Master

Master is a person who holds authority over a household, servants, or workers, and the word also serves as a title of respect for a teacher or lord.

The text says household authority is ordered toward righteousness: God says of Abraham, “For I have known him, to the end that he may command his children and his household after him, that they may keep the way of Yahweh, to do righteousness and justice” (Genesis 18:19). The text also places human mastery under divine accountability in matters of labor. Leviticus 19:13 says, “The wages of a hired servant shall not remain with you all night until the morning,” and Deuteronomy 24:15 says, “In his day you shall give him his wages, neither shall the sun go down on it.” Job 31:15 grounds that duty in common creation: “Didn’t he who made me in the womb make him? Didn’t one fashion us in the womb?” Malachi 3:5 says Yahweh will be “a swift witness against ... those who oppress the hireling in his wages,” and James 5:4 says withheld wages “cry out” and “have entered into the ears of the Lord of Armies.” First Timothy 5:18 cites the principle, “The laborer is worthy of his wages.” Ephesians 6:9 addresses “masters” directly: they are to “do the same things to them, and give up threatening,” knowing that “he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no partiality with him.”

The text also uses master as a teaching title. Matthew 10:25 says, “It is enough for the disciple that he be like his teacher, and the servant like his lord. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more those of his household!” Matthew 26:18 has Jesus send disciples with “The Teacher says, ‘My time is at hand,’” and John 13:13–14 records, “You call me, ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord.’ You say so correctly, for so I am. If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.” One way to read this is that the title does not remove authority but defines its use as service.

Christian traditions differ over how to apply the term. Some communities call Christ “Master” and also give analogous teaching authority to ordained ministers; others use “Master” almost exclusively for Christ and prefer functional titles for church leaders. Traditions also differ in reading the master-worker texts: some stress the duties of masters and the sin of withheld wages, while others stress that both master and servant stand under the same heavenly Master (Ephesians 6:9). These are differences of emphasis and application, not of the plain commands cited.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.