Ephesians chapter six. Before I begin, I’m going to make a confession and I’m going to say something that no preacher should ever think, let alone say out loud. And that is, I’ve been afraid as I’ve been planning to preach this morning on the subject of servants or slaves and masters. I’ll be addressing the subject of slavery. I told Kim, I said, I’m just afraid this is going to be the most irrelevant sermon that anybody in church has ever heard.
Slavery is not exactly a burning issue today. I realized that. But it is a subject that the scripture speaks to. And if I don’t address it when I come to a passage like this, well, then when will I? Beyond that, in our country with the African slave trade that haunts our conscience, this is a subject of conversation that comes up not infrequently. And it is something the Bible has to say something about. And I think it’s important for that reason.
And then also, it has become increasingly popular in recent years for the, especially the new atheists, to use this as a criticism against Christianity. You’ll even hear things like Christianity is the cause, was the cause of slavery, and that Christianity condones slavery, and so on. And so because of all of that, I think it is worth our time to do that. It’s customary to treat this passage in regard to employers and employees, and I think that’s right, and I hope to do that next week, and I hope to show you why that’s a right use of this passage. But this morning I want to look at the subject of slaves and masters, and we’re going to look at it in light of this passage, and then also in light of the other places, particularly in the New Testament, that speak to the issue. And hopefully it’ll be helpful, as I say, if nothing else, in particular in reference to those who bring up the subject as an argument against Christianity.
With that in mind, you’ll remember this passage is what is often called the household codes. Household codes. Paul addresses wives, and then husbands, children, and then fathers and parents, and now slaves and masters. Beginning with verse five of chapter six:
Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling. With a sincere heart, as you would Christ, not by the way of eye service as people pleasers, but as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart. Rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a slave or free. Masters, do the same to them and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their master and yours is in heaven and that there is no partiality with him.
Let’s bow together for prayer. Our Father, we are grateful that Your word does speak to issues of life importance for us, and we’re grateful for the instruction that You give us. We ask that in this passage now You will help us to see how the gospel ought to shape our thinking in this particular regard and give us a healthy understanding through it of the life implications of the gospel with regard to treating one another. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
James Madison Pendleton: A Voice for Abolition
James Madison Pendleton lived 1811 to 1891. He was a Baptist pastor, first in the South, then later in the North. He was a man who lived during the time of the national debate here in America and the division over race and slavery and around the time of the Civil War. He was a son of the South. He was born in Virginia. He pastored in Kentucky and Tennessee, and then later in the North in Ohio and in Pennsylvania. He was a prominent Southern Baptist voice. He taught at the Southern Baptist Union University in Jackson, Tennessee. And with all of that in his background, he had everything to gain and nothing to lose by siding with the South with regard to the matter of slavery.
The Southern Baptist Convention, as some of you may know, was founded in 1845 when the Southern churches broke away from the Northern churches over a dispute that arose among them when Southern slave owners were being refused ordination for missionary service by the North, and so the Southern churches broke away in protection of slavery. But James Madison Pendleton was one of those minority voices for abolition in Southern Christianity in the day. And when pro-slavery articles were written in the Baptist Banner, a Baptist newspaper, particularly in the South—pro-slavery articles written by a fellow pastor—Pendleton wrote to rebut those arguments. The Baptist Banner, if you can believe it, refused to publish his rebuttal, and so he had it published instead in the Louisville Examiner. And it was a strong, forthright argument for emancipation.
He notes in his biography the cost of his convictions, at times even danger to his life. He was forced to resign his post at Union University. He describes his despair and his tears at the time. He was afraid God had no other place for him in His vineyard. “Where can I serve the Lord now?” And it was just a terribly despairing time for him. And you can imagine the added grief that it was to him when his own son died in battle as a Confederate soldier.
But in a society where slavery was so widely accepted, and in fact the Bible was used to justify it, Pendleton was convinced that the Bible could not be used in that way, and he spoke out firmly against slavery. And he writes this, for example: “I have often wondered that the apologies”—that is the arguments, the older sense of the word apology—”I often wondered that the apologies of slavery refer with such frequency to the Mosaic law, when it is evident that if a prominent regulation of that law had not been utterly disregarded, there would have been no slavery in America. Moses says”—and here he quotes Exodus 21:16—”he that steals a man and sells him, or if he be found in his hands, shall surely be put to death.”
Well, of course, the Bible can be twisted and used to say anything just about that you want it to say. We see that in our own generation as well with other issues. And it was used in support of the African slave trade in ways that are, to our way of thinking especially today, just unthinkable, but to the thinking of many in that day as well. Some claim that they owned slaves out of their—and this is a quote that Pendleton makes—”out of their obligation to love their neighbor and convert the unbeliever.” That’s what lays behind the African slave trade.
