Philemon Series Week 5: Treading the Road that Leads to Shackles

There’s a story told about an airman by the name of MacDonald and an unnamed Scottish chaplain, who had to bail out of their plane behind German lines during World War II. The two men were captured and separated at the prison; the chaplain went to the British side, and MacDonald to the American. While in the prison camp, the Americans jimmy rigged a radio and were able to get information about the war. Everyday, MacDonald would go to the fence and share the news with the chaplain by speaking Gaelic, a language the Germans didn’t understand. One day, MacDonald shared that the German High Command had given up. A few moments later, when the chaplain couriered the news the British side of the prison, the Brits erupted in shouts of celebration. Soon after, when the German guards found out what happened, they walked away from their posts, leaving the prison unguarded. The POWs were free. But in reality, they had been freed by the news, even though it took a little longer to be freed from their shackles (story told by Ray Bakke, the Executive Director of International Urban Associates). 

It’s this kind of freedom, that brings us back to our final week in our study in the letter to Philemon, where we’ll be reading the last four verses of the letter. Over the past four weeks we’ve covered both the letter’s intent, and the implications of the letter. In our first week we saw how Paul approached the whole situation. He could have approached it by attacking Philemon and commanding him to do what Paul wanted, but instead, he saw Philemon as God saw him. As an image bearer of God, who, though is lacking in an area of his faith, had still done a lot of good for the kingdom of God. This gives us a model by which to deal with our brothers and sisters. Too often we see an area that needs to be addressed in a fellow believer’s life and we attack them on it. Instead, Paul shows us that we need to recognize the good things God has done through them. We are to see people as image bearers and to extend grace to each other.

Following that, we saw how Philemon was lacking in an area of forgiveness towards his runaway slave Onesimus, because of this, Philemon’s ability to share his faith was stifled. God used the situation of Onesimus to not only bring the slave into a saving faith, but to grow Philemon to be a better disciple. This showed us that God is calling us to restored relationships, which is a high calling of God. Even if it brings temporary discomfort, our goal should be God’s goal, of restoring broken relationships as far as it concerns our side of the situation.

From there, we dove into two weeks of addressing the issue of slavery. Where we found that God’s original design did not include slavery, and so he has worked and is working to elevate people. God does this elevation by giving us principles to live out as light to break the bondages around us. We are to seek God to break the bondages of sin that still hold onto us, as we do so, we are to point others to Jesus who is the bondage breaker, and we are to enact God’s principles into seeking how we can participate in that bondage breaking work.

All this brings us to the final four verses of Philemon, where we’ll pick up them up in verse 22. Let’s read together. 

 

22 And one thing more: Prepare a guest room for me, because I hope to be restored to you in answer to your prayers.

23 Epaphras (app-a-fra-s), my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, sends you greetings. 24 And so do Mark, Aristarchus (air-a-stark-us), Demas and Luke, my fellow workers.

25 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.

Paul ends his letter to Philemon as he ends a lot of his letters. Paul shares his desire to visit Philemon, something he would end up never doing. Not long after this letter was sent out, Paul would be set free and then re-arrested. That second arrest would then lead to his beheading by order of the Emperor. 

Jesus had brought a self-righteous Pharisee, who had persecuted and shackled God’s people to a place of absolute humility. He had used Paul’s intellect to pen the majority of the New Testament. He had used Paul’s strengths and weaknesses as a model by which many other believers would look to. Paul’s words of, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ …(1 Corinthians 11:1)” are a call to us to see what God did through his life, and to imitate it’s ferocious desire to lay our lives down for the sake of the Gospel. 

These final words teach us a lesson of what Paul learned so well. He didn’t know what his outcome would be, he hoped it would be that he would continue on in Christ’s work, as he said to the Philippians, “21 For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. 22 If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. 23 I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. 24 But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account. (1:21-24)” And in that work, he hoped that restored relationships would continue. For Paul, he didn’t want to meet Jesus without having his temporal relationships being mended. 

And so we see that very thing with the mention of Mark. A young man who Paul once rejected because of the man’s lack of endurance for the Gospel’s sake. Yet, Paul was glad to have that relationship restored. 

