Colossians 3:22–25

Colossians 3:22 — "Servants, obey in all things those who are your masters according to the flesh, not just when they are looking, as men-pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing God."

Paul addresses douloi — household slaves, the most economically and socially vulnerable members of the Colossian congregation. His qualifier "according to the flesh" (kata sarka) is theologically decisive: it signals that this obedience is bounded, provisional, and located within the transient order of fleshly existence. These masters hold authority only in the material dimension of life; they are not lords of the soul. The phrase implicitly preserves a domain — the spiritual, the interior — that no earthly master can command.

The contrast between "men-pleasers" (anthrōpareskoi) and "singleness of heart" (haplotēti kardias) is the moral heart of the verse. "Men-pleasers" are those who perform only when observed — an ancient form of what we might now call performative compliance. Haplotēs (singleness, simplicity, integrity) appears also in Ephesians 6:5 and connotes an undivided interiority, a will that is not split between a public performance and a private reservation. To obey in singleness of heart "fearing God" (phoboumenoi ton kyrion) — where kyrios likely refers to Christ — is to bring one's invisible motivations into alignment with one's visible actions. This is an interior reformation, not merely a behavioral prescription.

Colossians 3:23 — "And whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men."

"Whatever you do" (ho ean poiēte) universalizes the principle beyond servitude to encompass all human activity. The adverb "heartily" translates ek psychēs — literally "from the soul," from the deepest center of one's personhood. This phrase echoes the Shema (Deut 6:5), where Israel is commanded to love God "with all your soul" (bechol nafshecha). Paul is effectively embedding the great commandment inside the experience of daily labor. The most menial task — grinding grain, hauling water, copying a manuscript — becomes an act of worship when performed ek psychēs toward the Lord.

"As for the Lord and not for men" introduces the defining reversal: the true audience of all work is not the earthly master but Christ himself. This is not a counsel of indifference toward one's employer, but a radical expansion of moral seriousness. Because Christ sees what no human employer can see, the standard is raised rather than lowered.

Colossians 3:24 — "knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ."

The logic is eschatological: present faithfulness secures a future inheritance (klēronomia). For a slave, the word "inheritance" would have carried enormous force — slaves in Roman law could not inherit; they were property, not heirs. Paul declares that in the economy of Christ, the slave has an inheritance that no legal system can confer or withhold. This is a direct reversal of the social order, echoing the Beatitudes and anticipating the great eschatological leveling of Matthew 25.

The final clause — "for you serve the Lord Christ" (tō kyriō Christō douleuete) — is a stunning inversion. The doulos (slave) who obeys a human kyrios (lord) is simultaneously serving the divine Kyrios. The relationship is not abrogated but transfigured: what appeared to be service to a man is revealed as liturgy offered to God.

Colossians 3:25 — "But he who does wrong will receive again for the wrong that he has done, and there is no partiality."

The final verse pivots to warning, and its subject shifts ambiguously — it can address the wrongdoing servant, but given the parallel passage in Ephesians 6:9 where masters are specifically warned, most patristic readers understood this as addressed primarily to masters. "No partiality" (prosōpolēmpsia) — literally "receiving of a face," i.e., favoritism — is a principle drawn from Deuteronomy 10:17 and Acts 10:34: God judges by deeds, not by social rank. The master who abuses his position will face the same impartial tribunal as the servant who shirks his duty. This is a quietly subversive statement: it demolishes the legal and social immunity that slave-owners enjoyed in Roman courts by placing them before a court where their wealth buys nothing.

Catholic tradition finds in these verses a foundational text for the theology of work as vocation and sanctification. Pope St. John Paul II's encyclical Laborem Exercens (1981) grounds its entire vision of human labor in the principle that work is not merely economic activity but a participation in God's own creative act and a means of personal sanctification. Colossians 3:23 — working "from the soul, as for the Lord" — is the scriptural linchpin of this vision. Work performed with this orientation possesses what Laborem Exercens calls "subjective" value: it shapes and dignifies the worker, not merely the product.

St. John Chrysostom, preaching on this passage (Homilies on Colossians, Homily X), insists that Paul's counsel does not sanctify the institution of slavery but rather provides enslaved Christians with a means of interior freedom unavailable by any external emancipation: "Thou art a slave of men in thy body; but in thy soul thou art free." The Fathers consistently interpreted the "singleness of heart" as a form of the undivided love of God, connecting it to the purity of heart praised in the Beatitudes (Mt 5:8).

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (§2427) explicitly teaches that "human work proceeds directly from persons created in the image of God and called to prolong the work of creation," and (§2426) that the Gospel "does not legitimate any existing social order, but rather illuminates it from within." This precisely captures Paul's method: not revolution from without, but transformation from within, through the hidden agency of a God who sees all work.

The "no partiality" of verse 25 anticipates Catholic social teaching's insistence on the universal destination of goods and the equal dignity of all workers regardless of station — a principle central to Rerum Novarum (Leo XIII, 1891) and reiterated in Gaudium et Spes §29.

Few Catholics today are chattel slaves, but the spiritual dynamics Paul describes map precisely onto contemporary work life. The "men-pleaser" of verse 22 is the employee who works diligently only under surveillance — performing for performance reviews, for the open-plan office, for the camera — while coasting in private. Paul's counter-proposal is not more external accountability but a transformed interiority: work done ek psychēs, from the soul, because God is the real audience.

This has concrete implications. A nurse who gives full attention to a difficult patient at 3 a.m., when no supervisor is watching, is practicing verse 23. A tradesman who does careful work inside a wall that will never be seen is practicing verse 23. A parent doing the unglamorous, unnoticed labor of raising children is practicing verse 23. The Opus Dei tradition and the broader Catholic theology of "sanctification of ordinary work" — articulated by St. Josemaría Escrivá in The Way and Friends of God — builds its entire spirituality directly on this Pauline foundation.

The warning of verse 25 calls today's Catholics — particularly those in managerial or supervisory positions — to examine their treatment of subordinates, contractors, gig workers, and domestic employees. The divine court shows no partiality; the powerful are not exempt.