WHAT IN CHRISTIANITY UNDERMINED SLAVERY?
(I Tim. 6:1-2)
Overview of I Tim. 4:1-6:2
4:1-2 How False Teaching Enters the Church
4:3-5 Common Grace
4:6 Word of God in Life of the Believer
4:7a Godliness – Divine / Human Role
4:7b Train Yourself to be Godly
4:7c Spiritual Disciplines (The Word of God)
4:7d Spiritual Disciplines (Devotions, Worship)
4.7e Spiritual Disciplines (Church Attendance, Journaling, Practicing Presence of God)
4:8-9 Why Godliness Has Great Value
4:10 Putting Our Hope in the Living God
4:12 Setting an Example for Believers
4:13 What a Christian Worship Service Looked Like in the First Century
4:14 Neglecting the Spiritual Gift God has Given Us
4:15-16 Getting Home Before Dark
5:1-2 So, How Should We Describe the Church?
5:3-16 God’s Tilt Towards the Disenfranchised
5:3-16 Sorting Out those Worthy of Relief – A Biblical Approach to Social Welfare
5:3-16 The Biblical Rationale for Providing for Relatives
5:5-16 The Tale of Two Widows – A Biblical Approach to Pleasure
5:9-10 The Good Works of a New Testament Woman
5:11-14 The Younger Widows – Breaking Celibacy Vows
5:11-14 The Younger Widows – Gossiping False Teaching
5:15 Satan’s Effort to Keep Jesus from Fulfilling His Mission
5:17-18 Honoring the Work of Elders
5:19-20 How NT Church Discipline Illustrates Cultural Formation
5:21 Partiality – A Christian Problem?
5:22-24 Selecting Church Leadership
5:23 The Christian’s Use and Abuse of Alcoholic Beverages
6:1 Honoring God’s Name
6:1-2 What In Christianity Undermined Slavery?
1All who are under the yoke of slavery should consider their masters worthy of full respect, so that God’s name and our teaching may not be slandered. 2Those who have believing masters are not to show less respect for them because they are brothers. Instead, they are to serve them even better, because those who benefit from their service are believers, and dear to them. These are the things you are to teach and urge on them.
INTRODUCTION:
1. Four Lessons from I Tim. 6:1-2
a. Honoring/Slandering the Name of God
b. What in Christianity Undermined Slavery
c. History of Slavery
d. Treatment of Slaves / Masters
2. Slavery in the New Testament period:
Historians, sociologists and commentators feel that at least 40 percent of the population in the cities of the Greco-Roman world were slaves …. And that would mean that a good percentage of the membership in the early church were also slaves.
A Jewish man is obligated to say the following prayer every day, “Thank you God for not making me a Gentile, a woman or a slave.” (The Talmud: Menahoth 43B-44A).
For master and slave have nothing in common: a slave is a living tool, just as a tool is an inanimate slave. (Aristotle)
About Aristotle again (from the web) However, there is little difference between using slaves and using tame animals: both provide bodily help to do necessary things.’ Aristotle then proceeds to describe a slave’s position and it is truly terrifying. A slave is no more than ‘a tool of his master’. Together with the wife and the ox, a male or female slave is a householder’s indispensable beast of burden. He or she should be kept well — for simple economic reasons. But slaves have no right to leisure or free time. They own nothing and can take no decisions. They have no part in enjoyment and happiness, and are not members of the community. For the same reason Aristotle also justifies wars to capture new slaves. For some people ‘are by nature destined to be ruled, even though they resist it’; like wild animals that need to be tamed. He even says that all foreigners to some extent belong to this category.
READING: Gordon Fee
First it needs to be stated that slavery in the first-century Greco-Roman world was considerably different from that of recent American history; it was rarely racially motivated. Most people became slaves through war or economic necessity, although by time of Paul, the majority of slaves were so by birth (born of slaves) Manumission, the freeing of slaves, was a common occurrence, although in many cases slavery was preferred to freedom because it offered security – and, in some case, good position in a household. (Gordon Fee, pg.136)
That is maybe a too rosy picture of slavery. Paul says that they were “under the yoke of slavery” and that is a good metaphor, for slaves were considered a living tool, like cattle.