But though Paul desired to return to Philemon, in his mention of others, he points his friend to the greater work. Epaphras (app-a-fra-s) was a fellow prison for the Gospel. Not just because proclaiming the Gospel led to his imprisonment, but because both he and Paul chose Christ over all things. The chains were monuments to a life dedicated to the Lord. All bondage from the world had been loosened, and the result was physical chains to quell the freedom these two men had in Jesus.

The mention of Mark, Aristarchus (air-a-stark-us), Demas and Luke show that Paul didn’t do the work of God in isolation. He worked alongside others, who cared for him. Two of which would write their own Gospels and add to the Scripture of the New Testament. It shows us that Paul valued them, and mentored them in Christ. Something we are also called to do. We are to pour what Christ has done for us into our own Marks and Lukes. Preparing the next generation of believers to walk the way of freedom not caring if it leads into the shackles of the world.

Why? Because we are satisfied with the grace of Jesus. There is nothing greater in this world than knowing we are in the presence of God, because of our Savior. We have done nothing to earn it, nothing to point to ourselves and say, “I did it.” We are only saved by the grace of God, and so understand that we hold no judgment over others, but we are servants of that grace, that we might be graceful, as we point others to the Saving Jesus. Then we will come to the same conclusion of Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)”

The letter to Philemon is a final moment in the life of Paul that shows us what really matters in life. Philemon stands at the cross roads of forgiveness and bitterness. Paul has chosen the path of forgiveness; so much so, that he would take on the burden of Onesimus if it meant that Philemon would walk the road with him. Paul proclaimed this when we wrote to the Romans, “For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh. (9:3)” Of course he couldn’t, we’re all responsible for our own choice to accept Jesus as Savior or not. Yet, in Paul we see a model of Christ, who did lay down his life for others to pay the penalty of sin. 

And knowing that consequences of sin, Paul desired that others might not face it, and so would willingly give up his own life. This example is the example that we are all called to. To lay down our lives for the sake of the Gospel. To forfeit ourselves for the sake of others. As Jesus stated, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:13)”

We are called to lay down our lives, that we may have many brothers and sisters in Christ. It is a call that brings temporary hardship, and eternal rewards. Not rewards of silver and gold, but rewards of God’s image bearers being snatched from an eternity away from God. And eternity of self-destruction in sin and death.

Paul’s final words, are a call to us as we close his final letter, to no longer be in the bondage of sin, and to seek forgiveness for both ourselves and the people around us. That we might walk in the way of our Savior, a path well treaded by the likes of Paul before us. God is calling us to shine with his forgiveness to the world. A forgiveness that was shown on the cross, and bought by the blood of God himself. The task wasn’t easy for him, and it won’t be for us, but the result is worth it. Jesus knew it, Paul knew it, and countless others who followed it knew it as well. As Polycarp, a second generation disciple of Jesus was heard saying when commanded to deny Jesus, “Eighty and six years I have served Him, and He has done me no wrong. How then can I blaspheme my King and Savior?” Let us show ourselves to be found in the long line of faithful believers that have gone before us.

My challenge for you this week, is to go before God in prayer with this one dangerous request, to be a faithful disciple to the end as Paul was. To lay down your will in every possible way, that Christ’s freedom would so break every tether that is on you, that it would lead you into cold shackles of imprisonment if need be. And that people would see your example, glorify our Father in heaven, and seek to walk the same path that you have tread. 

Let us be imitators of Paul, who imitated Christ so well for us. That we might bring glory to our Savior. Amen.

Philemon Series Week 4: Slavery Part 2: Working Against Bondage

  Four weeks ago we began to walk through Paul’s letter to Philemon. In that letter Paul calls on his brother in Christ to receive back his runaway slave, Onesimus, as a fellow brother in Christ. By receiving Onesimus as a brother in Christ, God’s intention is to correct a deficiency in the faith of Philemon and restore a broken relationship.

The vehicle by which this all occurs is through slavery. Slavery is an issue that gets brought up a lot when dealing with people that question, is God really good? “If God is good,” the question goes, “then why didn’t he command slavery to be done away with?” Philemon gives us an opportunity to deal with the issue of slavery, because we should always deal with hard issues, so that we might have a deeper understanding of how God works. 

