Duties of servants and masters.
I. DUTY OF SERVANTS. Recognized as constituent members of the Church, and, however little esteemed by man, as greatly regarded by God. In Christ all are brethren, for all are brothers of Christ, therefore of one another.
1. The duty of servants is obedience. Qualities of the obedience.
2. The reward of good service. Whatsoever good you do, you shall receive of the Lord; he will repay you. We are apt to be jealous of this doctrine. It seems to undermine free grace. But no; salvation is wholly of grace; but one feature of grace is that, when you receive it and act on it, it begets, as it were, another gift of grace. If by grace the servant obey in the Lord, a further act of grace will follow; the obedience rendered will be rewarded and blessed. Better this surely than any amount of earthly reward! "God is not unrighteous to forget" the faithful work of those who remember him above all other.
II. DUTY OF MASTERS.
(a) You have a Master also, One in heaven, who oversees all you do;
(b) there is no respect of persons with him. One of the great problems of the day is how to impregnate the relations of master and servant with the Christian spirit, and carry into effect the aim of such passages as this. We do not refer particularly to domestic service, for a servant, by entering a house, becomes in a sense a member of the family, and is thereby bound to fall in with the family order. The difficulty lies mainly with the case of large bodies of men working under a single employer. The problem is too intricate to be discussed here. But both masters and men need to beware of offending Christ by a bitter and unreasonable spirit. Occasions for glorifying God by the manifestation of a noble Christian spirit may become occasions for letting out the selfishness of the carnal heart. Yet, complicated though the question is, it is probable that the true solution would be reached by all Christian men if the spirit of this text were carried out, if both masters and men tried to do all as to the Lord and not to men, and to esteem his approval the very highest reward to which they could look.