Come and study Holy Scriptures with us as Father Stephen DeYoung teaches verse by verse on the podcast,

The Whole Council of God.

Father Stephen is a former Protestant pastor and Bible teacher in the Reformed Church,

but now an Orthodox priest serving at Archangel Gabriel Orthodox Church in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Verse 9, and you masters do the same things to them, giving up threatening,

knowing that your own master also is in heaven and there is no partiality with him.

That there is no partiality with him is important because it's calling back to a whole range of references of the Old Testament.

To Yahweh, the God of Israel, who is no respecter of persons, takes no bribe, has no partiality.

And in all of those cases, the reference comes, I won't say all, there might be one, one or two.

Almost all of those cases, it's in reference to God is the protector of orphans, widows, right?

Him reminding Israel, you were slaves in Egypt, so you did, right?

So St. Paul's calling that, when he talks to people who own slaves here right he says

give up this is your own master is heaven meaning you're a slave too right and reminding them of

all of that in the old testament about the deliverance from Egypt and what happened to the Egyptians

right about all of those sorts about how God protects the about the deliverance from Egypt and what happened to the Egyptians, right?

About all of those things, about how God protects the weak and the powerless, right?

So again, without saying you need to release your slaves, if they caught that reference and went back in red, right?

If they're familiar with the Torah, right?

He's basically saying they should free their slaves.

Right? He's basically saying they're walking a tightrope in terms of what happens when they have to answer to God.

And we're going to see, like I said, when we get to Philemon,

how this practically plays out with St. Paul basically saying,

...