MASTERS AND SERVANTS*
by Herman Bavinck
The New Testament contains a number of sayings that indicate how the relationship between masters and their servants ought to be, such as Ephesians 6:5–8:
Bondservants, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ, not by the way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or is free.
Other texts such as Colossians 3:22, 1 Timothy 6:1–2, Titus 2:9, 1 Peter 2:18 speak in the same spirit,
“With all fear and reverence, bondservants are to be subservient to their masters, not only those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are hard.”
In recent years, within the circles of our laborers, the rumor has spread that all these admonitions directed by the apostles to bondservants are no longer in force. Our circumstances are completely different. Slavery was universal during the apostolic era. Servants then were not yet independent, free persons, but just like other possessions, were considered completely the property of their masters, subject to their arbitrary whims and without any rights over against them.
The admonitions of the apostles were directed to such bondservants, as many as were “under a yoke” (1 Tim. 6:1). But now, so it is said, we live in altogether different circumstances. Not only are laborers not slaves, they are also no longer serfs, bound to their masters; they are completely free and independent and stand in relation to their masters as contractors who insist on a specific wage for a specific job. Furthermore, should they not receive this, they are permitted to go on strike and stop working on that job.
Therefore, the admonitions of the apostles have lost their force for our times. They were valuable once upon a time—when slavery was universal—but are no longer valid.
It is not inappropriate to ask a counter-question to this new ethic.
The New Testament not only considers the relation of bondservants to their masters, but also that of masters to their bondservants. In Ephesians 6:9 we read:
“Masters, do the same to them [that is to say, treat your bondservants with the same good will they must demonstrate toward you], 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 Colossians 4:1, Paul admonishes:
“Masters, treat your bondservants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven.”
And he writes to Philemon that he should receive his runaway slave,
“no longer as a bondservant but more than a bondservant, as a beloved brother” (v. 16).
Now here comes the counter-question: If the apostolic admonitions to bondservants are no longer valid because of changed circumstances, do the admonitions to masters, for the same reason, no longer have any force? The one stands and falls with the other. If our servants are no longer bound to the word of the apostles that prescribes their subservience and benevolence, then their masters are also discharged from the same word that expects them to show benevolence and fairness to their servants. If the moral bond is broken on one side, it cannot be maintained on the other.
But there is still more.
During the apostolic era, the relationship between masters and bondservants was not the only relationship that is regulated in a vastly different way from that of our day. Also completely different is the regulation of the relationship between husbands and wives, parents and children. Does this mean that the admonitions of the New Testament, directed to husbands and wives, to parents and children, therefore have no force nor value any longer? We read there:
“Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them” (Col. 3:19).
“Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord” (Col. 3:18).
“Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4).
“Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right” (Eph. 6:1).
Is it possible in our day to consider ourselves discharged from all these admonitions because the legal relationships between husbands and wives, parents and children are regulated differently now than they were in the days of the apostles?
To pose these question is sufficient to answer them.
However easily this happens now and then in some circles, we cannot and may not simply dismiss these admonitions of Scripture. If changed circumstances were sufficient for us to dismiss the words of Holy Scripture, then by this same rule, practically the entire Bible would be robbed of its validity. Because the Bible is a collection of books that did not fall from the sky but were written, under the leading of the Spirit, by different people in different times and circumstances, and therefore carry those identifying marks on every page. They are altogether historical books—that is, books that came into being in a particular group and time.
But the miracle of Holy Scripture is that history is made by God to be the bearer of an eternal, everlasting content. The human word has become an instrument to express God’s thoughts. The Word, that was with God, became flesh and in this way dwelled among us. That also includes the admonitions with respect to husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and bondservants.
The legal relationships were completely different than are ours today.
That is evident numerous times in the New Testament. But the remarkable thing is that Jesus and the apostles left those legal relationships untouched and directed themselves to the moral relationships. Jesus did not involve himself in politics and paid no attention to the social question. His advice:
“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Mark 12:17).
And when two brothers were fighting with each other about an inheritance, he refused to serve as their arbitrator (Luke 12:13–14).
He did not come to establish a worldly kingdom, but to establish the kingdom of heaven on earth, a kingdom that was to work as a leaven on every terrain.
The apostles spoke and acted in the same vein. They did not abolish slavery and did not intervene in the existing legal relationships but regulated the moral relations that mutually exist between people. Paul did not only approve but recommended that slaves avail themselves of the opportunity to gain their freedom (1 Cor. 7:21). Nonetheless, the rule to which he holds is this: people should remain in the callings to which they are called,
“For he who was called in the Lord as a bondservant is a freedman of the Lord. Likewise he who was free when called is a bondservant of Christ” (1 Cor. 7:22).
That is why Paul sent the runaway slave Onesimus back to his master, but now not as a bondservant, but as a brother in the Lord (Philem. 16).
The apostles were not revolutionaries but preachers of the gospel. They did not overthrow the existing legal relationships, but brought into hose legal relationships a different, new moral relation that would eventually, in the course of time, change and reshape them, not in a revolutionary but in a reformational way. That masters today no longer can or may treat their servants as slaves, and that servants now are free and independent persons, is for the most part thanks to the gospel proclaimed by the apostles. And then the source of this change is mainly the following admonitions: Masters, do what is right by your servants (Eph. 6:9),
“Bondservants, 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” (Col. 3:22).
One ought to think ten times over before rendering these admonitions null and void with an appeal to changed circumstances. Why? Because they hold out, not only to servants but also to their masters, a calling to do their Christian obligation. They don’t alter the legal relationships but regulate the moral relation as such, the moral relation that can and must exist in all legal relationships. They set forth a personal moral, spiritual bond that exists between husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and servants, a bond that far exceeds all created obligations in strength and durability.
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*Bron: Reformed Social Ethics (ed: John Bolt), Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2025, p. 48-52. Beklemtonings en voetnotas bygevoeg.
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