Here’s my longer notes (with some chunky historical digressions in the end notes) from this morning’s Metro Christian Centre, Bury service (23rd August, 2026), as we continue our journey through Paul’s extraordinary letter, Ephesians.
You can also catch up with this via MCC’s YouTube channel (just give us time to get the video uploaded).
“[The Enemy] does not yet perceive our purpose clearly. He supposes … what he would himself have done in our place … according to his wisdom … That we should wish to cast him down and have no one is his place is not a thought that occurs to his mind. That we should try to destroy the Ring itself has not yet entered into his darkest dream.”
— Gandalf, The Two Towers[i]
READ: EPHESIANS 6:1-9 (NIV/NET)
RATATOUILLE
Since Helen began last week with a film reference and a picture of one her favourite Hollywood heartthrobs of the 1990s,[ii] I thought I might as well follow suit, and begin with another all-time cinematic great and introduce the ladies in the room to another heartthrob.
And so, let me introduce you to Remy, the star of the 2007 film, Ratatouille.
I know, he may not measure up to last week’s image of Kevin Costner. But let me tell you, ladies, Remy is passionate and determined. He’s no ‘manchild’. He also has an astonishing culinary talent, an extraordinary sense of taste and smell, and a dream: he wants to be a chef.
Not just any chef, and not merely someone who follows a recipe and serves up any old slop. But a great chef, the ‘Crème de la crème’ of chefs — a gourmet French chef.
Inspired by his culinary hero, the late Chef Auguste Gusteau, whose famous motto is ‘Anyone can cook … but only the fearless can be great’, Remy believes he can take the food people are accustomed to and elevate it to new and imaginative horizons.[iii]
But he has a problem, a significant barrier to his dream. To be a chef, you need access to a kitchen, ingredients, cooking equipment and people who will eat your food! Remy, however is not allowed anywhere near those things. Because … he is a rat.
And, as it turns out, being a rat isn’t a helpful qualification if you want to work in a Parisian kitchen.
Without spoiling too much of the film, Remy co-opts the help of a human, Alfredo Linguini. By instructing and guiding Linguini’s body, Remy infiltrates the kitchen of the best restaurant in Paris and begins to cook (in both the traditional and the ‘Gen Zed’ sense of the word).
Remy can’t rewrite the menu. He’s a rat! He is powerless to overhaul the culture of the restaurant, let alone Paris. Again, he’s a rat!
But, in the meagre capacity he has, Remy can change what goes into the meal, and so he innovates; adding a little bit of this and a little bit of that — ingredients that revolutionise the restaurant’s dishes from what is familiar into something strange and new.
And that, perhaps oddly, brings us to what Paul has been doing in the back end of Ephesians 5 and what he continues to do in Ephesians 6.
THE GRECO ROMAN RECIPE
Paul, in the Greco-Roman culture of the 1st century AD, is like Remy the rat in a Parisian kitchen.
The Greco-Roman world had been cooking up the same household recipe for centuries before Paul ever picked up his pen. Long before Paul, Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle had tried producing the perfect ingredients for how society should be structured, of who fits where.
Between the pair of them, a lot of research had been carried out over what recipes already existed within the history of the ancient world. They both wrote lengthy “cook books” on the subject, and they gave their suggestions on what was the perfect cooking method.[iv]
A method, I should add, that was both patriarchal and ethnocentric, placing ‘male’ and ‘racial’ preference as the chief ingredient.
Aristotle boiled it down to the management of the household, suggesting that the perfect social menu hung on the relationship between, ‘master and slave, husband and wife, and father and children.’[v]
What do you notice about these categories?
By the time of the Roman Empire, those Greek recommendations had baked for a long time in the ovens of Rome’s laws. The outcome being that, within Greco-Roman culture, one man—the paterfamilias—stood at the centre of the household. The Latin phrase was patria potestas: “the power of a father.”
Under Roman law, one man held authority over everyone under his roof — wife, children, and slaves alike. Their property, decisions on marriage, and even the power of life and death, ultimately rested in his hands.[vi]
That was the cultural soup of the day. And it’s difficult for us to appreciate just how comprehensive it was.
Take children, for example.
