Colossians 3:22-23 and 1 Peter 2:18 command slaves to obey their earthly masters in all things, with fear and sincerity of heart, including "froward" (harsh) masters. Matthew 4:10 cites Deuteronomy that worship and service are owed to God alone. 1 Corinthians 7:23 tells believers, "Ye are bought with a price; be not ye the servants of men." Matthew 23:10 forbids anyone being called master (kathegetes) because Christ is the only master. The household codes' command to serve human masters with fear contradicts Jesus' and Paul's direct statements that service belongs to God alone.
Proposed answers
People have answered this in several ways; GEBible presents them as equal peers.
Obediance to masters enjoined
Servants, obey in all things [your] masters according to the flesh; not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but in singleness of heart, fearing God:
And whatsoever ye do, do [it] heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men;
Servants, [be] subject to [your] masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward.
22Servants, obey in all things those who are your masters according to the flesh, not just when they are looking, as men pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing God.23And whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord, and not for men,
Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.
Ye are bought with a price; be not ye the servants of men.
Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, [even] Christ.
What follows is one scholar’s way of reading this disagreement— a critical-historical view that often concludes the texts genuinely disagree. It draws on the peer-reviewed sources listed below and stands as one position among the answers above, presented for transparency, not as GEBible’s position.
How critical scholarship weighs this: Leans toward a genuine contradiction
This summarizes where critical scholarship tends to land on this tension — a report on the field’s center of gravity, not GEBible’s own ruling.
The household codes (*Haustafeln*) of Colossians 3:18-4:1, Ephesians 5:21-6:9, 1 Peter 2:13-3:7, and the Pastorals reflect a post-Pauline church working to make Christianity socially respectable within Greco-Roman expectations. David Balch traced the form to the standard Hellenistic topos *peri oikonomias* ("concerning household management"), reaching back to Aristotle's *Politics*, which paired ruler/ruled, husband/wife, father/child, and master/slave. The slave instructions in Colossians 3:22 ("obey in all things your masters according to the flesh") and 1 Peter 2:18 ("be subject... not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward") sit in obvious theological tension with the undisputed Pauline material: 1 Corinthians 7:23 ("be not ye the servants of men"), Galatians 3:28 ("there is neither bond nor free"), and the letter to Philemon, where Paul appeals for Onesimus to be received "no longer as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved."
The pedigree of the texts matters here. Critical scholarship generally treats Colossians as deutero-Pauline and 1 Peter as pseudonymous, with the codes representing a second-generation accommodation to Roman social norms — precisely the kind of institutional consolidation one would expect as the movement's eschatological urgency cooled and it sought a stable footing in the wider culture. The friction with the Jesus tradition is sharpest at Matthew 23:8-10, where Jesus forbids the very titles of hierarchical authority the codes inscribe: "call no man your father upon the earth... neither be ye called masters (*kathegetai*), for one is your Master, even Christ." Davies and Allison read this as a deliberate leveling of rank within the community.
The strongest harmonization is a two-spheres distinction, and it deserves a fair hearing. On this reading the commands operate on different planes: slaves owe ordered social obedience in the temporal household, while worship (*latreuo*, Matthew 4:10) and ultimate allegiance belong to God alone; "be not ye the servants of men" concerns spiritual bondage to human teaching or sin, not the social institution of slavery; and Matthew 23 forbids honorific religious titles within the assembly, not civic structures. The qualifying phrases reinforce this — Colossians 3:22 frames slave-obedience as done "as to the Lord," and 1 Peter grounds submission in conscience toward God. Each text, on its own terms, can be construed so as not to command the worship reserved for God.
But the distinction strains at two points. First, 1 Peter 2:18 specifically commands obedience to *harsh* masters (*skoliois*), which the qualifier cannot soften into a merely civic arrangement; it sanctifies submission to abuse. Second, the codes demand obedience "with all fear" (*meta pantos phobou*), and *phobos* in the LXX is the loaded term elsewhere reserved for reverence toward God; the codes thus do not merely permit slavery but fold the slave-master bond into Christian devotion, making servile obedience a religious duty. Jennifer Glancy and J. Albert Harrill have shown that early Christianity left the institution of slavery substantially intact and supplied it theological reinforcement rather than critique. Against that backdrop, the contradiction with the "call no man master" tradition is not dissolved by the two-spheres move; it is relocated. Whether one judges the conflict resolved depends on how much theological weight the religiously charged language of "fear" and "as to the Lord" is allowed to carry.
Where the critical reading lands: partially harmonizable in principle by the two-spheres distinction, but the religiously loaded "fear" language and the command to obey harsh masters keep a genuine theological tension with the Jesus and undisputed-Pauline traditions.
