Should I “Submit” to an Unjust Boss? – LIVE Q&A for May 8, 2025
Should I “Submit” To an Unjust Boss?
From Anne via email: Question on 1 Peter 2:18-19. It says to servants to be subject to your masters, not only to the good and gentle but also to the unjust. This they say is a gracious thing, but when do I know that the injustice is my way to offer God glory, and if it is too much and that I need to leave the company? Thank you, Pastor and team.
The quick answer is, Yes – up to a point. Let’s explain, beginning with the passage.
1 Peter 2:18-20
Servants, be submissive to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the harsh. For this is commendable, if because of conscience toward God one endures grief, suffering wrongfully. For what credit is it if, when you are beaten for your faults, you take it patiently? But when you do good and suffer, if you take it patiently, this is commendable before God.
- [18] Servants, be submissive to your masters: The command to submit to masters isn’t just to those who work for masters that are good and gentle, but also to those who are harsh. If we must endure hardship because of our Christian standards, it is then [19] commendable before God.
- [20] For what credit is it if, when you are beaten for your faults, you take it patiently? To be punished for our wrongs is no credit to us. But when we are punished for doing good and endure it [20] patiently, we are complimented before God.
- “It appears from this that the poor Christians, and especially those who had been converted to Christianity in a state of slavery, were often grievously abused; they were buffeted because they were Christians, and because they would not join with their masters in idolatrous worship.” (Clarke)
There are similar passages in Ephesians 6:5-8, Colossians 3:22-25, 1 Timothy 6:1-2, Titus 2:9-10.
Titus 2:9-10
Exhort bondservants to be obedient to their own masters, to be well pleasing in all things, not answering back, not pilfering, but showing all good fidelity, that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things.
- The principles of submission are strong, are difficult – but they are not unlimited. We obey God rather than man (Acts 4:18-20), and God never commands unreserved, absolute submission on a horizontal or human level.
- If we use the analogy of slave and masters to correspond to employees and employers, it should be kept in mind that God alsogives commands to masters. It isn’t a one-ways street; before God, workers have obligations to their bosses, but the bosses also have obligations to their workers.
Colossians 4:1
Masters, give your bondservants what is just and fair, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven.
Ephesians 6:9
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.
- Apart from a specific leading from God, if you can improve your situation, do it!
1 Corinthians 7:21
Were you called while a slave? Do not be concerned about it; but if you can be made free, rather use it.
A job commitment is real, but it isn’t like a marriage commitment – “till death do us part.”
What does 1 Corinthians 15:2 mean by the phrase “believe in vain”?
1 Corinthians 15:1-2 – Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you–unless you believed in vain.
In this context, to believe in vain is to fail to hold fast the word that Paul preached to them. Paul explains that the word he preached to them was simply bringing them the gospel. So, we understand that to depart from the gospel is to have believed in vain.
Here’s one way that this could be lived out. Remember the parable of the soils where Jesus described a farmer who went out to sow and cast his seed out upon many different kinds of soils. In one type of soil, there was a thin layer of dirt over a rocky shelf. The seed was implanted in the dirt and grew, but because of the thin, rocky shelf underneath the dirt, it could not put down deep roots. Therefore, it never took root, and the plant died. It sprung up quickly, but it did not continue. You could say there’s a sense in which that plant began to grow in vain, because the growth did not continue, and it showed that it never really took root.
Paul is saying to the Corinthians that it’s necessary for believers to hold fast to the gospel. That’s the word he preached to them. Remember how it begins here, “Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which you also received, and in which you stand, by which also you are saved if you hold fast.” To believe in vain is to have let go of the gospel, to no longer hold fast to the truth.
It must be admitted that there are some people who make a start in the Christian life, but they have a very real difficulty in continuing on. You could say that if the difficulty continues and they abandon the faith because of it, there’s a sense that they believed in vain from the beginning.
What is the glory Jesus gave to His disciples in John 17:22?
God declares that He shares His glory with no one. In John 17:22 Jesus gives a glory (given to Him by the Father). Is the glory that God shares with no one the same glory that Jesus gave to His disciples or is it a different glory, and what did the glory given to the disciples entail?