When Paul uses the word child in this passage, he’s not strictly speaking to toddlers, tweens or teens only. The word he chooses isn’t age-related; it’s relational. A child was anyone who remained someone’s offspring under the authority of the family patriarch.[vii]
You could be forty-six years old, married, with children and grandchildren of your own, managing vineyards, even serving as a local governor or a general in the army—and if your father, granddad, or great granddad was alive, Roman law still regarded you as a child beneath the eldest surviving male’s authority.
In practice, this meant that all you owned would be his, to do whatever he liked with. He could sell your property, your wife, your slaves; he could expose your children at birth or sell them into slavery; he could even drag you from your governor’s seat, mid “council session”, and have you scourged and sold into slavery.
Although, Roman law did cap his ability, only permitting him to sell any child into slavery to a maximum of three times.
Still, once is bad enough!
You may be a ‘free person’, but for want of another word, you belonged to another’s will and whims.
The same was true, in different ways, for slaves.
Slavery was rampant across the Roman Empire and had been rampant long before.
There’s two extremes we need to avoid here. One treats Roman slavery like a parallel to modern day employment—like having a job, but without wages, sick days, and holiday pay, but instead with room and board. That’s not true at all.
The other extreme is to compare it to the Transatlantic Slave Trade. But doing so does a disservice to the unique horrors of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
But, make no mistake, Roman slavery was barbaric, cruel and intentionally violent. The historian, Orlando Patterson, who has done a lot of research on the history and scope of slavery, concluded that the Roman institution of slavery was defined by ‘the permanent, violent domination of natally alienated and generally dishonored persons.’[viii]
In other words, it was founded on the idea that slaves were genetically inferior and less than human. An idea that was brutally enforced.
Someone describes the life of slave, saying, ‘Beatings were frequent and could be severe, including flogging and mutilation. If a slave was required to give testimony in court, torture preceded testimony so that, supposedly, the slave would speak the truth. Sexual abuse of slaves was common. If a slave killed, the penalty was burning at the stake or crucifixion.’[ix]
The same punishments could be incurred if a slave rebelled or ran away. Although, masters did have to weigh the financial pros and cons of replacing the slave. Again, this is not something to celebrate: the concern, shamefully, was for the master’s purse and not the slave’s life.
In all its guises, Roman slavery was coercive and profoundly dehumanising. Slaves were bought and sold, becoming nothing but property and “living tools”. Families were often separated; husbands, wives and children were never treated as a ‘family’ in any legal or social sense. Bodies were often exploited. You could say that a slave, regardless of if they were treated “well” or not, was an invisible person in Roman society.
Again, this was the recipe that the Greco-Roman world had cooked up and simmering for centuries.
So, when we arrive at Ephesians 6 (and the back end of Ephesians 5), this hierarchy is already standing. Paul did not invent it. Neither is he defending it or “baptising” it (adopting it as “Christian” living). It’s the only shape a household had ever taken as far as anyone in the Greco-Roman period could remember.
Perhaps most importantly, Paul has no political power to dismantle it.
Paul has no seat at the table where Roman law gets written, no vote, no petition, no lobby. We live in a part of the world with rights we take for granted — a vote, a free press, employment tribunals, etc. — and it’s worth remembering, before we go any further, that none of that existed for Paul, or for the churches he was writing to.
He is, in many ways, far closer to Remy the rat than to the head chef.
A Jewish prisoner belonging to a tiny movement centred around a crucified Messiah — a movement that is considered both to be suspicious and seditious — is hardly the obvious candidate to redesign Roman civilisation.
Paul can’t change the menu options, but like Remy, he can innovate.
The believers he is writing to are scattered across the layers of this social menu; many would have been wives, children, slaves[x]; others are in the position of husband, father and master. And through this body of people, like Remy via the body of Linguini, Paul is determined to sprinkle a little bit of this and a little bit of that.
He may not be able to rewrite the Roman recipe; but he can add ingredients that change it its flavour.
THIS AND THAT (DIGNITY AND LIMITS)
Paul adds the ingredients of dignity and limits.
With regards to dignity, the most remarkable thing Paul does here is not what he says. It is who he speaks to. Paul addresses children and slaves personally.
A letter about the Greco-Roman household didn’t have to speak to either of them. Generally, such letters would have been written to the men who held the power: Here’s what to do with your wives; Here’s what to do with your children; Here’s what to do with your slave.
But Paul doesn’t write that sort of letter. He breaks with convention and turns to the people who are normally only ever talked about, and he talks to them.