So last week we began to work through God’s approach to slavery. In it we discovered there things: First, slavery wasn’t a part of God’s original design and comes about because of a curse through sin. Second God is pro-freedom and works within a sinful society to elevate slaves towards greater dignity and freedom, because at the time, slavery was a social need to deal with things like debt. Finally, God gives us principles to live by, which, if we follow them, should return us back to God’s original design. 

With that refresher in our mind, we can now turn to the passages from Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy which deal with slavery. And as we delve into these passages, we must remember one more thing we talked about last week: God works within the human capacity. So as we read, we’ll be seeing two things at work: God’s elevation of slaves to greater dignity and freedom, and God’s working within a sinful people. This is illustrated by Jesus in Matthew 19. When asked about divorce, Jesus brings the questioners back to God’s original design of lifetime union under God. To this the questioners respond in verse 7, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?(19:7)” And it’s here that we get an insight into how God deals with sinful humanity, “He said to them, ‘Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. (19:8)” This is profound because it teaches that God acted in certain ways, not because of his original design, but because of the hardness of hearts, the sinfulness, of humanity, which Jesus equated to his current audience as well. 

With that in mind, we can read from Exodus 21, where we’ll read only the verses pertaining to slaves. 

1 “Now these are the rules that you shall set before them. 2 When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing. 3 If he comes in single, he shall go out single; if he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him. 4 If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out alone. 5 But if the slave plainly says, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,’ 6 then his master shall bring him to God, and he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost. And his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall be his slave forever.

7 “When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do. 8 If she does not please her master, who has designated her for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed. He shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people, since he has broken faith with her. 9 If he designates her for his son, he shall deal with her as with a daughter. 10 If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or her marital rights. 11 And if he does not do these three things for her, she shall go out for nothing, without payment of money …

16 “Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death …

20 “When a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod and the slave dies under his hand, he shall be avenged. 21 But if the slave survives a day or two, he is not to be avenged, for the slave is his money …

26 “When a man strikes the eye of his slave, male or female, and destroys it, he shall let the slave go free because of his eye. 27 If he knocks out the tooth of his slave, male or female, he shall let the slave go free because of his tooth …

32 “If the ox gores a slave, male or female, the owner shall give to their master thirty shekels of silver, and the ox shall be stoned.”

To our modern ears, ears that are steeped in hundreds of years of Christian morality, the chattel slavery of the 1600-1800s, and the continued social ills that it caused, the biblical words that God first used in dealing with the institution of slavery seems immoral. But again, we must remember that God is dealing with people that have no qualms about slavery.

Putting this into perspective, in the ancient Near Eastern the laws were things like this, “If A. breaks the contract and leaves B.’s house and declares thus: ‘I am not a slave-woman and my sons are not slaves,’ B. shall put out the eyes of A. and her children and sell them. (https://core.ac.uk/reader/217424590, pg. 1667)"

Another law concerning runaway slaves was, “The mayor and five elders shall swear the oath of the gods … If they swear and afterwards he discovers his slave …they are thieves: their hands are cut off; they shall give 6000 (shekels of copper to the Palace). (https://core.ac.uk/reader/217424590, pg. 1673)”

Even into the era of the Greco-Roman world, we can see the station of slaves did not improve. In Ancient Greece, Aristotle defended slavery by asserting that slaves were fated to be slaves by their character … (https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/teachings-about-slavery-in-the-bible-and-by-the-early-church-fathers/)

Scholar Mark Cartwright in his article on “Slavery in the Roman World,” wrote, “Slaves were the lowest class of society and even freed criminals had more rights. Slaves had no rights at all in fact and certainly no legal status or individuality. They could not create relations or families, nor could they own property. To all intents and purposes they were merely the property of a particular owner, just like any other piece of property - a building, a chair or a vase - the only difference was that they could speak. (https://www.ancient.eu/article/629/slavery-in-the-roman-world/)"

Speaking about runaway slaves, Laurie Venters writes, “The punishment of Roman slaves was not concerned with rectifying wrongs but re-establishing domination. (https://studenttheses.universiteitleiden.nl/access/item:2659945/view)"

So though we might hear words that make us go, “why such harsh treatment?” The first hearers would have responded with, “why such leniency?” In God’s first words on the subject, he has restricted what can be brought into and excluded from the contract. If a slave came in with things, he leaves with them. If he is given things, he can make a free choice to keep or reject them.