3. It is important to remember that slavery is not the worst of sins.
Our society is warped, especially now, in considering anything that is politically incorrect or smells of discrimination to be the worst of evils. The Bible is clear that there are more weighty sins than slavery.
QUESTION: What is the greatest sin that mankind is guilty of?
36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” 37Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38This is the first and greatest commandment (Matthew 22:36-38).
If the greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart, mind and soul. Then the greatest sin must be not to love Him so.
Slavery is certainly a great sin, because it violates the second commandment …. But murder would be greater than slavery because it takes a person’s life.
QUESTION: How would you prove the case that Christianity is against slavery based on the writings of the New Testament?
PROPOSTION: BY GRASPING THE KEY BIBLICAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST SLAVERY, WE WILL BE ABLE TO EXPLAIN THE CHRISTIAN POSITION AGAINST THIS TERRIBLE EVIL.
I. RATIONAL CREATURES ARE ENTITLED TO JUSTICE
There is no specific verse in the Bible that forbids suicide, abortion or pedophilia and yet Christians for centuries have stood against these practices.
Christians, like Augustine, have ‘done theologia.’ For example there are strictures against murder in the Bible. A person who kills himself murders himself. So a person who murders himself has broken the ten commandments … and so suicide is wrong.
“However, in his overall analysis of morality in human relationship, Thomas Aquinas (1305-1366) placed slavery in opposition to natural law, deducing that all “rational creatures” are entitled to justice. Hence he found no natural basis for enslavement of one person rather than another, “thus removing any possible justification for slavery based on race or religion.” (For the Glory of God, Rodney Stark, pg. 330)
Since people are “rational” they are not to be treated like animals, must be dealt with justly and therefore slavery is wrong.
II. JESUS DID NOT OWN SLAVES
If he did, it would have changed the whole focus of Christianity on slavery. Muhammad did own slaves and the Koran and Muslim scholars defend slavery.
In his book, “You Ask and Islam Answers”, Dr. ‘Abdul-Latif Mushtahari, the general supervisor and director of homiletics and guidance at the Azhar University, says (pp. 51,52),
“Islam does not prohibit slavery but retains it for two reasons. The first reason is war (whether it is a civil war or a foreign war in which the captive is either killed or enslaved) provided that the war is not between Muslims against each other – it is not acceptable to enslave the violators, or the offenders, if they are Muslims. Only non-Muslim captives may be enslaved or killed. The second reason is the sexual propagation of slaves which would generate more slaves for their owner.”
The Qur’an itself (in several places) approves of slavery and assures the Muslim the right to own dozens of male and female slaves either by purchasing them or as bounty of war. The Qur’an talks about the possession of slaves as “the possession of their necks” (Chapter 58:3, Surah Al-Mujadilah).
III. PAUL CONDEMNED SLAVE TRADERS
[The] law is made … for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious; for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, 10for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders …… (I Tim. 1:9-10).
The one New Testament verse which does expressly condemn slavery; Paul’s list of evildoers in 1 Timothy 1:9-10, includes ‘menstealers’.
Seeing this word as a reference to slave traders, Booth rightly suspects that this list is based on the Decalogue and that Paul is here referring to the Eighth Commandment. (Abraham Booth, 17-38-1806)
IV. THE EMPHASIS ON BENEVOLENCE IN THE BIBLE
… the slave trade … is …inimical to the ethical teaching of Christ. Christians are to love even their enemies and do good to them that hate them (Luke 6:27). ‘If our sovereign Lord requires benevolence and active love to our enemies’, Booth reasons, surely he cannot require any less to those who are not our enemies. ….
The London Baptist minister also cites the so-called Golden Rule, Matthew 7:12: ‘all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them’, to show that at the heart of gospel ethics is benevolence towards others.
Booth knew that some would object that slavery was a central feature of the Graeco-Roman world, yet the New Testament nowhere condemns it. He rightly admits that there is no explicit condemnation of slavery in the New Testament.
Yet neither is there any mention of gladiatorial games, which were ‘extremely bloody and wicked’. The fact that slavery, like these Roman blood sports, violates the general moral principles of the Scriptures is sufficient warrant to argue as Booth does. (Abraham Booth, 1734-1806)
V. SLAVES & SLAVE OWNERS EQUAL BEFORE GOD
And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him (Ephesians 6:9).
