Summary: As living tributes to Jesus our lives should always point to Him. All the credit goes to Him. And all the rewards of our inheritance with Christ can be ours. The ultimate reward of course being in the presence of God for eternity, and perhaps hearing, “Well done good and faithful servant.

“I Am Rewarded”

(Eph 6:1-9)

Here’s how our passage begins today, “Children obey your parents, honor your mother and father, this is the first commandment with a promise that it might go well with you and that you may live long in the land”. There’s one promise of reward. Then we see in verse 8 another promise that whatever good you do, this you will receive back from the Lord.

What are we to do with this passage about children and parents and slaves and masters? How is this applicable to us?

Well, the theme of submission continues in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians and there is again some metaphor in the groups he mentions, relating to our relationship with Christ and His relationship to the church.

It begins with children coming under the headship of their parents, and includes once again a reminder to fathers. He repeats this in Colossians 3 and it refers to fathers not abusing their power and discouraging their children. Remember God could have dealt with his children much more harshly than he has, so this mirrors the authority tempered with love and self control, that God shows to his children.

Now this first promise to children is clearly not just to the children of human parents. First it says obey your parents in the Lord. Notice in this again as we saw last week, Paul is using a human relationship as a metaphor for a relationship with Christ. The idea again is the design of God. The sovereign God of the universe has created the idea of marriage, and the idea and possibility of creating children within a marriage relationship. All the people in these relationships are to model submission and obedience to God first of all, but then also submitting to the people in their lives whom God has put them under.

Last week, husbands submit to God, wives submit to husbands, and now children submit to parents. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The idea of submission to authority is a key factor in the problems we see in our culture, in our families, and in our churches. As we move into the next part of this passage, we will see the same kind of dynamics in the workplace.

So look at what we’ve seen in the past two chapters. Wives submit to your husbands as to the Lord. Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Children obey your parents in the Lord. Bondservants, obey your earthly masters as you would Christ. Masters, remember who your Master is in heaven. Do you see the common denominator there?

Jesus says elsewhere as do unto the least of these you do unto me. Everything about our life and relationships here on earth always needs to come back to our relationship with Christ. We obey those God has put in authority over us as we would Christ (the condition there being that they are not asking us to do something that goes against the commands of Jesus), and we treat those under us as Christ does those under Him. This is all an idealized picture of how Christians and humanity in general was designed by their creator to operate, with everyone in total submission to Christ. This is the recipe for utopia.

Now as we talk about being rewarded, I believe the reason we hear of these conditions is that the greatest rewards come from following God’s will. Why would God have any obligation to reward humanity otherwise? But we need to make sure we don’t do this as a transaction. God is not exactly saying if you do this I will reward you. Rather the rewards come from the natural consequences of living according to His design. He created the universe to be a certain way, and if we operate according to the way, rewards will be inherent. The ultimate reward is not found in this life anyway because of the fallen nature of the world.

To me it’s more like building a model train, or car, or airplane let’s say. It comes with all these little plastic pieces attached to a little plastic frame, and there are instructions for how to put it all together. If you follow the instructions, the reward is a completed model that resembles what it is intended to be, the picture on the box. If you do it your own way, you may end up with something, but it might not be what you hoped it would be. The reward is simply from following the maker’s instructions. If you don’t follow the instructions, you can’t blame the maker for it not turning out the way you wanted, or the way he promised.

So here some people might say, well, I obeyed and honoured my parents, and my life actually hasn’t gone all that well, and I knew this kid who was very obedient and honouring to his parents and he died when he was 12. Where’s God keeping his promises in these situations? He said it would go well with us and that we would live long in the land.

This is where it’s important to understand context. Paul is talking about the 5th commandment given to the Israelites in the book of Exodus, and he combines it with the promise from Deut 5:16. He’s talking about honouring your parents and looking after them when they are older, and the promise is really that the family will live long in the land that God was giving them and they would prosper. It’s not so much an individual promise to individuals as it is a promise to families being established in a certain place or country. It’s the family model that God will bless throughout generations in that family.

And the other thing to ask is, did we really obey and honor our parents in the way that God sees it, or just in the way that we see it when we compare it to really bad kids? It’s the same as asking ourselves, have I really obeyed God in every thing? How many can say yes to that? Have we met the criteria for rewards based on His perspective or on ours? So we’ll question God when the promises don’t come, we will doubt that we can trust his promises, when what we should really be doing is examining ourselves and asking if I have really done what he said in the way that he says.

Remember this is all an ideal, and the mystery of how it’s designed to be and how it will be when God brings his reign to fullness and every knee bows and tongue confesses that Jesus is Lord. We will not prefect it until then, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive as individuals to make it as much a reality in our lives as possible. But we can’t expect the full reward in this life. We will however live long in the Promised Land one day, in fact for eternity, if we give Jesus our all in this life.