A daughter sold for the purpose of marriage for a son, she was to be treated as a daughter to the master and receive all benefits from that position. If she doesn’t meet the desire for that purpose, she is to be redeemed and not resold. On top of that, if another wife is taken, she cannot be diminished in her standing.

If a slave is stolen and sold, the man who is found in possession of the stolen person, shall be killed. Notice it wasn’t simply the thief, but the one in possession of the stolen person, who is also killed.

If a slave is struck, and is killed, there should be retribution for that murder. Here we might say, “Why should he even strike the person?” To that God adds verse, 26, in which he seeks to deter striking altogether by stating that if a salve suffers life altering damage by the strike, they are to be set free. In this way, God is giving pause to the master’s hand, to think through what he is actually doing. Why strike in the first place if there is a chance he could lose the slave altogether.

Finally, even if the slave is killed by an animal, there should be compensation for their life. We might not like that slavery existed, but God worked in a world that didn’t care two licks about slaves, by seeking to elevate the enslaved in a world of sinners.

Now, we need to jump over to Deuteronomy which is a restatement of the law found throughout Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, hence why it’s called Deuteronomy, which basically means second law. 

In Deuteronomy 15:12-14, we get an additional law about the length of slavery, which reads, “12 If your brother, a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman, is sold to you, he shall serve you six years, and in the seventh year you shall let him go free from you. 13 And when you let him go free from you, you shall not let him go empty-handed. 14 You shall furnish him liberally out of your flock, out of your threshing floor, and out of your winepress.”

A Hebrew slave may only be a slave for six years. Thereby giving a definitive end to the contract by which the slave entered in. 

Verses 16-17 of the same chapter deal with the slave desiring to stay with his master, and gives a way to solidify that contract.

In Deuteronomy 23:15, we are given an alternative to the Near Eastern law of runaway slaves, which reads, “You shall not give up to his master a slave who has escaped from his master to you. 16 He shall dwell with you, in your midst, in the place that he shall choose within one of your towns, wherever it suits him. You shall not wrong him.” That is a monumental stance on runaway slaves, which flies in the face of what the surrounding people believed, and would speak to the future issue with Philemon.  

Finally in the book of Deuteronomy, we go to Deuteronomy 24:7, “If a man is found stealing one of his brothers of the people of Israel, and if he treats him as a slave or sells him, then that thief shall die. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.” This statement entirely outlaws the stealing of slaves from within the nation of Israel themselves, which is taking the broad theft of people from Exodus 21:16, and here adding to it, the selling of the person.

But it doesn’t stop there. There are a few chapters in Leviticus that we need to look at as well. 

Leviticus 19:20-22 reads, “20 If a man lies sexually with a woman who is a slave, assigned to another man and not yet ransomed or given her freedom, a distinction shall be made. They shall not be put to death, because she was not free; 21 but he shall bring his compensation to the Lord, to the entrance of the tent of meeting, a ram for a guilt offering. 22 And the priest shall make atonement for him with the ram of the guilt offering before the Lord for his sin that he has committed, and he shall be forgiven for the sin that he has committed.”

This one might sound strange, but the purpose is to deal with an ambiguous situation. A woman slave could not give consent to sexual activity. So instead of carrying capital punishment as the law stated (Deuteronomy 22), she was consider guiltless. Since the woman slave was technically property, by social standards the man couldn’t be charged with a crime, but God wanted to show that this was still wrong, so the man had to give an offering to recognize his sin for sexual activity outside of God’s ordained marriage. Rather than being strange, in fact this dealt with the situation as charitable as could be.

