What is the context?
Paul applies the call to do everything in Jesus’ name to relationships within the household. He addresses each group directly: wives and husbands, children and fathers, slaves and masters.
Wives are called to submit as fitting in the Lord. Husbands are called to love and avoid harshness. Children are called to obey, and fathers are warned not to provoke them into discouragement. The instructions place real responsibilities on those with authority as well as those under it.
Paul is addressing actual enslaved people and their masters, rather than simply modern employees and employers. He directs their service toward Christ and promises an inheritance from Him. He also states that wrongdoing will be repaid without favoritism.
The instruction to masters continues in 4:1. They must supply what is right and fair, remembering that they too have a Master in heaven. Keeping this verse with the preceding instructions preserves Paul’s address to both sides of the relationship.
How is this passage commonly understood?
Christians commonly read these instructions as bringing household responsibilities under Christ’s lordship. They differ in how they describe authority and mutual responsibility in marriage.
The Southern Baptist Baptist Faith and Message, article XVIII, affirms equal worth while assigning the husband loving leadership and the wife gracious submission to that servant leadership. This is its stated confessional account, not a description of every Baptist church.
CBE International’s statement, family points 11–12, reads the marriage relationship through mutual submission and responsibility, with both parents sharing leadership in raising children. It represents a Christian equality reading across denominations.
In the Catholic apostolic letter Mulieris Dignitatem, paragraph 24, John Paul II reads the spouses’ relationship through mutual submission and Christ’s self-giving. These accounts share the call to love while explaining the pattern of responsibilities differently.
The commands to slaves and masters address an existing condition of slavery. They hold both accountable to the heavenly Lord and do not make a master’s earthly power the final measure of right and wrong.
Where does this fit in God's plan?
Galatians 3:26–29 identifies those in Christ as God’s children and heirs of the promise, across distinctions including slave and free. The inheritance promised to enslaved believers here belongs within that larger standing in Him.
Philemon 15–17 provides a concrete parallel: Paul asks that Onesimus be received as a beloved brother and as Paul himself. The call to live under one heavenly Master reaches into how people recognize and treat one another in Christ.
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.