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The world seduces us with slavery and calls it freedom. Christ
calls us to become His slaves, to take up the easy yoke, which
is the only freedom. [20]
Slaves were despised as a class in Roman culture because manual
labor was universally looked down upon. The goal of the value
system of upper class Roman society was not to have a respected
profession but to have no profession at all, to live a life of
organized leisure. Jobs we hold in high regard today, such as
doctors, lawyers and artists, were given to slaves in the first
century. [29]
When you look at the life of Paul, when you understand the
severity of his calling, you begin to see that the title “slave
of Christ” is more than a metaphor. It is an accurate
description of someone who gave up everything, his choices, his
expectations and all his rights. [40]
Every time Paul proclaimed the oneness every follower of Jesus
has with one another, he was, in a sense, pronouncing slavery
“null and void.” In the light of Christ it simply did not exist
anymore. But this spiritual reality was not at all evident to
the pagan world in which the new Christians were living out this
new freedom. Paul did not directly confront the world of Roman
slavery because his call was to introduce another world shaped
by a transcendent value system derived from the servant life of
Jesus. He did not preach the end of slavery, but rather a new
kind of slavery that was a new beginning, a better freedom. [54]
The New Testament does not offer the choice between slavery and
freedom, but only whose slave we will be—the world’s or
Christ’s. Jesus does not offer freedom from slavery but instead
a new kind of freedom that provides the only true freedom. I
cannot buy my freedom. Only Jesus can. [63]
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