Two other passages from Leviticus, chapters 22 and 25 have some interesting information. In speaking within the Levitical priesthood, God states this in Leviticus 22:10-11, “10 A lay person shall not eat of a holy thing; no foreign guest of the priest or hired worker shall eat of a holy thing, 11 but if a priest buys a slave as his property for money, the slave may eat of it, and anyone born in his house may eat of his food.” Understand that the Hebrews were allowed to buy slaves from outside the nation of Israel, which is told to us in Leviticus 25:44-46, and these slaves could become generational slaves. However notice something that happens to such slaves. In the context, God says this about the holy things, “Say to them, ‘If any one of all your offspring throughout your generations approaches the holy things that the people of Israel dedicate to the Lord, while he has an uncleanness, that person shall be cut off from my presence: I am the Lord. (22:3)” So no one who is not a Levite may touch the holy things, yet God puts in a stipulation that any slave bought from outside the Hebrew nations may eat of the holy food. So a true Israelite cannot touch anything holy, but a Levite slave can ingest holy food. That’s an elevation of the foreign slave.

In addition to this elevation, Leviticus 25:6-7 reads, “6 The Sabbath of the land shall provide food for you, for yourself and for your male and female slaves and for your hired worker and the sojourner who lives with you, 7 and for your cattle and for the wild animals that are in your land: all its yield shall be for food.” God provides a promise that when the people let the land rest for its sabbath year, he will provide food for everyone under a household, which includes any slaves. This lets us know that God is not only mindful of the slave, but also of giving them equal rest, as he did with the weekly Sabbath. 

In some of the final covenantal words of God to the people of Israel, God tells them this in Deuteronomy 28:58, “If you are not careful to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that you may fear this glorious and awesome name, the Lord your God, 59 then the Lord will bring on you and your offspring extraordinary afflictions, afflictions severe and lasting, and sicknesses grievous and lasting.” 

A part of those afflictions is verse 68, “And the Lord will bring you back in ships to Egypt, a journey that I promised that you should never make again; and there you shall offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but there will be no buyer.”

If the Israelites do not hold to the restraint of what God has said, then they will end up as slaves themselves. In other words, God is telling the Israelites that if they are not mindful of what God has done for them, bringing them out of the slavery of Egypt and giving them his commands, then they will end up like the very slaves they treat poorly. Spoiler, this eventually does happen.

Knowing all of this, we can now look towards the New Covenant of God where the language of slaves takes on a new tone. Jesus states in Mark 10:44, “… whoever would be first among you must be slave of all.” In Matthew 20:27, Jesus states, “… and whoever would be first among you must be your slave …” This elevates the position of slave as a servant of servants; which every Christian, especially those in leadership, should strive towards. 

In John 8:34 we’re told, “Jesus answered them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.’” Here we learn that there is a deeper slavery than that of physical bondage. Spiritual bondage is something that all of humanity is in, and therefore needs to be dealt with first, which in turn will lead to a release from physical bondage. 

For Philemon, there was still a spiritual point of bondage, which God was dealing with through the physical problem of slavery. Making the question, who was really in bondage? 

Paul would write to the Romans in Romans 6:16-18, “Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.”

We’re going to be slaves, either to our own sin or to the work of Christ. Sin’s slavery results in continued physical bondage and leads into eternal death, whereas slavery to Christ leads to spiritual freedom with the implications of physical freedom as well.

This is why when God’s principles are put into practice we get passages like Ephesians 6:5-9 which reads, “5 Bondservants, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ, 6 not by the way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, 7 rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, 8 knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or is free. 9 Masters, do the same 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.”

There is an uplifting because of Christ of both the slave to work for Christ where they find themselves and for the master to be kind towards the slave as to Christ. 

It’s when biblical principles are put into practice that we get statements like this from an early church father John Chrysostom (kris-tis-tum), “If you have any care for your slaves, do not employ them in serving your own needs; rather, when you have purchase them, then teach them trades so they can support themselves, then set them free. https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/teachings-about-slavery-in-the-bible-and-by-the-early-church-fathers/#_edn14)”

Scholar Bruce Strom, reflecting on the early Church’s view on slavery writes, “But the Apostolic Constitutions do not regard slavery as a natural condition, the freeing of slaves is encouraged, and when a slave owner free his slaves, this was seen as a type of forgiveness of sins. (https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/teachings-about-slavery-in-the-bible-and-by-the-early-church-fathers/#_edn14)"

But it is here that we must stop and be truthful about the history of the Church. When the Church became a political force within the world in the 300s A.D., it failed to hold to biblical principles and slavery continued. That continuation led to the chattel slavery of the 16-1800s. People used and misused Scripture to condone slavery, and slavery where people are stolen from their land and sold to outsiders. This type of slavery was outlawed in Israel, and yet we, the Christianized West allowed for it to happen. Any results of that deplorable sin, is heaped upon us as a society now, as it is among other western nations. 

