Sermon Tone Analysis

“Let all who are under a yoke as bondservants regard their own masters as worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and the teaching may not be reviled.

Those who have believing masters must not be disrespectful on the ground that they are brothers; rather they must serve all the better since those who benefit by their good service are believers and beloved.”

[1]

With some degree of regularity, individuals—not surprisingly, usually of Negroid descent—demand reparations for slavery.

These demands are echoed by several prominent race baiters who anticipate that they will be appointed to administer the reparations when they are finally extracted from taxpayers.

This is an odd demand, if one should pause and think.

It means that people who fled Hungary in 1956 to escape Soviet oppression are responsible to pay moneys to assuage the hurt feelings of Igbo tribesmen who fled Nigeria during the Nigerian Civil War in 1967 to 1970.

Of course, such reasoning makes no sense.

Then, the question arises, what percentage of “blackness” qualifies for reparations?

Should Barak Hussein Obama pay reparations to himself?

His mother was a white woman from Kansas and his father was a black man from Kenya.

Or should he pay reparations to his wife, Michelle Obama?

Is it even possible to find a black person who is racially pure without any genetic material contributed to her or his makeup either from Mongoloid or Caucasoid progenitors?

Perhaps those advocating payment of reparations based on race are actually attempting to game the system.

Assuredly, the demands—based as they are on race—anticipate a racial purity akin to Aryan purity that was demanded by the Nazis—a purity that was impossible to demonstrate and meaningless if it could be achieved.

What is indisputable is that slavery has been a plague on the world, beginning from ancient times and continuing to this day.

The estimates of those enslaved in our modern world run as high as thirty million people.

The number includes people in debt bondage, domestic servants kept in captivity, indentured servitude, serfdom, adoptions in which children are compelled to work as slaves, child soldiers, women in forced marriages and sex slaves in addition to actual slaves captured and held in bondage in a surprising number of Asian and Middle Eastern countries.

It is generally assumed that Caucasians enslaved Negroid races and Mongoloid races.

However, all races have practised slavery.

Historically, Asians enslaved Asians.

Today, slavery among Muslim countries is relatively common, especially in the Middle East.

Arab Muslims enslave black Africans with dismaying regularity.

Black Africans enslaved fellow Africans, often selling them to Caucasian slavers seeking cheap labour for the new world.

Without the enslavement of blacks by blacks, slavery among the European nations during the eighteenth and nineteenth Centuries would never have happened.

Set against this is the fact that without white Christian intervention slavery would have continued in Europe and the Americas.

I have included this brief address of the subject of slavery by way of introduction to the text before us.

Slavery was one of the most common conditions of those living in the Roman Empire.

Some estimates suggest that six out of ten people living in the Roman Empire were slaves.

Slavery presented a complex situation in the ancient context.

*UNDER A YOKE AS BONDSERVANTS* — I provided the introduction in order to state that direct application of the text to our current situation is not possible.

Within the Christian world, slavery simply will not be tolerated today.

However, this fact must be offset by the repeated call to Christians to offer themselves as slaves to the Master.

Underscore in your mind that we are called to offer ourselves voluntarily as “slaves” to Christ and to serve one another voluntarily.

Perhaps a few references to the call to voluntary servitude will be helpful.

“Whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” [MATTHEW 20:27, 28].

[2] The Master clearly calls those who would follow Him to choose a life of service.

He speaks of those who choose this life as choosing to be a “slave,” a /doûlos/.

A slave was “completely controlled” by another.

[3]

Having spoken of His pending return to take His own out of this world, Jesus then stated, “Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his master has set over his household, to give them their food at the proper time?

Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes.

Truly, I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions.

But if that wicked servant says to himself, ‘My master is delayed,’ and begins to beat his fellow servants and eats and drinks with drunkards, the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know and will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites.

In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” [MATTHEW 24:45-51].

Those who wrote the New Testament Letters often spoke of themselves as servants or as slaves of God and of Jesus Christ.

Paul appears to have favoured speaking of himself as a “servant of Jesus Christ” [see ROMANS 1:1; GALATIANS 1:10; TITUS 1:1].

In similar fashion James [JAMES 1:1], Peter [2 PETER 1:1], Jude [JUDE 1] and John [REVELATION 1:1] each refer to themselves as servants of God or of Christ Jesus.

The angels of God speak of themselves as servants of God [REVELATION 19:10; 22:9].

No wonder that these whom we consider to be great in the Kingdom of God speak of themselves as slaves, for Christ Himself presented Himself as a slave for our sake.

