by giving me a gift after taking my class, and I just said, you know, I'm your professor. I love teaching.

It's my joy. It's my honor. You don't have to worry about giving me a gift.

And I could just tell because of his context my rejection of his gift was a shameful thing. And so just being aware of how to love people well from an honor-shame context, I can only do that if I listen to them and they help me understand what's a shameful way or an unshameful way to behave as an authority figure over someone who's from an honor-shame context.