We can thank God for people like Angelina Grimké who called on Christians to stand against slavery when she wrote, “It is because I feel a deep and tender interest in your

present and eternal welfare that I am willing thus publicly to address you … To all of you then, known or unknown, relatives or strangers (for you are all one in Christ,) I would speak. I have felt for you at this time, when unwelcome light is pouring in upon the world on the subject of slavery; light which even Christians would exclude … You can do much in every way: four things I will name. 1st. You can read on this subject. 2d. You can pray over this subject. 3d. You can speak on this subject. 4th. You can act on this subject. (https://americainclass.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Grimke_Appeal-to-the-Christian-Women-of-the-South-excerpts.pdf)”

But let us not kid ourselves, it took far too long to react slavery within the wester world, and even now, we too easily overlook the slave trade that is happening through the stealing of people today. 

There are issues around us that we must stand up against that have plagued the Church and have marred the image of Christ to the world. The sex trafficking that occurs throughout the world. The exploration of immigrants. The legal murdering of babies through abortion. The injustices of our justice system. The rampant drug use and homelessness. The sexualization of children and the embrace of sexual and demonic media. 

There is so many things that when we look back at the sins of our past, the past looks at us and would see an even worse society than that which condoned slavery for too long.

As believers today, we must understand God’s desire to move people out of bondage, and we must work, empowered by the Holy Spirit, to address each of those places of bondage. For the world is still shackled in slavery, both physically and spiritually, yet Jesus tells his people, “14 You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. (Matthew 5:14-16)”

God is calling us to walk in his holy light, to speak up for the defenseless, to buck the bondage that is all around us. That begins with ourselves. We need to have God’s light work in us and destroy the points of bondage that we keep allowing to hold us hostage. Then we need to seek God to see where he would have us work alongside of him.

My challenge for you this week is to first seek God to bring freedom in any places of bondage you have. Second, to seek God in one of these four areas: sex trafficking, exploitation of immigrants, abortion, or drug use. Seek to know where God would have you work against the bondage. And to put Angelina Grimké’s call into action: Read on the subject, pray on the subject, speak on the subject, and act on the subject.

Let us not be passive in the bondage of other people, both spiritually and physically. Instead let us be the people of God who work in our Father’s heart of freedom. Amen.

Philemon Series Week 3: Slavery Part 1: God Enduring Human Sinfulness

  In our study on Philemon, the situation by which Paul appeals to his brother in Christ to receive back Onesimus as a fellow saved brother, is slavery. Now one of the attacks on Christianity is that God doesn’t give a prohibition on slavery. Instead, we see rules governing the practice. The accusation is, that, “if God is good, then why didn’t he get ride of such an immoral act?”

So in order to do justice to the issues that Paul’s letter to Philemon deals with, we also need to address the elephant in the room known as slavery. So we’re going to take two weeks to dive into this contentious topic. 

In the whole of the Scriptures, there are about 140 references to the idea of slavery. Most are in relation to calling someone a slave or describing them as one. The passages that we will focus on are the passages that consider the legal ramifications of slavery. In the Old Testament, these passages are most readily found in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy; whereas in the New Testament, they are sprinkled throughout the entire testament.

Let’s begin this huge topic by starting at the ground level. The Hebrew term for slave is ebed (eh’-bed), meaning bondage, slave, servant. It is also translated as attendant or bondservant. The word is connected to subjects of a chieftain, worshipers of God, and even the person mentioned in the Servant Songs of Isaiah. The word has more connotations than our perception of American-Slavery. In the ancient Near East, the term slave did not carry with it the horrific ideas of slavery that are history books record of slavery in the U.S. The word slave was used of anyone who was a lower political or social position of another. A king was the slave of the gods; the people, free and non-free, were slave of the king. 

