What is the context?
After speaking about family care and church leaders, Paul addresses people living in slavery. Their conduct is to honor God’s name and the teaching they have received. If their master also believes, their shared faith is a reason for devoted service rather than disrespect.
These are enslaved people, with a master’s authority over their lives. The passage does not say how each person became enslaved. Roman slavery cannot simply be equated with an ordinary job or a loan someone freely chose: the Roman jurist Gaius, Institutes 1.82, records that children could be born into slavery through their mother’s status.
Paul calls believing masters brothers, even while addressing a relationship of unequal power. The reason he gives for the slaves’ conduct is the reputation of God’s name and teaching. He does not say that their social position measures their worth before God.
How is this passage commonly understood?
Calvin and Wesley read the instructions as a call to faithful conduct within the slaves’ existing circumstances. Both recognize that sharing faith with a master establishes a real spiritual kinship, while Paul still asks the enslaved believer to serve faithfully. The immediate concern is how God’s people live and bear witness in that situation.
Where does this fit in God's plan?
Paul’s appeal concerning Onesimus gives another view of what this shared family means. In Philemon 1:15–17, he asks Philemon to welcome Onesimus as a beloved brother and receive him as he would receive Paul. This is a related passage, rather than a claim that both letters describe the same household.
Galatians 3:26–29 places slave and free together among God’s children and heirs through Christ. That belonging gives the instructions their wider setting: social power does not determine a person’s place in God’s family.
What is our position?
We don't have a position on this passage yet. When our study reaches a conclusion the text supports, it will appear here.