1 Tim 6:1 All who are under the yoke of slavery should consider their masters worthy of full respect, so that God's name and our teaching may not be slandered.

 

The Bible, at first sight, is somewhat disconcerting about the subject of slavery. It doesn't propose the abolition of slavery and the reason for that, I suggest, is that God knew that in those early days, men would not hear of it. The nearest we come to it is the case of Onesimus and Philemon. There is the Old Testament law that ensured that slaves were looked after and indeed released from time to time, but for now, in the New Testament, the issue is not freedom from a master, but how we respond to the master.

 

Today we can take this and apply it to work generally, for many of us work for someone else, and they are not always benign employers! The call from Paul is, therefore, a call to respect the employer. They have brought the business into being and they have responsibility for people and in God's sight they are worthy of our respect – whoever they are.

 

If we respect them, and many others probably do not, when others learn that we are Christians, then our testimony and our good attitude towards our employer will make others think and they will be less likely to reject our testimony because they see how it is worked out in practice. I wonder how many of us struggle with our attitudes at work and thus blight our testimony. If others see us grumbling and moaning about work, and doing it badly, they will not listen to us when we speak about Jesus.