Can Bondservants Be Manly?

Paul’s instructions to bondservants sit within a larger section on relationships organized under the heading of mutual submission “out of reverence for Christ” (5:21). Bondservants are addressed alongside wives, husbands, children, fathers, and masters, each receiving instruction appropriate to their position. What Paul says to bondservants, however, reaches beyond their specific circumstances.

He tells them to obey their earthly masters “as you would obey Christ, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart” (6:5–6). Their labor, whatever its content and whoever it serves immediately, is to be rendered “as to the Lord and not to men” (6:7). Their reward will come from the Lord (6:8). Paul immediately addresses masters as well: they are to behave in the same spirit, “knowing that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and that there is no partiality with him” (6:9). The social hierarchy Paul addresses does not map onto God’s. Both bondservant and master stand before the same Lord.

The implication for Christian manhood is direct. A significant strand in conversations about manhood ties a man’s faithfulness to his position: his influence, his professional standing, his capacity to lead and provide. The bondservant in Ephesians 6 has none of those things, and Paul gives him no exemption from the call to faithful discipleship. He is to glorify God in a position his culture found wholly unremarkable, not by escaping it but by living within it as one who answers to Christ.

Christian men will occupy many different positions. Some will have significant influence; others will spend their lives in work that goes largely unnoticed. Paul’s instructions to bondservants and masters make the same claim to both: you answer to Christ, and you are to live accordingly. The measure of faithfulness does not change with social position.