In the case of slaves especially, as one expert points out, Paul ‘acknowledges them, we might say “he sees them.” These ‘invisible’ people that all others take for granted are spoken to directly. This expert goes on to say, ‘I am unaware of any author [in the classical world] outside the Bible who does so.’[xi]
A stunning fact.
Imagine hearing this letter read aloud in Ephesus. Imagine being a slave sitting at the back of the gathering in one of the house churches, and then hearing Paul say, “Slaves…” And then realising: He’s talking to me. The empire may not regard me as fully human. My master may regard me as property. Society may have no interest in my voice or choices. But Christ does.
In each case, by addressing directly these classes of people, Paul treats a wife, a child, and a slave as someone with moral agency (something their culture did not). They are, for Paul, someone with a choice and not just a social expectation; someone capable of hearing an instruction, weighing it, and choosing—for themselves—to obey it. Not just because society or their “superior in society” demands it, but because they can freely act before God.[xii]
They are not furniture. They are not property. They are not merely extensions of another person’s authority. They are addressed by the Paul as being disciples, equal participants in the inheritance of Christ.
Paul speaks to the people at the bottom of the social ladder as though they stand before God in their own right.
More shocking still, is that Paul addresses them first.
Which is beautiful![xiii]
Paul doesn’t just add the ingredient of dignity, lifting those who were lower. The second ingredient Paul throws in is limits, lowering those who are higher.
After speaking to the powerless as though they have power, he turns, a few verses later, to the men who held all the power culturally in the household and basically tells them that their power is not unlimited.
Rome’s law never asked a father or a master to answer to anyone for how they treated their own household. Paul, however, strongly insists that they are accountable, they are under authority—to God.
He tells father’s not to provoke their children to anger (v. 4). In other words, you cannot simply do whatever your position allows you to do; you must think of your child’s interests.
And your power is not there for your own convenience: It’s for your child’s flourishing. You are to raise them —nourish them, is the word Paul uses— ‘in the training and instruction of the Lord.’ We tend to hear that verse as a description of the child’s syllabus, as if Paul is saying, ‘teach them facts about Jesus.’ Rather, Paul is addressing how fathers behave towards their children. ‘Bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord’ means, teach your children in a manner which reflects Jesus’ way of teaching. Don’t bully. Don’t boss. Don’t belittle. Set the example and serve. Don’t merely tell them about Jesus; show them Jesus. Behave in a Christlike way toward them.
Paul then turns to the masters:
‘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 favouritism with him.’ (v.9)
That’s a levelling statement! God has no favourites. Read it again and again until you feel the weight of that.
In other words, though society may be broken into strata’s of power, with some having perks and privileges in regards with how they can treat others, God neither underwrites this or consents to it. We are all fellow humans. In God’s economy, in Christ, all believers are equal—brothers and sisters and joint heirs. A point Paul has laboured for three whole chapters at the beginning of this letter.
Again, this statement is a clear charge that those with power are accountable to Christ and cannot simply do whatever status in their culture permits.
Paul also tells masters to treat the their slaves, ‘in the same way.’
The question is, in the same way as what?
The most likely reading is that Paul is echoing back to what he said to husbands with respect to their wives. In verse 28, following the example of Jesus who gave up his life for the church, Paul says to husbands, ‘In the same way, love your wives as you love your own body … No one hates his own body.’
If that’s the echo, Paul is telling masters: love your slaves as you love your own body. Shocking, and revolutionary, in a world built on the assumption that a slave’s body existed for someone else’s use.
Paul, weaving in Jesus’ ‘golden rule’, is saying, ‘Would you like it if what you did to your slaves was done to you?’ Extend to your slaves the rights and dignity you give to your own self. More than this, love them!
In all these examples, Paul is obliterating dominance, underwriting what he said at the head of this passage when he asked all believers to submit to one another. (Eph. 5:21).
As one commentator puts it, the powerful ‘may not use their power for their own ends, but must exercise it on the side of disadvantaged, the less powerful.’ Their power is therefore expressed not in domination, but in ‘humility, meekness, compassion, and love, the very traits which the Master in heaven himself displayed.’[xiv]
As Paul has said, to all believers, at the very top of this argument, we are to ‘Live a life filled with love for others, following the example of Christ, who loved [us] and gave himself [for us] … ‘ (Eph. 5:1).
That’s the example.
Paul is saying that anything that doesn’t look like Jesus’ use of power is to be ruled out. You cannot appeal to your position and status in society to justify it.
