As if you were serving the Lord ...

Friday, June 5, 2015. I have a slightly difficult topic this morning, which caught my eye last night when browsing the New Testament a little bit. I was looking into the topic: “how to deal with your boss when he is acting strangly?” I did not really expect clear guidance from the bible that particular moment, but then my eye was on Ephesians 6, and there you find quite straight words … let us have a look.

Serving the Lord, not people …

5 Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. 6 Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. 7 Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people, 8 because you know that the Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free. 9 And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him. (Ephesians 6)

Today we often have a dicussion about slavery when we read these verses. And yes, for Paul slavery was part of his daily life and he was not promoting revolution in the sense that he called slaves to stand up and establish what we would call modern-type democracy and human rights. But he was nevertheless preaching a revolution here - a revolution from both sides indeed.

We need to step back one step and think about God's kingdom. What is the community with God like? What is it filled with? We hear about love, about truth, about trust and mutual support! God's kingdom is a kingdom of love and support, where you can trust God completely, and where you can trust the others, since they follow the Lord.

Serve …

Love and service is strongly connected. When you love, you will be willing to do, to serve, to help, to support. All this is part of love. God wants us to live this love to the Lord, and it means that our whole life is influenced by it. Here, he even calls the slaves to serve as if they were serving the Lord, as if they were serving their great love. This is the real revolution: God is introducing his way into our human relationships - even when they are not yet there!

Now: what does it mean today? Clearly, Pauls words apply to the Christian in our business world as well. It means that we should be fully engaged in delivering good work, thorough work, dedicated work in our business - as if we were serving God himself. All people with responsibility got their position by the grace of the Lord, as we get our money and support by his grace and by nothing else.

Slavery was not a good thing, and we are lucky today to have abolished slave trade and slavery in most parts of the world. But still, in this pain, slaves were called to live in a special way by faith. God's power can establish itself in particular in such difficult situations, when the power of the spirit enables humans to make a difference! (RWEP) ... more texts