<p>6:9 <i>And you, masters, do the same things to them, and stop your threatening; knowing that he who is both their master and yours is in heaven, and that there is no partiality with him</i>- &quot;The same things&quot; refers to the good things of :8. For masters to do good to slaves was a paradigm breaking idea in the first century world, where a slave was not considered a person but a machine. Clearly it is believing masters who are being addressed here, and some of them practiced &quot;threatening&quot;; quite against the spirit of their Lord who when He suffered, &quot;threatened not&quot; (1 Pet. 2:23 s.w.). Masters were to realize that they too are in slavery- to the Lord Jesus. He will not take account of someone's social status in His judgments of people- &quot;there is no partiality with Him&quot; matches the comment in :8, &quot;whether he be slave or free&quot;. Surely nobody actually said in so many words that the Lord took account of their higher social status; but in their hearts they assumed this, and so Paul directly tackles that attitude. I noted on 5:32 that Paul uses the same principles about the unity of Jew and Gentile to reason that husband and wife are to be united in Christ. Here too, &quot;there is no partiality with the Lord&quot; is used both about the unity between Jew and Gentile (Rom. 2:11) and now here about the essential unity between master and slave in Christ. Paul is teaching far more than that masters and slaves should be civil, reasonable and tolerant towards each other; but beyond that, they were in fact united together as one in Christ. This is the result of baptism into the same Lord (Gal. 3:27-29).</p>