I once learnt a management principle
that’s so simple, and yet so profound, that it’s stuck with me for years. Authority
and responsibility should always go together. Authority doesn’t exist for
its own sake. If you have authority, it’s there so you can carry out certain
obligations. That means you have a responsibility to carry out those
obligations, and so you should be held to account for how well you discharge
your responsibility. Conversely, if you’re given any responsibility, then you
should also be given the authority to carry out that responsibility. Ideally,
authority and responsibility are two equally matched sides of the same coin. When
authority and responsibility aren’t balanced, problems arise. If a person is
given authority without a corresponding responsibility, it’s chaotic for
everyone. It can lead to authoritarian leadership, bullying, and abuse. Conversely,
if a person is given responsibility without a corresponding authority, the
person will often feel frustrated, they won’t be able to achieve their goals, their
motivation will be squashed, they can be blamed for things they can’t control,
and they can end up disillusioned and undermining the whole organisation.

Authority is a reality of life. Many of
us have authority of one form or another. Some kinds of authority are clear. Political
leaders have authority over the people in their constituency. Bosses and
managers have authority over their employees. Teachers have authority over
their students. And many employees—even those who don’t have the title
“manager”—still have quite a lot of authority in certain areas: for example, a
council worker has authority to stop traffic. And none of that authority exists
for its own sake. Any authority we have has a corresponding responsibility.
That’s true for everyone. But for believers in Christ, this principle is
especially significant. That’s because believers in Christ are, fundamentally,
people who are under authority: the authority of the “Lord” Jesus Christ. That
means we have a responsibility, not just to our job, but to Christ himself. This
is the point that Paul is making when he addresses “Masters” in his letter to
the Ephesians:

Masters, act the same way towards your slaves, giving up the use of threats, by recognising that both their and your Master is in heaven and shows no favouritism.Ephesians 6:9

In the original language in which Paul
wrote, the same word kyrios was used to describe both the “Lord” Jesus
Christ and “masters” of slaves. That’s because, despite the differences between
the two, the same basic idea—authority—applies to both. And here in Ephesians
6:9, Paul is deliberately making a point based on this idea of authority. Paul is
here speaking directly to “masters” of slaves, and he is reminding them that
they themselves have a “master”: the “Lord” Jesus Christ. But what Paul says
here isn’t just limited to first-century slave masters. It applies to anyone
who has authority over others. And that means it applies to most of us, in
various ways, depending on what authority we might have.

Act the same way

Paul begins by urging masters to “act the
same way”. The same way as what? Paul is referring back to what he has just
written in the previous verses to first-century slaves (see my post on Ephesians
6:5–8). He’s saying, quite radically, that believing masters should
adopt the same kind of attitudes and resulting actions that he’s just told
their slaves to adopt!