IT’S ONE THING to be the owner, say, of a small business. There are, of course, laws and regulations you have to follow, but you don’t directly answer to anyone else. You’re running the show. It’s another to be middle management. You still have some authority over your direct reports. But you are also someone else’s direct report; you are accountable to someone higher up who is watching to see what you do with the power and responsibility you’ve been given.

Something like a transition from the first to the second, I think, is what Paul was asking of the Christian heads of households in Colossae. They were used to holding power over everyone else in the household, and Roman law gave them a free hand in how they exercised it. But Paul was prompting them to see things in a different light, in accordance with the inside-out transformation he was asking of everyone in the congregation.

As we’ve seen, the household codes in Paul’s letters to both the Colossians and the Ephesians put forth standards for the relationships between wives and husbands, children and fathers, and slaves and their masters. These shouldn’t be read as if they were handed down from God out of the blue. When Paul tells wives to submit to their husbands, children to obey their fathers, and slaves to obey their masters, he isn’t saying anything that the hearers of his letters didn’t already know. This may therefore seem like Paul is leaving the abusive hierarchy of the Roman household intact.

But the nearly all-powerful paterfamilias was a husband, father, and master. Paul thus addresses him three times, in a way that challenges him to think differently about his various roles. All of the Colossian Christians were to seek the things above. All of them were to live out of their new nature in Christ. All of them were to be people of virtue. And for the paterfamilias, this also meant that henceforth he was to treat his wife, children, and slaves as real people with their own concerns, and deserving of love, compassion, and fairness.

. . .

IN VARIOUS WAYS and by a variety of people, it’s been said that our true character is demonstrated by who we are and how we behave when no one is watching. Paul’s instructions to slaves in both letters seems to assume something similar; he doesn’t just want them to obey when their masters are keeping an eye on them, but to obey in everything and with a good will and attitude. Instead of living in fear of their masters, they are to live in the fear of the Lord, as if Jesus were watching.

Paul’s instructions to masters, in turn, helps them remember that Jesus has his eye on them too:

Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a Master in heaven. (Col 4:1, NIV)

And again, here’s the parallel passage from Ephesians:

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. (Eph 6:9)

In the two passages taken together, Paul expects behavioral changes of masters: start being fair to your slaves, and stop threatening them. That may not sound like much of an ask, against the background of the modern moral standards we may take for granted. But for Paul to give such instructions seems to assume that the cultural norm was the opposite. Under the laws and customs of the Roman Empire, after all, slaves were not considered people but property and therefore had no rights. They were subject to the whims of their owners. Some slaves were fortunate enough to have relatively humane masters, but others weren’t as lucky.

Pause to think about that for a moment. In the United States, we expect equal treatment under the law. Even kids will sometimes whine, “It’s not fair!” Though this sometimes doesn’t mean much more than, “You’re supposed to give me what I want,” the very expectation of fairness is bred into them early on, and conscientious parents try to inculcate that value into them.

But life, of course, isn’t always fair. Again, sometimes that just means that we don’t get what we think we deserve, and nobody in particular is at fault. Sometimes, however, it’s because we’re the victims of someone else’s selfish abuse of power. This is something that marginalized groups in any society understand better than those who hold the power and privilege.

And in the Roman Empire, slaves were not only marginalized but often treated as subhuman, as property or chattel. Paul, therefore, isn’t addressing a situation in which masters are generally nice people who slip up now and then; he isn’t telling them to “do better.” He’s speaking into a context in which masters feel no need to be fair to their slaves and think nothing of threatening them with severe punishment if they don’t live up to the master’s standards. Note that while the New International Version translates Paul as saying “Do not threaten them” in Ephesians, the verb suggests letting something go; that’s why the Common English Bible reads “Stop threatening them,” while the New American Standard has “give up threatening.”

Note, too, that the letter to the Ephesians is generally considered to be a “circular” one, meaning that Paul expected it to be circulated to and read in churches beyond Ephesus. If so, then the threatening of slaves was a widespread and taken-for-granted practice, even in Christian households, and Paul wanted it to stop.

Paul is establishing a new moral norm. Everyone in every Christian household is to understand themselves as being in Christ and therefore called to live in a way that honors his lordship. For the paterfamilias, that means giving up the privilege of being the absolute lord and master of the house; from now on, Jesus is to be the Lord and Master, capital L, capital M. That doesn’t mean the paterfamilias no longer has any authority. But he reports to Jesus.

And just as he is called to do what is right and fair by his direct reports, so can he be confident that Jesus will do what is right and fair by him — and more.