Wednesday in the 30th Week of Ordinary Time, October 26, 2022

Ephesians 6, 1-9

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother. This is the first commandment with a promise, that it may go well with you and that you may have a long life on earth. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up with the training and instruction of the Lord.  Slaves, be obedient to your human masters with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart, as to Christ, not only when being watched, as currying favor, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, willingly serving the Lord and not men, knowing that each will be requited from the Lord for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free. Masters, act in the same way towards them, and stop bullying, knowing that both they and you have a Master in heaven and that with him there is no partiality.

“Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.”  “Obey your parents in the Lord.”  While it is clear to the understanding why Paul felt it necessary to teach the Ephesians about Christian marriage, one might wonder why he felt he needed to counsel their children to obey them.  The key to the answer to this question is in the phrase “in the Lord”.  Alcuin points out that "parents in the Lord" could mean either spiritual parents, as Paul declared himself to be, in 1 Corinthians 4, 15, as well as John the Apostle, in 1 John 5, 21, or simply Christian parents married “in the Lord”.  In both cases, obedience is raised from a matter of behavior and self-preservation to one of virtue: "for it is just".  The phrase "parents in the Lord" also reminds that the parent represents God and is sent by him to care for the child, and so obedience is owed the parent for the sake of the Lord.

“This is the first commandment with a promise, that it may go well with you and that you may have a long life on earth.”  “A long life on earth.”  Alcuin says, “If, perhaps, this promise was made to the Jews to be understood in the physical sense, to us this is said in the spiritual sense: Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.  Not this present earth, in which wicked men live, and in which there is wickedness in some parents, and in which all parents grow old, but that earth which the Lord promised to the meek and which the just inhabit, and the goods of which the Psalmist believed he saw when he said, I believe that I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living (Psalm 26, 13)” — that is, the world to come.  

“Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up with the training and instruction of the Lord.”  “And you, fathers, provoke not your children to anger: but bring them up in the discipline and correction of the Lord.”  Paul tells the parents that just as their children have the responsibility of obeying them, so the parents have a responsibility to raise them “with the training and instruction of the Lord.”  This is not merely a natural task, then, but a holy one, which the Lord oversees.  It is also a warning to those who have spiritual charge, to give diligent care to those entrusted to them by God.

“Slaves, be obedient to your human masters with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart, as to Christ.”  Some translations have “servants” for “slaves” but the Greek word Paul used was δοϋλοι (douloi), which means "male slaves", as distinct from freemen in the position of servants.  Paul identifies himself as a δοϋλος of Christ in Romans 1, 1, seeing himself in a position comparable to theirs.  “In the simplicity of your heart”.  Since his lord provides food and shelter for him, the slave can give undivided attention to his service. Paul employs the term δοϋλοι again in the following verse.

“Not only when being watched, as currying favor, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, willingly serving the Lord and not men.”  While a slave might put on a false face to please his master or act in an obsequious manner, Paul insists that the believing slave serve Christ in true sincerity.

“Knowing that each will be requited from the Lord for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free.”  Thus, the work of servant, slave, or, by extension, anyone compelled to labor, may be raised to the level of service to God when the intention is to please him.  In this, the worker imitates the Lord Jesus, who, “being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal to God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant . . . humbled himself, being made obedient unto death” (Philippians 2, 7-8).

“Masters, act in the same way towards them, and stop bullying, knowing that both they and you have a Master in heaven and that with him there is no partiality.”  That the Lord Jesus showed no favoritism was well-known and acknowledged even by the Pharisees and the Herodians: "Master, we know that you are a true speaker, and do not care  for any man; for you do not regard the person of men" (Mark 12, 14).