1 Timothy 6

The Mayor

There once was a mayor who inherited a town built on curvy and crooked roads.

The roads had been there for generations — winding, narrow, and dangerous — laid down long before anyone alive could remember.

Wagons tipped.

Children wandered.

The roads were bad, and everyone knew it.

The mayor wanted straight roads.

He dreamed of them.

But the town’s entire economy ran along those crooked paths.

The bakery sat on the bend.

The blacksmith had built his forge at the dangerous fork.

The school sat wedged between two curves.

To tear up the roads overnight would collapse the bakery, scatter the school children into the fields, and leave the forge with no coal delivery.

People would go hungry before the roads were ever straight.

So the mayor did something that confused people.

He published rules for the crooked roads.

He set speed limits.

He posted lanterns at the sharpest turns.

He required wagon drivers to call out before blind turns.

He mandated rest stops so tired horses wouldn’t panic on the bends.

Some people were furious.

“If the mayor truly hated these roads”, they said, “he would tear them up!

Publishing rules for them means he approves of them!”

But the mayor’s own journal —which his children read long after he was gone —told a different story.

He had written, “The crooked roads are a disgrace. But a town in ruins helps no one. I will them survivable today, and I will plant in every young apprentice the vision of a straight road, so that they may build what I could not.”

And that is exactly what happened. A generation later, the apprentices —who had grown up hearing about straight roads, who had been taught to imagine a better way —tore up the old paths and built new ones.

The mayor never saw it.

But his rules had kept people alive long enough for the dream to do its work.

As we open our bibles and turn to the final chapter of 1st Timothy, we may, too, be tempted to feel like the townsfolk who were angry at the mayor as we read the first two verses.

But hopefully, we can glean a bit deeper and find a couple really important bits of gold nestled in the context of these verses.

1 Timothy 6:1–2 ESV

1 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. 2 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. Teach and urge these things.

At the time of Paul’s letter to Timothy, it is estimated there were as many as 70 million people in the Roman Empire — of those people 7 - 10 million of them were slaves!

That means slavery was an entire economic system of its own.

I wish I could tell you after studying (even a little bit) ancient slavery, that it was somehow not as cruel, but that would be a lie.

Consider the torture of the Hebrew people while enslaved in Egypt.

While slavery was different in its nature, with many rules and regulations concerning how it was practiced, it was very much still slavery.

When a person is reduced to nothing more than mere property bad things happen.

Deviant sexual predation was common in the Roman era of slavery. Free Roman men were given free access to their slaves and would regularly violate male or female slaves.

This was viewed for the people of the Roman Empire as common as the satisfaction of hunger or thirst, what their base needs required could be met with their property.

Perhaps one of the most obvious differences between modern era slavery and that of the Roman Empire was race. As Rome conquered cities and nations, they would take their people and make them their slaves as they willed.

There were no distinctions based on color of skin or ethnicity, only that they were a defeated people.

There are distinct differences between Old Testament laws concerning slavery of Israelites and foreign slaves, and that of the kind of slavery which was common in the Roman Empire — since we are reading about the kind in the Roman Empire, it would be best, for our purposes today, to focus on the latter.

The Missing Commandment

I truly wish there were some missing 11th commandment that read, “Thou shall not have slaves”.

I wish that the bible would have been that clear and simple concerning the issue but we don’t find that in the word of God.

There are times when the Bible isn’t clear on subjects which matter greatly to us today.

For example, defenders of pro-choice rights might note the absence of a direct prohibition on abortion in the Bible.

At the same time, those who defend pro-life views find the ir position within the inference from passages such as Psalm 139:13–14 (“You knitted me together in my mother’s womb”).

Slavery is a similarly perplexing example. The practice of slavery has been one of the great moral abominations in history. This church stands united with modern-day abolitionists, those who fight against human trafficking — we have been supporters of groups like A21.

So, why doesn’t Scripture denounce it directly?

What we find through the pages of scripture are instructions and rules regarding behavior.

Why?

Similar to the mayor who had the power to change the roads but instead decided it would be best to create rules in order to maintain the economy so that the vast majority of people wouldn’t die before the straight roads were made; the word of God didn’t make a manifesto that would alter society and economy, it did what it always does — make the change in the hearts of people, and they would do the work.

Living In Slavery

Don’t be a slave to sin.

The bible didn’t abolish the act - if focused on changing the heart.

Heart change is the first step.

Once your heart has changed - you will want to get out of slavery.