Paul is nowhere in this text condoning abuse. Anyone who uses this text to demand submission over anyone is sinfully misusing these verses.
Again, Paul’s not endorsing nor prescribing society’s distribution of power. He is not assigning power and status to men. Paul is addressing those who have status in their society and challenging them on the use of that power, saying it should be operated in a Christlike way.[xv]
The Roman world understood power as the ability to exercise authority over somebody else. But Jesus does something utterly different with power. Jesus possesses all authority and yet uses it to serve.
He has the power to command, but he washes feet.
He has the power to condemn, but he forgives.
He has the power to save himself, but he gives himself for others.
Jesus is, as Paul says elsewhere, ‘in very nature God,’ and yet he ‘made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant.’ (Phil. 2:3-8)
Jesus doesn’t pretend that power doesn’t exist. Rather, He redefines what power is for. Power is not proved by what you can make someone do; it’s about what you can willingly do for someone else.
The Roman world assumed everyone wanted the father’s power. Jesus reveals a kingdom where power is emptied out in love.
RINGS OF POWER
I’m a big Lord of the Rings fan. And within that famous story, there’s this ‘Ring of Power’ that the heroes in the story set out to destroy instead of wielding.
It’s baffling game plan. One that the Enemy, the ‘big bad’ in the tale, Sauron, doesn’t expect them to adopt. He can’t imagine anyone wanting to destroy the Ring, to not use this power to dominate. He cannot imagine somebody having the opportunity to possess ultimate authority and choosing instead to pass it up.
Tolkien’s ring, and the Enemy’s expectations, are a perfect analogy of our world’s infatuation with power. The world around us often teaches us a particular recipe for power: Get it. Keep it. Protect it. Use it. Increase it. As someone else observed, ‘we cannot believe that any good can come from giving up power or not even desiring it.’[xvi]
But then Jesus comes along and gives us a completely different recipe for its use: to leave a place of power and serve.
So, how do we use power?
To be sure, most of us aren’t Roman fathers, or masters. We aren’t living under patria potestas. But every one of us has power somewhere.
Some of us have power in our families, or power at work. Some of us have power because we’re older, some because we’re younger. Some because we’re wealthier, more confident, or more educated.
Some of us have power because people listen when we speak, we have a position, a platform, be it in the real world or the online one.
Some people have power because we know other’s weaknesses—they have confided in us, sharing their vulnerabilities, giving us their trust.
And some people have power simply because someone else is afraid of disappointing them.
Again, all of us, in some way or another, have power. The question is, What do I do with whatever power I have?
The Kingdom of God doesn’t simply ask us whether we have behaved within the legal boundaries of our position. It asks us whether our use of power looks like Jesus.
If I use my authority to humiliate someone, it doesn’t look like Jesus.
If I use my position to manipulate someone, it doesn’t look like Jesus.
If I use fear to get my way, it doesn’t look like Jesus.
If I use money to control someone, it doesn’t look like Jesus.
If I use spiritual authority to silence someone, it doesn’t look like Jesus.
If I use my strength to make someone weaker and then make that weaker person do what I want, it doesn’t look like Jesus.
It may be legal. It may even be socially acceptable. People may tell me I’m entitled to it. But the question Paul puts before us is: Does it look like Jesus? And anything that doesn’t look like Jesus’ use of power is ruled out.
Whatever power you have, learn to use it like Jesus.
On the night when he was betrayed — so John tells us in the thirteenth chapter of his gospel — Jesus, knowing all authority had been given to him, got up from the table he was dining at, wrapped a towel around his, got on his knees and began to wash his disciple’s feet.
He could have wielded power and used it to dominate. Instead, he served.
As Jesus himself taught …
‘“Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.’
— John 13:12b-15 (NIV)
END NOTES AND REFERENCES
[i] J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Grafton, An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, 1991), pp. 121-122
[ii] Helen opened with a reference to the 1991 hit, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and its main star Kevin Costner. You can listen to Helen’s message here, ONE | EPHESIANS 5:21-33
[iii] In the film, Chef Auguste Gusteau is a long-deceased gourmet expert whose cooking expertise and philosophy feeds Remy’s aspirations. His famous mottos, ‘Anyone can cook… but only the fearless can be great’, and ‘You must be imaginative, strong-hearted...’ strengthen Remy’s resolve throughout the film
[iv] If you wish, you can read through these tomes: Plato’s (c. 428-348 BC) Laws, and Aristotle’s (c. 384-322 BC) Nicomachean Ethics and Politics.
