Who Are You When No One's Looking? — Ephesians 6:1–9 | Season 2, Episode 14

Who are you when no one's watching? How do you treat people when there's no audience, no accountability, no one keeping score?

That's the question Paul brings the gospel home to in this episode of the Set Free Stay Free Bible study podcast. Host Matt Dawson works through Ephesians 6:1–9, where Paul takes the thread he started in chapter 5 — submit to one another out of reverence for Christ — and pulls it through every relationship structure in daily life.

Children and parents. Servants and masters. Employees and employers. In every one of these relationships, Paul's answer is the same: the way you respond isn't ultimately about the person across from you. It's about Christ. You belong to him. You serve him. And he sees everything, whether anyone else does or not.

Using the SOAP method (Scripture, Observation, Application, Prayer), Matt unpacks what it really means to honor your father and mother — especially when the relationship is painful or broken, why obedience in the workplace isn't weakness but service to Christ, and why those in positions of power are held to the same standard as everyone else. There are no favorites with God.

This Ephesians Bible study is for anyone who wants to close the gap between who they are in public and who they are when it's just them and one other person.

In this episode:

• What honoring your parents actually means — and what it doesn't
• Why the promise attached to this commandment still applies today
• How Paul's instructions to servants and masters apply to modern work culture
• Why Gen Z's ideas about workplace agency and this passage are worth wrestling with
• The one thread running through chapters 5 and 6 — it's always about Christ
• A closing prayer for every relationship to be rooted in belonging to God

📖 Passage: Ephesians 6:1–9 (New Living Translation)