So Pendleton writes in reply, “Can you name a class of men for me who in the early settlement of America went across the Atlantic to Africa from merely these impulses of humanity to purchase slaves, believing that they could materially better their condition and win them to Christ? Does history contain a record of such men? I would like to know. I don’t know their names. I would like to know their names so I could give them the due honor that is due them.” Well, of course, he’s being sarcastic and it’s clear, and he says this, that the motive is not humanitarian. The motive is simply economic, no matter what the wrong involved and no matter what the cost of human life.
And he writes the idea that slaves are property, he says, is just an unthinkable thing to speak of men. In whose souls God has stamped immortality, he says, to think of them on the level of beasts that perish is just an unthinkable thing. Some would claim, he said, that slavery would promote the holiness and the happiness of the slaves themselves; bringing them from Africa here as a slave is better in that regard. And he says, well, if it’s better for them, it would be better for the whites as well. We should all become slaves. And of course, that wasn’t the issue either.
Well, Pendleton in his own ministry admitted blacks into the membership of the church, and he stood out as a wonderful example of understanding things better. But to bolster the claim that the Bible endorses slavery, passages like this in Ephesians 6 were appealed to, where here the Apostle Paul gives admonition both to slaves and to masters, but gives no suggestion of abolishing slavery itself.
Another passage that was used was 1 Timothy 6, verses 1 and 2, where, again, the Apostle Paul writes, “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 grounds 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.”
Well, Christians, many Christians in the Old South would appeal to passages like this to justify not only slavery in concept, but particularly that slavery that was practiced in the Old South. And as I say, the new atheists in more recent years have brought this up to attack Christianity on this score as well, even saying such things as Christianity was the cause of slavery.
Important Distinctions: Slavery in the Bible vs. the African Slave Trade
Now, I want to say a lot about that, but we start, I think, it’s very important, with these very important distinctions. And that is, first of all, the Bible and the biblical writers recognize slavery and they admonish accordingly. They recognize slavery and they admonish accordingly, but they do not endorse it as such. There was no society in that day that was without slaves. That would have been unimaginable to conceive of a society without bond servants. And neither Jesus nor the apostles were political revolutionaries. And in fact, if they had done so, it just would have brought persecution against the Christians.
And this is a more important distinction to make: Slavery in that world—that is slavery in the world of the New Testament—was not the same as the African slave trade that was practiced here in early America and that haunts the American conscience today. The slavery of that world in Paul’s world was not race-based. It was not based on kidnapping. It was not lifelong. And it was not, at least usually, marked by harsh cruelty. It’s an important distinction to make that there is slavery and there is slavery, and I’ll say some more about that in a minute.
Many of you know the story of Harriet Beecher Stowe in the 19th century, the famed author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The story is told, a famous story of course, where she went to the White House to visit and to meet with President Lincoln and Lincoln reportedly said to her, “So you’re the little woman who started this great war.” Well, in her book, she famously described the nature of antebellum slavery. And she writes things like, “The legal power of the master amounts to an absolute despotism over body and soul. And there is no protection for the slave’s life.” Well, Christians and even many non-Christians read that with just horror and revolt. And the problem is, in this context that we’re talking today, that is what comes to mind when we read passages like Ephesians 6. And it was two very different worlds.
In fact, it’s such a problem that it’s difficult for—and it’s a great discussion among Bible translators—how do we translate this word doulos? It’s clear enough, it means slave. It means bond slave. But as sure as you translate it that way, it’s going to bring to the American reader’s mind something different from what it was when Paul wrote it. In fact, if you’d like to see on it, it’s an interesting discussion. You can see it on the web at Crossway Publishers of the ESV. They have a brief video, a few minutes of the discussion of the Translation Committee of the ESV when they’re discussing this very issue. And you’ll see people like Wayne Grudem and J.I. Packer and Vern Poythress and Jack Collins and some others sitting around these big tables discussing, “How do we render this word doulos in a way that doesn’t miscommunicate what’s going on and what’s in Paul’s mind as he writes?”
Slavery in the Old Testament and the Roman Empire
Well, let’s look then a little bit about slavery in the ancient world and then try to bring this together. First of all, some just broad remarks. We can’t look into it in detail, but some broad remarks about slavery in the Old Testament. Usually, almost always, the slavery of the Old Testament, what it had in mind was what we would call an indentured servitude. It was carefully regulated by Moses’ law. It was often debt related. Sometimes it was even voluntary. That is, you sell yourself into slavery in order to pay off a debt. And it was limited to seven years. And keep in mind, in Moses’ law, it was not seven years just spoken. It was every seventh year there was to be a release of the slaves.