Over the past few days I have skimmed through vast swathes of these works, mainly because they seem to be quoted a lot by scholars exploring Paul’s words in context. What’s difficult to distinguish—because I am no expert—is whether Plato or Aristotle are prescribing their own view or describing their cultures or other cultures laws? For example, Aristotle certainly writes, ‘the slave is a living tool and the tool a lifeless slave’ (Ethics VIII.11); and again, ‘Now of instruments, some are soulless and others have a soul …, and the slave is an animate possession, and every assistant is like an instrument prior to other instruments. For if each of the instruments were able, when commanded or anticipating, to accomplish its own work, … there would be no need … for masters of slaves.’ (Politics 1.1253b); and again, ‘Moreover, the male is by nature superior and the female inferior, and the former rules and the latter is ruled.’ (Politics 1.1254b). Plato, too, states, ‘For slaves and their masters can never become friends, nor can base folk and excellent folk, even if they are said to be equally deserving of respect.’ (Laws VI. 757A); and, quoting Homer ‘… each one is the law for his own wives and children…’ (Laws III.680B). But it is hard, for me at least, to ascertain whether Aristotle or Plato agree with such views or are just sifting through arguments.
[v] Politics 1.1253b.5
[vi] The Greek Historian, Dionysius of Halicarnassus (60 – 7 BC) wrote up possibly the best summation of ‘the power of a father’ in his work, Roman Antiquities. In the sections mentioning it, he is reflecting on the laws purported to have been given to Rome by its founder, Romulus. Dionysius insists that these laws were recorded on the fourth of the Twelve Tablets by c. 450 BC (Rom. Ant. II.27.iii), and his knowledge of these customs implies that they still held across the transition of the Roman Republic into the Empire.
Dionysius spells out the father’s power as being for his full life, in Rom. Ant. II.27.ii – II.27.ii, stating that scourging, chains and death where all in his power to administrate over his offspring, no matter the occasion: ‘Indeed, in virtue of this law men of distinction, while delivering speeches from the rostra hostile to the senate and pleasing to the people, have been dragged down from thence and carried away by their fathers to undergo such punishment as these thought fit; and while they were being led away through the Forum, none present, neither consul, tribune, nor the very populace, which was flattered by them and thought all power inferior to its own, could rescue them.’ (Rom. Ant. II.26.v)
Modern historians, too, add weight to the ‘patria potestas’:
‘[A] child (at least as long as he or she was legitimate) was subject to the power of his or her paterfamilias, whether father, grandfather, or great-grandfather. Paternal power (patria potestas) was lifelong, so that in principle a man who had already become a grandfather might still be subject to his father’s power and become independent only late in life . . . Patria potestas goes back at least to the XII Tables (c. 450 BC), and in the early republic, the powers of the paterfamilias were extreme: a power of life and death over those in the family; power to decide whether newborn babies should be accepted into the family or exposed; power to sell surplus children . . . But paternal power remained significant because of two much more practical considerations: the paterfamilias owned all the family property, and none of his dependants could own anything; everything acquired by them automatically vested in the paterfamilias.’ [David Johnston, Roman Law in Context. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2nd Ed., 2022), pp. 37-38]
‘The father (pater) was head of the familia, the basic Roman social and property-owning unit. The familia under his control consisted of his children, whether living with him or not; his sons’ children, if any; his wife, if married with manus . . .; and his slaves. . . . At the death of the pater, the children (and wife) ceased to be alieni iuris (subject to another’s control) and became sui iuris (independent). Each adult son became a paterfamilias; no woman ever did – materfamilias in Latin was merely the term used to designate the wife, or strictly the wife in manus, of a paterfamilias.’ [Jane F. Gardner, Women in Roman Law & and Society (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1986), pp. 5-6. Manus (literally ‘hand’) meant a relationship in which the wife stood in the power of the husband.]
Whilst patria potestas may have been absolute in the early days of the Empire, over time, the rights attached to it became steadily more diluted by disuse. The father’s ability to put his children to death was abolished, the range of punishments available to him was reduced and his right to sell his children into slavery was restricted so that it could be exercised only in cases of extreme necessity. By the reign of the Emperor Hadrian (r.117-138) the power of the father over the lives of his children had been diluted so far that a father who killed his son lost his Roman citizenship, his property was confiscated and he was sent into exile.
