Ephesians 6:5

Paul is writing to the church in Ephesus (in modern-day Turkey) in a letter that includes what scholars call the 'household codes' — instructions for how different groups in a first-century Roman household should relate to one another, including husbands, wives, parents, children, and enslaved people. Slavery in the Roman world was widespread and economically foundational, and it was very different in structure from American chattel slavery — though no less dehumanizing. Paul instructs enslaved people to obey their earthly masters with the same sincerity they'd bring to serving Christ. This passage was tragically and shamefully used by slaveholders in American history to argue that the Bible endorsed slavery. The verse raises profound questions about why Paul did not directly challenge the institution of slavery — questions that Christians and scholars continue to wrestle with honestly today.

Lord, this passage carries weight I cannot hold lightly. I'm grateful for every person who fought for freedom even when Scripture was weaponized against them. Help me read your Word with honesty and humility — and make me someone who uses it to free people, never to bind them. Amen.

Let's be honest about this one. This verse has a history — and it's a painful one. For centuries, enslaved men and women in America heard these words read from pulpits, used as justification for their captivity. That history doesn't disappear because we're reading it in a devotional. Paul wrote to people who were already enslaved, inside a Roman world where roughly one in three people lived in bondage. He wasn't designing an ideal society. He was writing to people caught inside a brutal one, trying to help them survive with dignity and faith in circumstances no one should have faced. His words were pastoral, not political — but that distinction has collapsed for millions of people across history, and we have to hold that honestly before we go any further. Underneath the surface of this passage there is a principle — bringing sincerity, integrity, and genuine effort to your work not as a performance for whoever's watching, but as something you do before God. That principle still stands. But it belongs to free people — people doing work they have chosen. If you are reading this in freedom, the question isn't how to be a more compliant employee. It's whether the work you do, in whatever context, reflects someone who takes their whole life seriously before God — including ordinary Monday mornings. That's a real and worthwhile challenge. But we must never let it crowd out the prior one: that no verse of Scripture should ever again be used to justify holding human beings in chains.