John 17:22 – And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one.
This is a very good question. The answer gets a little philosophical. There is a glory of essence, a glory that comes upon a being or is resident within a being, a glory from the inside out. It’s a glory that abides and doesn’t fade. This glory is essential to a person in who they are.
That’s the glory that God the Son shared with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, as being the three persons of the Godhead, the one God, Yahweh, in three persons. That’s what we believe as Christians. We don’t believe in three gods. We believe in one God in three persons. So that glory is a glory of essence of being. It’s just resident within. It can’t be any other way.
Then there is a glory that is bestowed, being granted from one person to another. You know, when Moses went up on Mount Sinai, he received such a spectacular encounter with God that his face shone with sort of a reflected glory of God. But we know about that glory that it faded. It didn’t last. That’s because that glory wasn’t from Moses’ essence or his very being, but it was something bestowed upon him from a greater being, God Himself.
So, that’s the difference between the two kinds of glory. It is a head-scratching, Jesus-praising, Spirit-glorifying thing that there is any sense in which God shares His glory with us. But it is true, there is a sense in which God does exactly that. However, it’s not the glory that is inherent within us. It’s not resident in our being. Its glory bestowed as a gift upon us by a superior being, God.
Is “turning from sin” something you do to get saved, or is it something you do as a result or byproduct of being saved?
I think of faith and repentance as being two sides to the same coin. Repentance is a natural corollary of faith. To put your faith in Jesus Christ means to trust in, rely on and cling to Jesus. That’s the very practical definition given to us by our dear brother Kenneth Wuest in his great works on the Greek New Testament.
So, if the New Testament word for faith or belief carries the idea of trusting in, relying on and clinging to Jesus, an exchange must happen. I cannot trust in, rely on and cling to Jesus without ceasing to trust in, rely on and cling to myself or the world or my sinful ways or anything else. In other words, I can’t grab on to Jesus until I let go of other things. Repentance is the letting go. Faith is the grabbing on to Jesus, receiving what He gives. Faith is not a work. There’s a sense in which repentance isn’t even a work. Repentance is a forsaking. Faith is a receiving. And those aren’t works that earn salvation. They’re just the open hands which receive salvation.
So, is turning from sin something you do to get saved? No, but it is part of receiving salvation, so much so that we can say confidently that all who are saved will repent and believe, and that all who repent and believe will be saved. It’s two sides of the same coin. I don’t like to separate faith from repentance. We don’t repent or believe in order to earn salvation, but simply to receive what God has freely given. I do believe, though, that this perspective would put me at odds with our Calvinistic brethren.
I do believe that faith comes before being born again. Faith comes before regeneration. There are a lot of reasons why I believe that, and maybe we could get into that another time. But I think that God wants us to think that faith comes before being born again. That’s the natural way in which the New Testament speaks about it. Even if it were possibly true that you’re born again a nanosecond before you believe, that’s not how God wants us to think. God wants us to tell people to believe and be born again, not to hope that they are born again, and afterwards to believe.
In sanctification, do good works and new behaviors ever become automatic?
Is any part of the result of sanctification that good works become ‘automatic’? Or do we have to manually apply learned behavior like reading the Bible & applying what we learn? Any verses that say new behavior can also be automatic?
Romans 12:1-2 – I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Paul teaches in Romans 12:1-2 that we should not be conformed to the world and instead be transformed by the renewing of our mind. I think that when we are truly transformed by the renewing of our mind, it becomes a lot easier to obey and follow after God in the ways He would want us to as disciples. I don’t know if I would use the word automatic, but something close to that.
But it also really involves the formation and strengthening of habits. I think many Christians underappreciate the power of habit to shape someone’s behavior. As Christians, we need to realize that God makes us new men or new women on the inside. Praise the Lord for that! But we need to do what we can to bring our habits into conformity with the new man that God has made us in Jesus Christ. Remember, your mind is the fundamental battlefield, so be transformed there by the renewing of your mind.
