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!