CHAPTER VI.—Vv. 1-2. The duty of Christian slaves to heathen and Christian. masters respectively.
Ver. 1. The politico-social problem of the first ages of Christianity was the relation of freemen to slaves, just as the corresponding problem before the Church in our own day is the relation of the white to the coloured races. The grand truth of the brotherhood of man is the revolutionary fire which Christ came to cast uponearth. Fire, if it is to minister to civilisation, must be so controlled as {ο: be directed. So with the social ethics of Christianity; the extent to which their logical consequences are pressed must be calculated by common sense. One of the great dangers to the interests of the Church in early times was the teaching of the gospel on liberty and equality, crude and unqualified by consideration of
“the other natural social conditions, also
divinely ordered, which Christianity was called to leaven, not wholly to displace. The slave problem also meets us in Eph. vi. 5, Col. iii. 22, Tit. ii. 9, Philem. χ Pet. ii. 18. In each place it is dealt with consistently, practically, Christianly. The difficulty in this verse is ὑπὸ
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ε Ps. Ixxvii. ἡ διδασκαλία “ βλασφημῆται.
(Ixxviii.) τ, Wisd. Xvi. II, 24, 2 Macc. vi. 13, ix. 26, 4 Mace. viii. 17, Acts iv. 9.
ζυγόν. Thecontrast in ver. 2, οἱ δὲ mor. ἔχ. Seam. seems to prove that a δοῦλος ὑπὸ ζυγόν is one that belongs to a heathen master. The R.V. is consistent with this view, Let as many as are servants under the yoke. The heathen estimate of a slave differedin degree, not in kind, from their estimate of cattle; a Christian master could not regard his slaves as ὑπὸ ζυγόν.
τοὺς ἰδίους δεσπότας: The force of ἴδιος was so much weakened in later Greek that it is doubtful if it amounts here to more than αὐτῶν. See on iii. 4.
ϑεσπότης is more strictly the correla- tive of δοῦλος than is κύριος, and is used in this sense in reff. except Luke ii. 20. St. Paul has κύριος in his other epistles (Rom. xiv. 4; Gal. iv. 1; Eph. vi. 5,9; Col. iii. 22, iv. 1); but, as Wace acutely remarks, in all these passages there is a reference to the Divine κύριος which gives the term a special appropriateness.
πάσης τιμῆς ἀξίους, worthy of the greatest respect.
ἵνα μὴ βλασφημῆται: The phrase ‘‘blaspheme the name of God’’ comes from Isa. ΠΠ. 5 (cf. Ezek. xxxvi. 20-23). See Rom. ii. 24, 2 Pet. ii. 2. See note on ν. 14. The corresponding passage in Tit. ii. το, ἵνα τὴν διδασκαλίαν τὴν τοῦ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν θεοῦ κοσμῶσιν, supports Alford’s contention that the article here is equivalent to a possessive pronoun, His doctrine. On the other hand, the phrase does not need any explanation; the doc- trine would be quite analogous to St, Paul’s use elsewhere when speaking of the Christian faith. For διδασκαλία, see note on i. Io.
Ver. 2. A Christian slave would be more likely to presume on his newly acquired theory of liberty, equality and fraternity in relation to a Christian master than in relation to one that was a heathen. The position of a Christian master must have been a difficult one, distracted between the principles of a faith wbich he shared with his slave, and the laws of a social state which he felt were not wholly wrong. 1 Cor. vii. 22 and Philem. 16 illustrate the position.
μᾶλλον δουλευέτωσαν: serve them all the more, magis serviant (Vulg.).
For this use of μᾶλλον cf. Rom. xiv.