[vii] If Paul wished to describe adolescence, he would have used the word παῖς / pais. Paul, however, uses the Greek term which stresses the relationship of offspring to parent (τέκνον / teknon), a term that would describe anyone between the ages of 1 and “old-age” who happened to be under the ‘power of a father.’
[viii] Orlando Patterson, Slavery & Social Death – A Comparative Study (Harvard University Press, 1990), p. 13, as quoted in Lynn H. Cohick, Lynn, Ephesians (Proclamation: Preaching the New Testament) (Cascade Books, an imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition, 2025), p. 121.
Cohick goes on to summarise Patterson’s findings as such:
‘Patterson highlights several key aspects of slavery in the ancient world. First, it was permanent, inasmuch as the stain of social worthlessness stayed with the individual even if they became a freed person. Second, and relatedly, there was not two categories, slave and free, but a middle category, freedman or freedwoman. No one who had been enslaved ever made it past the “freed” rung on the ladder. A freed person owed allegiance, honor, and often a portion of their earnings to their previous owner who now functioned more as a patron. Third, the institution was based on violence: physical, emotional, mental violence. The ancient treatment of slaves turns one’s stomach. Fourth, slaves had no natural families. The children they bore, the loves which they held, could be torn from them at any time. Indeed, it was common for owners both to encourage love between slaves, and then use potential separation as a threat to control behavior. Fifth, slaves had no social honor. A slave was invisible as a person. As Patterson remarks, the slave was the “ultimate human tool, as imprintable [sic] and as disposable as the master wished.”’
As an additional voice, Kenton Sparks states: ‘[A]nyone familiar with slavery in the ancient Near East, or in the Greco-Roman world, will know that ancient varieties of slavery were every bit as cruel and depersonalizing as slavery in the American South. During the well-documented Roman period, slaves were mere bodies, to be used according to the whims of their owners. They were presented naked for inspection to prospective buyers and were often branded upon purchase. Attractive women and boys were especially prized for their service in hetero- and homosexual gratification. This was particularly true when their owners wished to engage in sexual activities that their spouses found unsavory, or where their owners wished to rent out their sexual services. Slaves were constant victims of physical and emotional deprivation, and of extreme corporal punishment. According to Roman law, the legal testimonies of slaves had to be verified under torture. All this is not to mention the generally destructive effect that Roman slavery had upon the affected families. It is true that Roman-era slavery sometimes provided comfortable and prosperous lives for slaves, and that most slaves were eventually released, usually by age 30 or so. But [it is wrong and unwise to accentuate] the parallels between modern employment and ancient slavery. The two things are entirely different at precisely the most important points.’ [Kenton Sparks, God’s Word in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship, (Baker Academic, Grand Rapids, MI, 2008), p. 292]
[ix] Gary M. Burge, Lynn H. Cohick, and Gene L. Green, The New Testament in Antiquity: A Survey of the New Testament within its Cultural Contexts (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI, 2009), p. 358
[x] On this note, I would highly recommend Rodney Stark’s The Rise of Christianity
[xi] Lynn H. Cohick, Lynn, Ephesians (Proclamation: Preaching the New Testament) (Cascade Books, an imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition, 2025), p. 123.
[xii] On the household codes addressing the socially subordinate as moral agents: ‘’Here begins the revolutionary innovation in the early Christian style of ethical thinking for which there is no explanation in borrowing from other contemporary cultural sources. The subordinate person in the social order is addressed as a moral agent. [The first “liberating” dimension of this material is the fact that the addressees, underdogs in the culture, have been convinced by the gospel of their dignity, to the point that it is relevant to urge them to be patient.] He/She is called upon to take responsibility for the acceptance of their position in society as meaningful before God. It is not assumed, as it was in both Jewish and [Greco-Roman] thought, that the wife will have the faith of her husband, or that the slave will be part of the religious unity of the master’s household. Here we have a faith that assigns personal moral responsibility to those who had no legal or moral status in their culture, and makes of them decision makers. … After having stated the call to subordination as addressed first to those who are subordinate already, [Paul, and all the so-called “household” codes of the New Testament] then go on to turn the relationship around and repeat the demand, calling the [culturally] dominant partner in the relationship to a kind of subordination in turn. [Husbands are called upon to love their wives as he loves himself; Fathers are called to provoke their children to anger but to bring them up in a way, an instruction, that reflects Jesus-likeness; Masters are told, ‘in the same way’ (echoing the instructions to slaves, i’e, ‘those rules apply to you too’), so be kind and gentle, don’t be threatening, and that you, too, have a master, Jesus Christ.] … That the call to subordination is reciprocal [submit to one another] is once again a revolutionary trait.’ [John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus (William B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI, Cambridge, UK, 1994), pp. 171–172, 177.]