In the Septuagint, the Greek word that translates the Hebrew is doulos (doo’-los) which means enslaved, or slave. However, it is also translated as bondservant, or to give a clearer definition, a person who has no ownership rights over themselves. In the New Testament, it is this same root word that Peter, Paul and other writers use to describe both the social reality of slavery and the spiritual slavery we have both to sin and to God. 

Now that we have that understanding of the word, we can begin to look directly at the non-free idea of slavery in the Bible. The first use of the Hebrew word, doesn’t come until Genesis 9:25, and it is used in a curse on Noah’s grandson Canaan that he would be a “servant of servants” or a “slave of slaves.” Meaning that he was to be the lowest of the low. This doesn’t mean he would be a slave, but rather those from his linage would be the lowest people in society. What this shows us is that slavery is a result of sin, not of God’s original design. 

Because of this, early Church theologian Augustine of Hippo wrote, “Slavery, therefore, is introduced to the world by sin and not by nature. (https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/teachings-about-slavery-in-the-bible-and-by-the-early-church-fathers/#_edn14)"

Since we know that God’s original design did not include slavery and this hierarchal lowering of people, we can then see how God responds to sin when we look through his interaction with Israel as a nation.

The book of Exodus is steeped in God’s work of freeing his people from the bondage of slavery. In fact freedom from slavery is so heavy in the Scriptures that the Museum of the Bible’s associate curator Anthony Schmidt told the Smithsonian Magazine, that out of the 66 books of the Bible, “… the astoundingly reduced Slave Bible contains only parts of 14 books. (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/heavily-abridged-slave-bible-removed-passages-might-encourage-uprisings-180970989/)” Only parts from 14 books were acceptable, because the rest of the books of the Bible emphasized God’s desire for people’s freedom. 

In Latin America, the recognition of how many biblical passages were pro-freedom, led to liberation theology, which has at it’s roots the breaking of bondage of oppressed people (https://www.britannica.com/topic/liberation-theology). 

In Exodus, the first mentions of slavery are those of Israel being in the state of bondage.  Once Israel is released from Egypt, God instituted three things: The Passover meal, the consecration of the firstborn, and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Within the Feast of Unleavened Bread, God states in Exodus 13:3, that the purpose of the Feast is to “… Remember this day in which you came out from Egypt, out of the house of slavery, for by a strong hand the Lord brought you out from this place. No leavened bread shall be eaten.”

This theme of remembering that God brought Israel out of slavery permeates the rest of entirely of God’s covenantal relationship with Israel. Being emphasized at least fifteen times just in the book of Deuteronomy.  

In fact, as God begins to give his covenantal laws in Exodus 20, be begins in verse 2, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” Everything God speaks to the Israelites is in the context of freedom from slavery. Why? Because slavery is a result of sin, and personal freedom is a hallmark of God’s original design. 

So then, why didn’t God come out and command the end to the sin of slavery? As we read through God’s covenantal laws, what we call the Ten Commandments do not give an explicit rejection of slavery. 

Without going into a deep dive of how Exodus is set up, the Ten Commandments are general commands, from which all other civic laws are derived from. In the theocracy that God is setting up, the purpose of the commands are to restrict sinful people from doing sinful things. 

They begin with four laws that focus on worship of God: No other gods, no carved idols, not taking God’s name in vain, and remembering the Sabbath as holy. Within in the Sabbath command, it reads, “… but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. (v.10)” In the Sabbath command, the word translated as male servant is the word for slave. Slaves are given equal rest with those who are free; thereby elevating the slave from being overworked.

