Colossians 3:23

Amazingly, Paul spent (in the NET bible version)

• 11 words giving his instruction to the wives

• 11 words for his instruction to the husbands

• 13 words concerning children's obligations to their parents

• 12 words for his instruction about the father's behavior toward the children, and

• 19 words for his instructions on how the masters should treat the slaves

• But his instruction to the slaves? 79 words. More than all the others combined.

Paul spent four whole verses giving instructions to the slaves concerning their masters.

• In verse 22, he tells them what should motivate them: the fear of the Lord

• In verse 23 (the focus verse), he tells them what attitude they should have: enthusiasm.

• In the next verse, he tells them they will receive rewards from God for what they do for their masters. I don't know what else to tell you if that does not blow your mind.

A slave is someone who, looking at things from the earthly point of view, is all work and no gain, right?

But not from God's point of view.

A slave does not have time to preach the gospel, evangelize, or win souls, but we are told that he has a reward for what he does for his (possibly) bad master? Wow!

Again, God allows these scriptures to be written in the time of slavery, using extremes to communicate his truth so that it is impossible to miss it.

Whatever you do in the flesh, you will receive the rewards from God, is what the bible says (2 Corinthians 5:10). Your diligence at your supposed secular job is not time wasting, your big or small contribution is not without rewards, is what I am saying.

The theme of reward fills the scriptures; not holding back and giving your best effort is not without rewards (especially when there is no immediate earthly gain), and not loving your life until death for the cause of Christ is not without eternal rewards (Revelation 12:11). But all these don’t make any sense to the unbeliever.

I am spoiled for choice regarding the scriptural reward concept, especially in the afterlife.

Clearly, Paul is not putting earthly hope before the people he is directing the message in this verse to.

So you have become a Christian. What is left between now and when Jesus comes is your accumulation of rewards based on your actions.

Several parables of Jesus are full of variations of the master going away and leaving his slaves on the earth, and when he comes back, he gives a reward for the diligence.

You get a reward for diligence wherever he has put you. With him, there is no difference between secular and spiritual work because he is Lord of all.

That is the only way the words of Paul to the slaves make sense, his words that what they are doing for their master is qualifying them for an inheritance in Christ when Jesus returns. Again, Paul erased the boundary between secular and spiritual regarding rewards when Jesus comes.

There is one thing that Paul's words would do to slaves: no one would be doing their bare minimum, and no one would be grumbling, I can assure you.

Working for the Lord and not for people gives a whole new meaning to work. Do you get it? So, if the slave is working for God, what about the engineer or the doctor, or a janitor, or a toilet cleaner, or a plate cleaner, or a babysitter?

It is the same thing. Even if you are being paid, I believe there is really no value that can be placed on the investment of your soul in that job, so in the same stroke, you are supposed to act and think as if you are working for the Lord, and you will get an inheritance based on that.

Again, Jesus is Lord of all (Acts 10:36): of both the full-time preacher and the fully time slave. The slave, therefore, would not feel that they are less than “great” Paul in any substantial way.

And then there is the enthusiasm part, at the privilegde to work for the Lord and get the reward that only him can give.

However, understand that these words are meaningless to the nonbeliever, seeing that they can be motivated by anything but the Lord.

A Christian slave is always doing something; he is not doing anything for himself, but for someone else, and that someone else, in reality, is the Lord Jesus, Paul is saying.

Did you see the massive shift that would came to the minds of the slaves?

Look at it this way: When it comes to the social ladder, the slaves are the lowest; when it comes to dignity, the slaves have the least.

In place of the slave, you can have the illiterate, the poor, the weak, the imprisoned, the persecuted, the poorly educated, the widow, the rejected, and the orphans. The point I am making is that the message of the gospel is revolutionary for those called the least among men.

No one is less than a slave in terms of the economic scheme of things.

So imagine two slaves: one slave is a Christian and works enthusiastically for the Lord because of an expected superb inheritance, and the other is not a Christian and goes about with a solemn look.

The latter seems logical; the former is not, from the standpoint of the man of the earth who thinks it should be the pity party for the slave.

That is the same thing for all the other instructions.

• The wives submitting to their husbands is, for that time, supposed to be countercultural.

• Husbands loving their wives is supposed to be countercultural.

• And children obeying their parents is supposed to be countercultural.

The difference may not be in what they are doing, but in why (motivation) they are doing it: the Lord is the why.

But arguably the most extreme example is the instruction to the slave, where God makes clear that carrying water for the master is to be regarded as carrying it for the Lord. That is the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven, the slave, and all other believers are now living in the kingdom of God.

Jesus said the kingdom of God is near (Mark 1:15); now, it is realized in people who live it.

In this letter, Paul is communicating Christ as Lord now, among the principalities and powers, and also in the lives of Christians, even the most lowly of existence, slaves or not. Pay attention!