Recall the description of the Master which Paul presents in the Letter to Philippian Christians.

“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” [PHILIPPIANS 2:5-7].

All who are believers in the Risen Saviour are expected to present themselves as slaves of righteousness.

Listen to the Apostle to the Gentiles as he instructs the Roman Christians.

“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.

I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations.

For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification” [ROMANS 6:17-19].

We Christians are “slaves to righteousness,” and we are slaves to one another.

Elders are to make themselves slaves to those whom they are appointed to serve.

“Have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies; you know that they breed quarrels.

And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness.

God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth” [2 TIMOTHY 2:23-25].

All the verses I have cited speak of voluntary servitude.

Perhaps one of the reasons we recoil from speaking of ourselves as slaves is a misperception of what is meant.

Whenever we think of slavery we tend to think in racial terms.

Slavery in the New World and in Europe was imposed on races considered inferior.

Thus, there was a decided racial component in slavery as practised in the New World—a racial component that continues to colour our perception of slavery.

The slavery that is practised in numerous Muslim countries is likewise racial in nature.

Filipinos, Hindi or black Africans are enslaved by Arabs and often sold to the highest bidders.

The slavery witnessed during the past three centuries is decidedly racial in nature.

However, at the time Paul wrote this letter to Timothy, slavery in the Empire was changing dramatically.

Slavery appears never to have been based on race in the Roman Empire; rather, slavery within the Empire reflected the economic and political realities of the day.

Conquered peoples could be enslaved, regardless of race; or an individual could sell himself or herself into slavery due to poverty.

Freedom could be scary; so some individuals seeking a measure of security chose slavery.

I’m speaking of those who were bondservants or conquered peoples.

Those who became slaves of the state through conviction of criminal charges were sent into the mines and rowing gangs on the galley ships, and there they were expected to die.

Though the master had complete control over a slave, it should not be assumed that slaves were necessarily uneducated or of low social class.

In the Roman Empire, manumission at age thirty was the rule.

It is reported that there was such a high rate of manumission that Augustus Caesar introduced legal restrictions to curb the trend.

[4] Slaves in the Empire could own property, even owning other slaves.

The excess numbers of nouveau riche ex-slaves was said to have scandalised “old money” Romans.

[5]

No particular work was reserved exclusively for slaves.

Slaves and freeborn people worked side-by-side in both menial and responsible tasks.

Slaves might be physicians, teachers or business owners; or slaves could work as street sweepers, hand workers and dock workers.

Selling oneself into slavery was commonly used as a means of obtaining Roman citizenship and gaining entrance into society.

[6] I am not suggesting that buying or selling slaves was Christian—it was decidedly sub-Christian.

However, if we wish to understand how to apply what Paul has written concerning slavery, we need to understand how the first readers of his writings reacted.

Therefore, it is appropriate to state that the concept of slavery is more complex than the word might indicate.

Bible translators struggle to convey most accurately what is meant.

Consider this statement from the preface of the English Standard Version of the Bible, the translation that I use.

“In New Testament times, a /doûlos/ is often best described as a ‘bondservant’—that is, as someone bound to serve his master for a specific (usually lengthy) period of time, but also as someone who might nevertheless own property, achieve social advancement, and even be released or purchase his freedom.

The ESV usage thus seeks to express the nuance of meaning in each context.

Where absolute ownership by a master is in view…, ‘slave’ is used; where a more limited form of servitude is in view, ‘bondservant’ is used…; where the context indicates a wide range of freedom…, ‘servant’ is preferred.”

[7]

Slavery was not an ideal state, but neither was it the inhumane condition which we associate with modern slavery.

Though the Apostle did not advocate a slave revolt or throwing off slavery through some form of resistance or revolution, Paul did teach, “If you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity” [1 CORINTHIANS 7:21].

For the purpose of understanding what is written, we need to know that the social status of a slave was dependent upon the social status of the owner of the slave.

“Free persons who had to look for work each day without any certainty of finding it (day labourers) were at the bottom of the social-economic pyramid, not those in slavery.”

[8]

Slaves in the New Testament were considered part of the extended household.

Self-sale into slavery was the most common way in which one became a slave.

This provided a model for freeborn people who became Christians, as the Apostle writes in the First Corinthian Letter: “He who was free when called is a bondservant of Christ.

You were bought with a price; do not become bondservants of men” [1 CORINTHIANS 7:22, 23].

Nor should anyone imagine this concept of voluntary slavery to have been restricted to Paul.