In verse 4 we see another important exhortation for fathers, to bring our children up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. In other words as the Bible says. Otherwise how will they know the promises and what they are to obey to receive the rewards?

Ok let’s move on. Bondservants obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling. Let’s use this verse to look at employment relationships, because that’s really what this is referring to in those days. You might say I’m not a slave. O Yeah, do you go to work for fun? Could you say tomorrow I think I’m going to stop working now?

Slaves in those days were essentially paid employees only they had to work for this person because they owed them money. And after 7 years they were allowed to leave or continue to work for the person. And many stayed. Again it’s God saying that I am responsible for you being in this situation under the headship of this person, and I want you to treat this relationship as you would treat your relationship with me.

Verse 6 is very important for employees and for Christians in general. Do not obey by the way of eye-service. What that means is don’t just do what you are supposed to do when the boss is looking, and of course the big boss God, is always looking. It’s all together too common for Christians and workers to look like their doing what they’re supposed to be doing when others are watching, or to please others. But when no one is around they can look much different.

There’s no reward in being phony people pleasers. But if you treat your work as if you are doing it for God from the heart, you will be rewarded not just in your life, but in your heart. Christians should be the best, most productive, most reliable, most submitted people in their places of work, because of their true boss. I have heard wonderful stories of Christians who continually surprise their bosses with their attitude and work ethic, and sometimes this even leads to an opportunity to witness for Christ. Sadly, I have heard far more stories of how Christians can be some of the most difficult, grumpiest people at their workplace. Whether a bondservant or free (God shows no partiality), the person who works as unto the Lord will receive back from the Lord whatever good he does.

So masters, employers, do the same and stop threatening your employees, knowing who the master really is. So if you’re a boss or manager, again you should be the greatest person to work for. People should want to work for you from the heart, not because they are threatened by you.

In my Bible, the word master is capitalized and so it refers also to our highest master. How well did threatening people even work for God. The two testaments are pictures of our God, and the Old Testament shows the futility of law and threats to get his people to obey. The New Testament shows the effective way of being the boss. Telling the truth, equipping, and sacrificing for the sake of the workers. The truth is told but not in the way of threats, simply as facts based on love. The choice is ours to obey or not, but for different reasons. Because we love our boss for what he does for us, how he treats us, not because he threatens us.

So I want to end today by summarizing the last few weeks. Our last week in Ephesians will have a somewhat different theme.

There are two main themes in the book of Ephesians. In the first three chapters it’s really about how Christ has reconciled all creation to himself and to God. And secondly that Christ has united people from all nations and backgounds to himself and to one another in His church. These great deeds were accomplished through the powerful, sovereign, and free working of the triune God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – and are recognized and received by faith alone through his grace. In light of these great truths, Christians are to lead lives that are a fitting tribute of gratitude to their great Lord.

I like that idea. Is my life a tribute to God? Our deal is sealed, we really have nothing left to live for other than God. Do you understand that? That can permeate every part of our lives, and we can live in the midst of our culture and do all the things we do like work and have families and so on, but it’s all a tribute to God as we simply wait for the full consummation of His Kingdom. We need not strive for anything other than perfectly doing His will in every situation we find ourselves in.

And we can do this with peace, and not pressure because we know that we are forgiven, and the pressure to achieve in a worldly manner no longer drives us.

The last two and a half chapters have shown us that we are new creations, willing prisoners and slaves to the Lord, belonging to his great body, the Church. We are equippers and we are being equipped for unity so that we may all grow up into Christ who is our head. No longer being tossed to a fro by every wave that comes through our culture, every new doctrine, or human cunning and deceitful schemes. And our ultimate goal is to grow up in love.

So we have a new life, and in that new life we can be different. We can walk in love, we can be godly husbands and wives, and children, and employees and bosses. All for the sake of Christ and as tribute to Him, so that we may be his witnesses. We have all the rewards already, we’re just waiting for the full inheritance, and there can be many more in this life, especially if you look at the heart rewards over the material rewards.

You know many people say that you can witness with your life and if necessary use words. Frankly that’s bad theology. Yes we are to be so different from the rest of the world that people notice, but that’s when we tell them why we’re different. So it works both ways. You can’t be a witness for Jesus if you are the same as everybody else who doesn’t know Him. But you are also not a complete witness if you don’t tell people about him. Otherwise they will just see you as a really good person. But the truth is we are not good people. We have been, as mentioned in chapter 4, recreated after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. God makes us who we are today, not us.

As living tributes to Jesus our lives should always point to Him. All the credit goes to Him. And all the rewards of our inheritance with Christ can be ours. The ultimate reward of course being in the presence of God for eternity, and perhaps hearing, “Well done good and faithful servant."