Servants Who Adorn the Doctrine
9 Exhort servants to be in subjection to their own masters and to be well-pleasing in all things, not contradicting, 10 not stealing, but showing all good fidelity, that they may adorn the doctrine of God, our Savior, in all things.
The people with the least standing in the household are given the largest reason for what they do: they make the teaching look like what it is.
The last group in the code is the one with no legal standing at all. Servants are to be subject, well-pleasing, not contradicting, not pilfering, but showing all good fidelity. As with Philemon, the letter directs conduct inside a structure whose ground the gospel removes elsewhere — a slave and a master who are brothers are already something the arrangement cannot describe Philemon 1:16.
What is remarkable is the reason attached: that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things. The verb is kosmeō G2885, to arrange and set off to advantage — the word behind ordering a room or a woman's dress. Teaching is treated as something that can be well or badly displayed. And the display is entrusted here to household slaves. In a world where such people were counted as furniture, the letter makes them the setting in which the gospel is shown. That is a larger dignity than the code's opening groups receive.
settled What this mark means