Sources for this reading
David L. Balch, Let Wives Be Submissive: The Domestic Code in 1 Peter (SBLMS 26; Scholars Press, 1981) pp. 1-21, 119-121
James D. G. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon (NIGTC; Eerdmans, 1996) pp. 251-265on Col 3:22-23Colossians 3:22-23
Paul J. Achtemeier, 1 Peter (Hermeneia; Fortress, 1996) pp. 192-200on 1 Pet 2:181 Peter 2:18
W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Matthew, Vol. 3 (ICC; T&T Clark, 1997) pp. 271-276on Matt 23:8-10Matthew 23:8-10
Jennifer A. Glancy, Slavery in Early Christianity (Oxford University Press, 2002) pp. 142-156
J. Albert Harrill, Slaves in the New Testament: Literary, Social, and Moral Dimensions (Fortress, 2006) pp. 85-117
Examining the tension
What follows is one scholar’s way of reading this disagreement — a critical-historical view that often concludes the texts genuinely disagree. It draws on the peer-reviewed sources listed below and stands as one position among the answers above, presented for transparency, not as GEBible’s position.
How critical scholarship weighs this: Leans toward a genuine contradiction
This summarizes where critical scholarship tends to land on this tension — a report on the field’s center of gravity, not GEBible’s own ruling.
The household codes (*Haustafeln*) of Colossians 3:18-4:1, Ephesians 5:21-6:9, 1 Peter 2:13-3:7, and the Pastorals reflect a post-Pauline church working to make Christianity socially respectable within Greco-Roman expectations. David Balch traced the form to the standard Hellenistic topos *peri oikonomias* ("concerning household management"), reaching back to Aristotle's *Politics*, which paired ruler/ruled, husband/wife, father/child, and master/slave. The slave instructions in Colossians 3:22 ("obey in all things your masters according to the flesh") and 1 Peter 2:18 ("be subject... not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward") sit in obvious theological tension with the undisputed Pauline material: 1 Corinthians 7:23 ("be not ye the servants of men"), Galatians 3:28 ("there is neither bond nor free"), and the letter to Philemon, where Paul appeals for Onesimus to be received "no longer as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved."
The pedigree of the texts matters here. Critical scholarship generally treats Colossians as deutero-Pauline and 1 Peter as pseudonymous, with the codes representing a second-generation accommodation to Roman social norms — precisely the kind of institutional consolidation one would expect as the movement's eschatological urgency cooled and it sought a stable footing in the wider culture. The friction with the Jesus tradition is sharpest at Matthew 23:8-10, where Jesus forbids the very titles of hierarchical authority the codes inscribe: "call no man your father upon the earth... neither be ye called masters (*kathegetai*), for one is your Master, even Christ." Davies and Allison read this as a deliberate leveling of rank within the community.
The strongest harmonization is a two-spheres distinction, and it deserves a fair hearing. On this reading the commands operate on different planes: slaves owe ordered social obedience in the temporal household, while worship (*latreuo*, Matthew 4:10) and ultimate allegiance belong to God alone; "be not ye the servants of men" concerns spiritual bondage to human teaching or sin, not the social institution of slavery; and Matthew 23 forbids honorific religious titles within the assembly, not civic structures. The qualifying phrases reinforce this — Colossians 3:22 frames slave-obedience as done "as to the Lord," and 1 Peter grounds submission in conscience toward God. Each text, on its own terms, can be construed so as not to command the worship reserved for God.
But the distinction strains at two points. First, 1 Peter 2:18 specifically commands obedience to *harsh* masters (*skoliois*), which the qualifier cannot soften into a merely civic arrangement; it sanctifies submission to abuse. Second, the codes demand obedience "with all fear" (*meta pantos phobou*), and *phobos* in the LXX is the loaded term elsewhere reserved for reverence toward God; the codes thus do not merely permit slavery but fold the slave-master bond into Christian devotion, making servile obedience a religious duty. Jennifer Glancy and J. Albert Harrill have shown that early Christianity left the institution of slavery substantially intact and supplied it theological reinforcement rather than critique. Against that backdrop, the contradiction with the "call no man master" tradition is not dissolved by the two-spheres move; it is relocated. Whether one judges the conflict resolved depends on how much theological weight the religiously charged language of "fear" and "as to the Lord" is allowed to carry.
Where the critical reading lands: partially harmonizable in principle by the two-spheres distinction, but the religiously loaded "fear" language and the command to obey harsh masters keep a genuine theological tension with the Jesus and undisputed-Pauline traditions.
Sources for this reading