The elevation of the status of slaves in a world of sin, is how God moves people along.  Augustine recognized what would happen if slavery went away the next day, “… abolishing slavery, although it is a sinful alienation from the standards of love, would cause too much social unrest. In the present state of the world, it ought to be endured. (https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/teachings-about-slavery-in-the-bible-and-by-the-early-church-fathers/#_edn14)”

Here is what most people miss about the ancient practice of slavery. In the ancient Near East, slavery was a social contract that fulfilled many areas of the economy. Raymond Westbrook in his work on “Slave and Master in Ancient Near Eastern Law,” found three types of slavery: Social Justice, Contract, Citizenship/Ethnicity. Social Justice and Contract were similar in that they dealt with people who were sold into slavery due to some sort of relief for a creditor or a debtor. This seems to be the majority of slavery within a social group or nation. The area of slavery due to Citizenship/Ethnicity, dealt with people outside of a social group where people were captured due to war or through slave trade. These three areas are recognized and dealt with in the Scriptures. Yet, as we will see, those who found themselves in a slave position were elevated by God through his commands. But, again we have to ask why didn’t he simply do away with it.

The answer could be better understood in our society today. We do not have slavery, but we do have debit collectors. We have and IRS whose job it is to collect taxes from people. We have banks and financial institutions whose job it is to collect on mortgages, and loans. But what happens when one cannot pay their debt? They enter into a bargain of some sort with the collectors. Their wages are garnished, they file for bankruptcy, their assets are seized and sold. And what happens when a person can’t take care of their debt? We have governmental programs to assist. Welfare programs help people as they struggle to make ends meet. Debt forgiveness through organizations help people get out of dire financial situations.

We in the modern U.S. have many assets that can be bartered with. But for the majority of human history, the only thing a person had was themselves. There were no social programs, when entire civilizations could be wiped off the map in a single generation because of a famine or plague. Where the vast majority of people were living hand-to-mouth, barely getting by. You just had yourself and your family, and so to pay debt, a person’s only way of repayment was to enter into these socially acceptable slave contracts, which were the majority of slavery. How do you deal with debt in a society where no one knows the financial future, and all you had to bargain with was yourself? And from a biblical perspective, how do you deal with such a society that is also steeped in sin? 

It’s easy for us in the modern day to say, well they should just cancel debt. But we don’t even do that. The way debt is collected today is analogous to how it was collected then, we work it off. Yet their societies were not as stable as ours, they didn’t have additional means, they just had themselves. And even if they did just cancel debt, thereby getting rid of 2/3rds of slavery in one stroke, what keeps people from gaming the system? Of racking up ever higher debt and never having to pay it back.  Of course we’re more enlighten than that, and we don’t have anyone in our society who would do such things, right? But if someone did try to take advantage of others forgiving massive repeated debt, the slave isn’t the one who is in debt, rather the slave becomes the one who reaps the consequences of another’s actions and has to pay for their misdeeds. 

So how does God deal with the social need of debt collection and the sinfulness of man? He institutes laws by which he constrains the master’s power over the slave, and gives a few ways to have the debt forgiven. Next week, we’ll take a look at those passages and see just how God both elevates and restrains the position of master and slave. 

But for no, we need to understand that God works within the human ability to follow, and even then we have a hard time putting what he says into practice. 

Last week we talked about how God calls us to forgiveness. Forgiveness is one of the most basic principles of the Scriptures. If the world took it seriously and implemented into our lives fully, then all forms of indebtedness would be gone tomorrow. Yet we continue to seek what is owed to us, whether that be financial, emotional, or physical. 

This is why the action on Jesus on the cross is so important for us to see God’s forgiveness in action. Which brings us back around to Paul’s words in Colossians 2:9-14, which Philemon, who had an indebted slave, would have heard. Paul writes, “9 For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, 10 and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. 11 In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, 12 having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. 13 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.”

If the goal of God is for indebtedness to end, that end should start with the Church. If forgives is to start, it should start with Christians. Because our Savior forgave our debt, how much more should we forgive both the physical and non-physical debts that our owed to us? 

My challenge for you this week, is to take a look at your life and ask the question, what debt am I holding over people. What have they done, either physically, mentally, spiritually, or emotionally to incur a debt with me? This week I want to challenge you to go before God and have that debt forgiven. Let none of us put others into a type of slavery to us, because our God desires freedom for all. And that freedom comes only through the forgiveness of Christ. 

So let us be a people of God who carry forgiveness and no I.O.Us. Amen.