I charge you, in the sight of God and Christ Jesus and the elect angels, to keep these instructions without partiality, and to do nothing out of favoritism (I Timothy 5:21).
THIS “EQUALITY” (LACK OF FAVORITISM ON GOD’S PART) UNDERMINES ALL SOCIAL DISTINCTIONS AS WELL AS SLAVERY.
ILLUSTRATION: Reading from Blue Like Jazz:
Donald Miller tells of a woman, Penny, who was born in a green army tent on a hippie commune in the Pacific Northwest. Her mother and father spent their lives trying to find truth through drugs. Penny, who was very much against evangelical Christianity, went to France during her sophomore year in college and there met a Christian woman Nadine. Nadine encouraged her to read the Bible and they started reading it together. She relates:
We would eat chocolates and smoke cigarettes and read the Bible, which is the only way to do it, if you ask me. Don, the Bible is so good with chocolate. I always thought the Bible was more a salad thing, you know, but it isn’t. It is a chocolate thing. We started reading through Matthew, and I thought it was all very interesting, you know. And I found Jesus very disturbing, very straightforward. He wasn’t diplomatic, and yet I felt like if I met Him, He would really like me. Don, I can’t explain how freeing that was, to realize that if I met Jesus, He would like me. I never felt like that about some of the Christians on the radio. I always thought if I met those people they would yell at me. But it wasn’t like that with Jesus. There were people He loved and people He got really mad at, and I kept identifying with the people He loved, which was really good, because they were all the broken people, you know, the kind of people who are tired of life and want to be done with it, or they are desperate people, people who are outcasts or pagans. There were others, regular people, but He didn’t play favorites at all, which is miraculous in itself. That fact alone may have been the most supernatural thing He did. He didn’t show partiality, which every human does.” (Blue Like Jazz, pg. 47)
ILLUSTRATION: Reading from The Rise of Evangelicalism
The impact of such evangelical outreach received an unusual memorial in what was probably the very first publication by an African American. Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784) was an African-born slave who had been purchased by a merchant family in Boston, which then manumitted her in recognition of her precocious literary abilities. When Whitefield died, Wheatley, who had heard him preach, wrote a memorial poem that featured lines representing Whitefield’s address to the slaves:
Take Him ye Africans, He longs for you,
Impartial Savior is his title due:
Wash’d in the fountain of his redeeming blood,
You shall be sons, and kings, and Priests to God.
(The Rise of Evangelicalism, Mark Noll, Pgs 175-176)
VI. CHRISTIANS ARE TO DEAL JUSTLY WITH SLAVES
Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a Master in heaven (Col. 4:1).
The very concept of ownership brings with it the right not to be ‘right and fair.’ No body tells a farmer to be ‘right and fair’ with his cows. He doesn’t have to consider dealing justly.
The minute we emphasize what is ‘right and fair’ we are admitting the humanity of an individual.
QUESTION: At the very minimum, what would have been ‘right and fair’ for slaves?
VII. SLAVES AND FREEMEN ARE ONE IN CHRIST
There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28).
Some have called this “The Magna Carta of Humanity.”
The verse strips the superiority out of the Jewish prayer: “Thank you God for not making me a Gentile, a woman or a slave.” (The Talmud: Menahoth 43B-44A).
Women liberation groups have tried to use this verse to show there is no difference between male and female. There is a difference and between slaves and masters …. But there is a big change when they believe …. The are “one” in Christ, in a spiritual sense.
VIII. SLAVES/SLAVE OWNERS ARE ALL MEMBERS OF GOD’S FAMILY
14Although I hope to come to you soon, I am writing you these instructions so that, 15if I am delayed, you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God’s household (family), which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth.
Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3:35).
QUESTION: How do we become members of God’s family?
By birth: “…no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again (born from above)” (Jn 3:3).
12Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God (John 1:12-13).
By adoption: “He predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will” (Eph. 1:5).
Paul uses “brother” and “sister” to refer to believers:
Those who have believing masters are not to show less respect for them because they are brothers. ……… (I Timothy 6:2).
Treat …. older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity (I Timothy 5:2).
I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church in Cenchrea (Romans 16:1).
15Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back for good— 16no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. He is very dear to me but even dearer to you, both as a man and as a brother in the Lord (Philemon 1:15-16).
Christ broke the yoke of slavery by raising slaves to the status of brother and sisters. So slaves have moved from being Plato’s “tools” and a Jewish social misfit to members of God’s family.
QUESTION: How then should slaves and masters treat each other since they are members of one family? What are the consequences of the Christian family relationship?
Christians are told to “love one another” (John 13:34); be “kindly affectionate one to another” (Rom. 12:10); “prefer one another” (Rom. 12:10); “receive one another” (Rom. 15:7); “Admonish one another” (Rom. 15:14); “serve one another” (Gal. 5:13); “Forbear one another” (Eph. 4:2); “teach and admonish one another” (Col. 3:16); “comfort one another” (I Thes. 4:18); “edify one another” (I Thes. 5:11); “exhort one another” (Heb. 3:13); “provoke one another” (Heb. 10:24).
Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you (Eph. 4:32).
There is a new equality based on the blood/body of Christ:
16Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? 17Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf (I Cor. 10:16-17
”Being brothers together in God’s household set the whole relationship on a new footing” (Guthrie, 139).
If a member of the family, sister or brother, than a slave is a joint heir, having the same father, the same lineage, the same home, the same rights.
Who would ever think of selling a brother or sister into slavery? Who would hesitate to do all in his power to deliver a brother or sister from slavery?
“Family of God” written by Bill Gaither:
Chorus
I’m so glad I’m a part of the Family of God,
I’ve been washed in the fountain, cleansed by His Blood!
Joint heirs with Jesus as we travel this sod,
For I’m part of the family,
The Family of God
You will notice we say “brother and sister” ’round here,
It’s because we’re a family and these are so near;
When one has a heartache, we all share the tears,
And rejoice in each victory in this family so dear.
From the door of an orphanage to the house of the King,
No longer an outcast, a new song I sing;
From rags unto riches, from the weak to the strong,
I’m not worthy to be here, but PRAISE GOD! I belong!
IX. CHRIST’S KINGDOM IS A KINGDOM WITH AN HEROIC ROLE FOR LOSERS
ILLUSTRATION: I just completed reading “The Life of Alexander the Great” who was great in men’s eyes and longed to be worshipped as a god but died at the age of 33 or either poison or over-drinking. He is in the list of Western Civilizations heroes along with Achilles, Cesar, Charlemagne, Napoleon, Lord Nelson, Washington, Lincoln, Eisenhower etc, etc. And the Bible heroes, e.g. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Samuel, David, Isaiah, Paul ….
READING: Phil Yancey
Jesus was the first world leader to inaugurate a kingdom with a heroic role for losers. He spoke to an audience raised on stories of wealthy patriarchs, strong kings, and victorious heroes. Much to their surprise, he honored instead people who have little value in the visible world: the poor and meek, the persecuted and those who mourn, social rejects, the hungry and thirsty. His stories consistently featured “the wrong people” as heroes; the prodigal, not the responsible son; the good Samaritan, not the good Jew; Lazarus, not the rich man; the tax collector, not the Pharisee” (Rumors of Another World, Phil Yancey, pg. 197-198).
And so with slaves, from social rejects and “living tools,” true losers in the game of life, to members of the family of God, the truly blessed.
Although slavery has been a near universal feature of “civilization” since the beginning of the world ) For the Glory of God, Rodney Stark, pg. 292) because of the reasons above, Christianity was instrumental in undermining and destroying the institution of slavery.
Why did it take so long?
SO WHAT????
1. The greatest sin a person ever commits is the sin of failing to love God as he/she should.
2. We do not need to be apologetic concerning the New Testament’s treatment of the slavery question.
3. We need to remember how truly revolutionary Christianity was, is and should be? We should always be in the forefront of standing against oppression, especially where fellow Christians are involved.
4. The concepts of “loving our neighbor as ourselves” and “doing unto others as we would have them do to us” are the core principles of a Christians social interaction with others.
We should always show a deep concern for our persecuted and suffering brothers and sisters around the world.
5. Doing what is “right and fair” should always govern our relationship with others.
6. We need to thank God we are members of the family of God and embrace all those who are family members too, even though they may be different than us.