🔍 Keywords: Ephesians Bible study, Bible study podcast, SOAP method Bible study, Christian Bible study, Scripture-first Bible study, Set Free Stay Free, Matt Dawson, walking through the Bible, Christian discipleship podcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome back to the Set Free Stay Free Bible Study Podcast. We are in episode 14 as we get ready to finish the book of Ephesians, the letter to the church in Ephesus. But as always, I want to start with a quick question. Who are you when no one's looking? Right? Who are you? How do you respond? What do you say? What are some of the things that that you engage with when there's really nobody around? And today we're going to look at this section of the end of the letter that Paul writes to the Church of Ephesus, where he really addresses, I mean, he takes the gospel and brings it as practically home as possible, which is how we engage in conversations with other people. And so I want us to pray before we dive in today. We're diving into chapter six of Ephesians. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. Just to reveal to us what you will and let us learn from what you have us to learn from today, especially as practically as uh Paul makes it here in Ephesians six. We're so grateful for it, and we pray all this in your name, Jesus. Amen. As always, guys, we use the SOAP framework for our Bible study. That's scripture, observation, application, prayer. You can click the QR code to get a resource about this. I've I've recorded a video about how you can read the Bible every day and get something out of it and enjoy it. Um you can click the QR code or I will, and you can download. There's a link in the pin description as well as the description of this video for a framework to help you walk through this soap Bible study framework. But we're gonna apply it to our reading of chapter six, just the first ten verses today, as we uh dive in. You guys ready? Here we go. Ephesians 6 1 says this children, obey your parents because you belong to the Lord, for this is the right thing to do. Honor your father and mother. This is the first commandment with a promise that if you honor your father and mother, things will go well for you, and you will have a long life on the earth. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger by the way you treat them. Rather, bring them up with the discipline and instruction that comes from the Lord. Let me just pause there. Great context. Um remember we finished chapter five, where we were talking about what does it look like to live as children of light? What does it look like to uh put others before ourselves? And then the big long section in chapter five, which we ended with in episode 13, was hey, you know, what does it look like in a marriage? And that's what I think you can remember, verse 21 sets the whole stage for all of us to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. It's Ephesians 5, 21. It's a great verse to memorize. What does it look like when we operate in such a way that it's not the person across from us that we're actually living and responding to, but we're actually responding to God. That's where Paul starts us in Ephesians 5. He started Ephesians 4 that way, in terms of how we're called to live. But now he's getting really detailed in terms of what does it look like in our relationships? Husbands and wives, then chapter 6, he makes the turn. Children, obey your parents, honor your father and mother. And guys, this is a hard one, especially if you are someone who struggles with a relationship with your parents. I know many people who struggle to understand what honoring looks like when our parents are sinful people. Maybe they're not believers, maybe they're not a part of faith, maybe they you've got trauma from the past, maybe they've gotten older and nastier, not better with age, but worse. And so uh I think this is one of those things that people really struggle with because the Bible says, hey, honor your father and mother, right? Uh children obey your parents. Now, understand, when he says children obey your parents, he's talking about children, okay. You're raised as a child in a home. Most people that struggle with this are adults, are adults because they don't really understand the promise that has been made, which is that when we honor our father and mother, we we experience a blessing from God. Now, that does not mean that the relationship is perfect. It doesn't. Honoring someone does not mean you're close to someone. Honoring someone does not mean you continue to bring yourself to them and as as be to be vulnerable and to be hurt by someone that has a high probability that they're going to abuse or hurt or just because of the dysfunction in the relationship cause problems. That does not what that is not what honoring means. Matter of fact, I'm teaching on this uh in a couple weeks at our church. It just said the the fact that it was part of the Ten Commandments, the fact that it was a part of that, the fact that it has, as Paul says, it comes with the blessing, it comes with a promise that when you honor, when you choose, see this, you're obeying your parents because you belong to the Lord. We honor our father and mother because we belong to God. That is the only reason. Listen, there's lots of relationships that I think some people feel like they should just wash their hands of, cut off. And again, I'm not a counselor for you, I'm not somebody that's trying to tell you how to manage the dysfunction in a relationship. But the idea here is that to leave your heart open to honoring them, okay, which is to honor them not because they're worthy of it, but because you belong to God, is a separate situation. It's something that you need to really work through. Well, what does honoring my mom and dad really look like? Right? What is, I mean, again, we have broken homes, there's lots of situations going on, but what does that look like for me? And I think this is a great place to pause and not just observe what it says, but to figure out that how that applies to me. You know, why is there a promise attached to this? How does this affect me and my relationship with my parents if it's a strained relationship? Now I'm gonna make a quick pause. If the relationship is strained because of your ego, your ideology, your preferences, your choices, you have to own some of that. Okay? Not saying that there's not two sides of every story, but we went through a whole season, political season, COVID season, where we saw people, well, I'm not going home for Thanksgiving because my parents voted for you know Biden or Trump or whatever. I get just I'm cutting my parents out of my life. Listen, you're an idiot. That's not at all what you should do. That's not at all pretense