[xiii] I also want to add that the status of slaves within the church body was not contingent upon their status within the wider Roman society. We know that slaves were given leadership roles. Two examples come from the early centuries: Firstly, the early church father, Ignatius, makes mention that Onesimus, the ‘escaped slave’ at the focus of Paul’s letter Philemon, became bishop in Ephesus (Ignatius, Ephesians 1:3; Apostolic Constitutions 7.45). As Lynn Cohick notes, ‘what could be more provocative to the social system than an owner serving his/her slave, than the community choosing a slave as their leader [Lynn H. Cohick, Lynn, Ephesians (Proclamation: Preaching the New Testament) (Cascade Books, an imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition, 2025), p. 125]. Secondly, the early second century letter by Pliny the Younger, addressed to the Emperor Trajan, has Pliny, in his attempt to control the spread of the ‘degenerate superstition’ of Christianity, admits to torturing two female slaves. He also mentions that these two slaves where also ‘deaconesses’ within the church.
Based on the text in Eph. 6:9, the fourth-century church father, Chrysostom, argued that Paul commands owners to serve their slaves. (Homily 22).
[xiv] Mariane Meye Thompson. For a fuller quote, where Thompson writes regards the household codes mentioned in the letter to the Colossians (I’ve amended for the Ephesian references):
‘Paul does not establish or champion either the institutions of slavery or the hierarchical ordering of the family and state. These were given to him in the culture into the which he was born and lived as a citizen of the Roman Empire. Paul’s concern was that Christians, whose lives are now [‘adopted into God’s family’, Eph. 1:4] should live for their Lord in whatever circumstances they find themselves. This is the paradox of Chirstian existence, [under the authority and lordship of Jesus, Eph. 1:9], but also under the daily rule of human “lords” or masters who do not and cannot command the Christian’s ultimate allegiance. Here, too, is a word to those human lords and masters: they do not ultimately govern or control those under their charge and are themselves answerable to the same Lord as are those under their charge. They are not masters of their own fates, captains of their own souls – any more than they are masters and captains of the fates and souls of others. … Paul stands the typical injunctions to husbands, father and masters on their heads by making it very clear that those who are in power may not set the rules according to their own whims and preferences [Eph. 6:4; 9]. They may seem to “rule” [in their culture’s ideas of hierarchy], but the rules have in fact already been determined by Christ, who is Lord of all [cf. Eph. 5:2 ‘walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up…’]. Again the powerful may not use their power for their own ends, but must exercise it on the side of disadvantaged, the less powerful. Their power, then, takes the form not of insisting on one’s legal right or dominating the other, but rather expresses itself as humility, meekness, compassion, and love, the very traits which the Master in heaven himself displayed. Those who participate in the reality on the new humanity created in Christ live in two worlds at once: they live in the reality of the new creation, but they live in that reality in the present world order.’ [Marianne Meye Thompson, Colossians & Philemon (The Two Horizons New Testament commentary), (William B. Eerdmanns, Grand Rapids, MI, Cambridge, UK, 2005), pp. 92-93, 96-97]
[xv] ‘Paul is concerned that in all these relationships, humility and service to each other out of love for Christ must be foremost. Thus a master cannot be harsh with a slave, even if such treatment was legal, because that behavior dishonors their Master, Jesus. Again, a husband cannot be harsh with his wife, even if such behavior is legal, because that contradicts Christ’s own love for his bride, the church.’ [Gary M. Burge, Lynn H. Cohick, and Gene L. Green, The New Testament in Antiquity: A Survey of the New Testament within its Cultural Contexts (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI, 2009), p. 345]
[xvi] Henri Nouwen, The Selfless Way of Christ: Downward Mobility and the Spiritual Life (Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd, London, 2007), p. 61
TRISTAN SHERWIN 
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