Paul’s instructions to servants (Eph. 6:5-8) are full of meaning for all who profess to be servants of Jesus Christ.

First, they show that any honorable work, no matter how menial, can be done for the glory of God. The slaves to whom Paul wrote may have mopped floors, cooked meals, washed dishes, tended animals, or tended crops. Yet the apostle said that these tasks could be done “as to Christ” (v. 5); that in doing them, the slaves were “bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God” (v. 6); that they were “doing service as to the Lord” (v. 7); and that they would be rewarded by the Lord for doing a “good” job (v. 8).

It is easy in our thinking to make a dichotomy between the secular and the sacred. We think of our weekday work as secular, while our preaching, witnessing, and Bible teaching are sacred. But this passage teaches that for the Christian there need be no such distinction. Realizing this, the wife of a well-known preacher put a sign over her kitchen sink that read, “Divine services are held here three times a day.”

There is another lesson here, namely, that no matter how low a man may be on the social ladder, he is not excluded from the choicest blessings and rewards of Christianity. He may never trade in his work clothes for a business suit, but if his work is of such good quality that it brings glory to Christ, he will be fully rewarded. “knowing that whatever good anyone does, he will receive the same from the Lord, whether he is a slave or free” (v. 8).