to be able to do that. But again, doesn't mean you have to be close in your relationship. But this idea that, like, who needs them? Dude, I take it very seriously when the Bible says to honor your father and mother. Even in the most strained situations, even in the most broken situations. I tell people, leave the light on, have your heart you know protected uh as best you can from the emotional damage and the dysfunction, but find a way to forgive and honor your parents as best you can with the help of the Holy Spirit. God will help you. Okay. Falls in line with the second part of this we just read. Fathers do not provoke your children to anger, right? By the way that you treat them. Okay, now this is just a father's thing. It says fathers, she's talking to parents. Okay. There's a lot of times I really do believe that for whatever reason, fear, control, whatever the case is, parents can approach their children, especially when they're older, in the wrong way. They don't really understand how the relationship and the dynamic has changed, and they can, even when they're younger, cause a lot of damage because it's all about control, it's all about control based on fear, it's all about your ego, right? And you don't even realize it until it's too late. And you provoke them to respond, you provoke them to anger, which is why Paul's given the warning here. Like, hey, children, yes. Honor your parents, yes. Hey, parents, right? Don't provoke an anger. Bring them up in the discipline and the instruction that comes from God. Okay, this is both ways how this works in terms of relationships. Let's keep going. Okay? We're gonna go to verse, I believe, five. This is a tough one because a lot of people don't like these words, okay? It says, Slaves obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them as sincerely as you would serve Christ. Try to please them all the time, not just when they're watching you. As slaves for Christ, we do the will of God with all of our heart. Work with enthusiasm, as though you are working for the Lord rather than for people. And remember that the Lord's going to reward each one of you for the good that we do, whether whether we're slaves or whether we are free. Masters treat your slaves in the same way. Don't threaten them. Remember, you both have the same master in heaven, and he has no favorites. Now, people get really tore up over the um the language because this is a verse that people point to all the time. Well, the Bible promotes slavery or doesn't say what I want to say about slavery, and we're thinking chattel slavery and the way things have been for the last couple hundred years, and really worse than that before. But here's the deal there have been slaves since the beginning of time, and if you read Revelation, there are going to be some form of slavery even to the end of days. We're talking worldwide because so much of people's sinfulness runs on a kind of a hierarchy system where people are going to serve others. That's the way it is. Don't don't hear me say that that's a rubber stamp on slavery. But Paul is dealing with, again, this this uh this Greek area, he's dealing with people that he knows are involved in these relationships, and they are trying to follow Christ. There are slaves, there are masters, there are people that are engaged in these systems that are trying to follow Christ and do what God has called them to do. And so he is directing what this ancient form of slavery, or at least what they could call a dulos, okay, which is a bond servant. A lot of people sometimes enter those things. It's not the same as chattel slavery, which is property, which is ownership, which is the abuse of that. It's this it's this idea. Matter of fact, some of the some of the translations use the word servant because they don't like the word slave. So they use the word servant, and either way, right, servant or slave, the relationship is still the same. I have taught this very oftentimes, even in modern context with employer, employee, you know, situations, because when he when he goes down the list, it kind of fits with all of it, right? Because you're you're gonna spend your life serving someone, whether it's by choice, whether it's in an employment relationship, it's just the way it is. So even in those words, just hear the heart of what he's saying. He's saying, look, you might be in a situation where you're the one serving, you're the doulos. By the way, Paul calls himself a doulos for Christ, right? He he sees himself in even a relationship with Jesus that he also serves as a slave. He's a slave of Christ. He says, You're gonna obey with deep respect and fear, and you serve them sincerely. And he goes on again because you would serve Christ this way, right? And and and you don't just do this when they're watching you, right? You you do this with all your heart. You you you serve in such a way that honors God. And again, apply this across the board in every relationship you have. I mean, there's a modern day kind of uh weirdness to employee employee relationships, and we got a lot of Gen Z and Alpha coming up, and they got a whole different idea of agency and what I deserve and what should happen with managers and people that are above me, and I'm not here to serve you, and I'm buying, and now you're selling, and I'm I mean, it's it's listen, it's it's weird. Okay, you've never started out in the mail room, you don't know what serving people really looks like, right? There's just there's a there's a weirdness to the way people think it should be immediately. Not saying there shouldn't be respect in those things, but the way Paul's talking about this is he's trying to give them the guardrails. Look, you're gonna be in a situation where you're serving others. I want you to serve them with all your heart. I want you to serve in such a way that it's not just because they're looking or they're watching or they're paying attention, but because you serve Christ. And he goes on, you're gonna do this with all your heart and all your enthusiasm as if you're working for the Lord and not actually working for people. Why? Because God rewards you for that. He sees, right? Whether somebody else sees or not, he always sees. And then I love the fact that again, he gives the context to masters. Even when you go back to Deuteronomy and the Levitical law, even when God gave laws around bondservants, you know, they couldn't, you know, after the seventh year, they had to forgive the debt. I mean, there's all sorts of stuff you want to go back and study that. He even gave, he always gave instructions, not just on how people served, but how people who were who those masters, how they needed to treat those people. And and again, that's part of what God said needs to happen if you find