Hey my friends, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible Hour Podcast. And we're doing one of those two-part episode things that we do from time to time. I'm all worked up and excited because we went and looked at this slavery stuff, and I kind of discovered that whenever slavery came up in the New Testament, if it wasn't a controversial passage, I just kind of, you know, cruise past it or think of it in the context of my life. But after having gone through all of this ancient world slavery stuff with you, so many of these verses are popping back into my mind. And I'm thinking, I need to go look at those again because I think there's a richness there I have not appreciated until just here in the last couple of weeks together with you. So we did some of that yesterday. We're going to do some more of that today. I'm going to have Jeff play some music and we'll pick up right where we left off.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I think maybe I just hustled over some of the slave language when we were going through Galatians last season because none of it's controversial. Like it's all, hey, slavery is bad, you are free now, this is great. Galatians doesn't really have a lot of household rules sections. I mean, not like some of these other books that we look at. So, you know, maybe it was just easy for me to focus on the obvious theological implications and not think about how much really more powerfully this comes across, set against the backdrop of an audience that would have been totally keen, totally aware of the implications of classism and living in a state of being where you look like a per, I mean, you just look like flesh like everybody else, but you got a title on you. You've got a legacy, a reputation, a class that sticks to you, and there's nothing that you can do about it except look from the outside in at these beautiful families that you'll never have and you'll never be a part of. And then along comes Christ. And not only does he manumit you, not only does he free you from your status as a slave to sin and death and the human condition, and even as a slave to the old law of the old testament, not only does he manumit you, but he goes even a step further and he gives you his name, he gives you his royal robes, he gives you his ring, he gives you a place at his table, he calls you son, daughter, he makes it so that you can call God Abba, Father. This isn't just manumission, this is adoption. I think unless you really appreciate the weight of what slavery in the ancient world was and what the promise of manumission meant, but also the limits on manumission, I think unless you get that, I think before I went and read about all this stuff recently, is really hard for me to appreciate the 14-point swing kind of thing that Paul is characterizing here in Galatians, where you go all the way from a slave, a total outsider, not just to manumission, but all the way to honored son, daughter, heir of the king. Yeah, we've talked about stuff like that before, but the weight of it is hitting me so much harder. And then when I go back over and I look at this little tidbit at the end of Colossians chapter three, man, my first instinct is not to be like, I really need to defend the Bible here because it kind of looks a little bit like it's okay or turning a blind eye to the plight of the slaves, to the institution of slavery. No, I don't really feel that impulse at all as I read it right now. Instead, what I see is an author inspired by the Holy Spirit who is keenly aware of this important dynamic within his society, within his civilization. And he's speaking to it with clarity in light of the gospel. He's speaking to it in very practical terms. These realities exist. I mean, frankly, they wouldn't unexist for centuries to come after this. So here's what it looks like to function within the boundaries of this, and the instructions aren't just for the slave, but rather the instructions are for the masters as well. Paul just takes those boundaries that we read about that were placed on masters and extends it even further, not just to like you can't hit them that hard, you can only hit them this hard. Paul goes way further. And we what he's saying is you shouldn't just hit them less. It's you should conceive of them differently. Your slaves are you, you're all flesh, you're all in need of a savior, you are all brothers and sisters, you are all one in Christ. I think Paul knew that he couldn't slay the dragon of slavery right at this moment. I don't know Paul's mind. I don't know that that was something that he thought about a whole lot, but he certainly thought about the abuses of the institution and his teachings, if followed to the nth degree, would have made slaves and masters in a Christian context look really entirely different than anything you or I have ever thought of in terms of what slavery is. Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair because you know that you also have a master in heaven. And isn't that just the closing kicker for all of it? You do not own yourselves. Just you like, hey masters, like just in case any of you have become conceited, imagining that you're somehow special or better than someone, just because you stumbled into this social class and someone else stumbled into a different one. Let me disabuse you of any of those notions of superiority or pride. You are a man under authority as well, masters, and you are gonna answer to someone as well. And you're gonna answer to someone who can do a lot more than apply a stick or a flog or a public shaming. The master you answer to is one who is in control of the fate of your soul. He's the ultimate judge of your soul. And I think when Paul opens here by first talking to the slaves in the audience, but then flipping around and talking to the masters in the audience and being like, you be merciful, get this right, understand the chain of things, understand that you're not at the top of it. You can almost hear echoes of the parable about the unmerciful debtor who had somebody below him who owed him just a little bit, but he owed a ton of money to somebody way above him. And this debtor went and begged the super rich guy, like, oh, let me off the hook. I can never repay it in my whole life. And then the rich guy was like, okay, fine, uh, I'll let you off the hook. And then the middle debtor, who just got forgiven a ton of debt, goes back to the guy who owes him a trifling amount and he strangles him, he chokes him, he's like, Yo, give me my five bucks, or whatever it is, is not much money. And of course, the point is, dang, you know, that guy who got forgiven so much but couldn't even forgive a little, he's an idiot. He just does not understand the order of things or the world. That doesn't even make sense. You're supposed to revile his behavior and not want to be like him. Well, this is kind of the same principle right here. You're all slaves is the implicit take-home of Colossians three. All of us who are Christians are slaves to Christ. That's kind of the takeaway of Colossians 3 and really all of Colossians. And really, the teachings of Christ and the whole New Testament, very practically, you if you read it, I mean you don't even have to read it that closely to come away with the point that you're going to be a slave to one of two things. You're either going to be a slave to sin and all that comes along with that, or you're going to be a slave to Christ. Sin is a cruel master. Christ's burden is easy and his yoke is light, and he's gentle of heart. And to be a slave to Christ really is to be a son and an heir. They're part and parcel. They're one and the same because of the character of Christ and because of the work of Christ. Look, bottom line is this. I think we really cheat ourselves out of some of these crucial passages in the New Testament. If every time we see anything about slavery that doesn't sound like how we'd talk about it now, we do this knee-jerk thing where we quit interpreting that passage, we quit worrying about how it fits with the rest of the book, and we're like, all right, we got to work on this problematic thing that's right here, figure out how to either make it go away or how to criticize the Bible or whatever it is. I just don't think that's the best way to read it. I kind of suspected that before I went and did all this work, but I feel that even more strongly now that I'm catching some of those buzzwords and buzz concepts from the time you and I put in together, going through the details of what slavery was like in the ancient world and how the original audience would have thought of it. There is a richness to this metaphor that Christ and the New Testament authors do not shy away from. Yeah, it would seem to me, biblically and logically, that slavery between people is an unnatural institution that lends itself to some of the bleakest of abuses. And I think part of the reason that this is morally obvious is because people aren't that different. Nobody's that far above anybody else to have any rightful claim to ownership over another person. But God and how far above us He is? Well, yeah, actually that that does make sense. In fact, it's kind of hard to imagine any other relationship between the all-powerful God of everything and people, and yet, once again, we see this language throughout the New Testament that instead of God calling us slaves, or instead of God calling us just simply pardoned and freed, and now we'll go our separate ways, he calls us son and daughter. He puts the royal robe on us, he gives us the ring, he kills the fat and calf metaphorically and brings us to his table. And even though slavery is a dark and bleak institution, as a metaphor, as an analogy throughout the New Testament, I think we'd really be depriving ourselves if we just went and snipped out all of the references to assuage our discomfort with the word and with the concept. The dramatic, shocking nature of what slavery is is a powerful imagery that is effectively deployed in the service of illustrating our relationship with sin and our relationship with Christ. Next time around, we're going to go and see what the very brief text of Philemon sounds like to us in light of all of this. I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.