yourself in those relationships. Paul is kind of echoing those same things. Paul says, Masters, you're gonna treat your slaves the same way, right? Not not because but because you belong to Christ. You don't threaten them, right? Remember, you both have the same master in heaven, and he has no favorites. I find oftentimes that a modern work culture, people can get a little too big for their britches, right? They can get a little too into themselves and think they have the power over people. Um, I know there are some work environments where people, I guess they just they just constantly work under a threat of being fired, a threat of the power being sort of abused over them. That's a horrible work environment. Nobody wants that. But but again, there's lots of places that sort of have this have this kind of culture built into them. Paul would address that same culture. I mean, guys, that's not the way to do this. And especially, again, he's talking to the church. He's talking to people in the family of faith who have that kind of power, who have that kind of dominance in someone's life. You you might have bondservants in your care. You need to treat them the same way. You need to treat them as if you are working for Christ because we all have a master, right? We all have this master, and he doesn't play any favorites, right? Whether you're slave or free, he doesn't play any favorites on those things. And so he's again, I think, I think we miss this going from five into six. The the the context that he wants to bring the gospel home and the work of the power of Christ in us home in every relationship, right? In every relationship. So here he's talking about husbands and wives, he's talking about the church before that in terms of how the church functions, and now he's talking about fathers and mothers and kids and honoring them. Now he's talking about a power structure. He's talking about masters and slaves and servants and bondservants. He's trying to hit all these because he really wants us to pay attention to the fact that in every situation we respond because of Christ, not because of the people that we're in relationship with. Now we do have responsibilities, he gave that to each one in terms of who we are in relationship with, but he's constantly coming back to the root. All of this is happening because of Christ. All of the way in which we're going to respond to this is because of Christ. And so I think that's my biggest observation today is that the thread that goes through chapter five into now chapter six as he continues driving this home, is that the way in which we live, whether I mean when people when no one's looking, right? Like when it's when it's just us and maybe one other person and it's just uh you know, it's in our relationships, what's that thread? Is the thread personal agency and individualistic freedom and individualism in terms of how I feel that you should treat me and your truth and my truth, and we're gonna argue about these things? Or in all these relationships, is it going to be that the way I live and and work and serve and father and a child to a parent, to a husband to a wife, in every single one of those things, am I approaching it first and foremost as the fact that I belong to Christ? That that the submission to one another is because of Christ, that the honoring, that the working and serving is all because of me serving and working and belonging to Jesus. And even at the end, even if I'm the one, like I'm a boss, I have employees, right? I have a certain amount of whatever you call it, power, uh, influence, you know, decisions I can make that can affect other people's lives. Yeah. I have to remember that, you know, that's I don't need to be making decisions and trying to control people based out of fear, which is what he says by threatening. Hey, we all serve a master. We all serve as servants of God. And he doesn't play any favorites. Doesn't he doesn't care that I'm the pastor or the one in charge of this, you know, these people at this season of life. He doesn't care the person that did it before me. He doesn't care that there's gonna be somebody that does it after me, doesn't care what position you hold. All of our responses are because of who God is. So I hope that's something you're gonna wrestle with today. I hope that there's some elements of that in terms of just your observation and how we can apply this even today, even today as we go out and and and work and live and parent and and and relationships and all these kinds of things. What does it look like for us today to apply his word to our lives? Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, thank you so much and uh really do so grateful for your word and the challenge today, and that in every relationship, the way in which we operate should always start with the fact that we belong to you. It should not start with the other person, it should not start with my ego, it should not start with where I think things should be or how things should operate. But God, ultimately, that you see everything, that you reward those who serve in such a way that they're serving you and not men. They're working for you and not people. So, God, I pray that you'll give us opportunities today just to apply this for every boss, for every husband and wife, for every father and a child and mother and child, for every other relationship. Again, people who are employed and employers and people who are maybe across the world living in those kind of bond servant relationships. God, just pray that you would just continue to reveal your spirit and your power through your word on how we can live in the freedom you've called us to live in Christ. We're so grateful today, God, for your word. We pray all this in your name. Amen. Thank you guys again for tuning in. We only have one more episode left uh for this study in Ephesians. I'm excited because the next part of chapter six, he talks about spiritual warfare. He talks about how we can uh guard ourselves, how we can what what things we're given for the offensive and what give things we're given for our character and for the defensive. And a great way to understand and see the spiritual battle that's happening in our lives. Don't forget to like and engage with this post. Don't forget to connect with us on social media. If you are listening to this to Spotify or Apple Podcasts, you can always DM me or email me at info at mattdawson.tv. I'll be happy to get you the resources you need, connect you to some things. I got some exciting things coming up before the the next uh season that's coming up. We got a new community we're gonna be launching soon. We've got a few more products we're gonna be launching soon. I'm super excited about it. I hope you guys have an amazing day.