There are three important provisions that were made in the Old Testament with regard to slavery that I think is important to keep in mind with regard to this distinction that I’m making. First of all, in the Old Testament there were laws against harming the slave. Now that was unheard of in the ancient Near East in their law codes. But for example, Exodus chapter 21 verses 26 and 27, that if a master injured his servant, that servant is to be set free. When the master or the employer, however you want to say it, accidentally even injured severely one of the slaves, the slave is to be set free. And if the master punished the slave in such a way that brought death, the master himself is to be put to death. It was a capital crime. So there was this built into the Mosaic Law, although there’s this recognition of slavery, but it was like an indentured servitude. There was built into it this notion of personal respect, that these were not just pieces of property, but they were human beings.
And so next, another provision of the Mosaic Law, there were laws against kidnapping. Exodus 21 verse 16, as we read earlier, it is an offense that is to be punished by death. And then third, and this is fascinating, and again, this is just unheard of in the ancient Near East, there were laws in Moses’ law against returning slaves to their owners. So for example, in Deuteronomy chapter 23 verses 15 and 16, Israel was to offer safe harbor for foreign runaway slaves. And that in contrast, again, not just to the antebellum South here, but also in contrast to the ancient Near East. And in fact, in Hammurabi’s code, there was a death penalty that was prescribed for helping a runaway slave. And in contrast to all of that, Moses’ law, they were commanded to give safe harbor for slaves.
Well, in a world where every culture practiced some kind of slavery, Israel was just unparalleled. In fact, one Old Testament scholar writes this: “No other ancient Near Eastern law has been found that holds a master to account for the treatment of his own slaves.” Now, that’s as distinct for injury to someone else’s slave. If you injured someone else’s slave, then you’d be in trouble. But injuring your own slave, well, that’s up to you. And so he writes, “No other ancient Near Eastern law has found that holds a master to account for the treatment of his own slaves. And the otherwise universal law regarding runaway slaves, would that they be sent back with severe penalties for those who failed to comply.”
So there was something about Israel’s slavery that was set apart against the rest of the ancient world. Again, it was not race-based, it was not based on kidnapping, it was not lifelong, and it was not marked by harsh cruelty. It was up to seven years only, and so on.
Well, we come to the New Testament world. And again, we just have time just to speak broadly. But there are some estimates of historians that in the New Testament world, that is in the Roman Empire, up to perhaps 85%—now get this, this is mind-boggling—up to 85% of Rome’s population consisted of slaves. Now, once you see that, you’re going to think, “Okay, there must be different kinds of slavery.” And, in fact, there were, both lowly and prestigious positions. We’ll see some of that in a second. Now, that’s a huge step backward from the Old Testament, but that’s not Christianity, that’s Rome.
Even so, even within Rome and in the Roman Empire, there were different kinds of slavery. Much of it was brutal and cruel and harsh. But many slaves lived very normal lives. Many slaves were paid the going rate. They simply weren’t allowed to quit, and they couldn’t market their skills to another employer. They were there, and it wasn’t lifelong, but they were paid the going wage and lived rather normal lives otherwise. The average stint of a slave then was 10 years. POWs, prisoners of war, were allowed—were made—often became slaves. And sometimes criminals were sentenced to become galley slaves. But that’s of a different order. You could in that day voluntarily become a slave, as I mentioned earlier, to pay off a debt. There was no economic structure in that day with a Chapter 11 or a Chapter 13 bankruptcy. And so you could sell yourself into servanthood, an indentured servitude, for a stipulated period of time by which you would pay off the debt, and then by that protect your family from disaster.
And in fact, this is just to show the staggering difference between what slavery could be in that world and what it was in the Old South. In that day, many of the slaves were doctors, physicians, professors in schools, the equivalent of PhDs, administrators, and civil servants. And in fact, even slaves could own slaves. So you see, we’re talking about two very different animals here, in broad strokes at least. No one in that world ever conceived of an economic structure without slavery. Some were harsh, some were cruel, yes. But the concept of slavery or indentured labor was considered a given. In fact, one scholar writes, “One cannot correctly speak of the slave problem in antiquity.” There was no problem. In other words, no one, not even the slaves themselves, considered abolishing the institution itself.
The Revolutionary Teaching of the New Testament
All right, now, within that broader context, we need to consider the New Testament teaching with regard to slavery. And several considerations come to change the institution in great ways. First of all, within a Christian concept, there is the concept of every man created in the image of God. There was a fundamental dignity that was recognized with regard to all human beings—high born or low, male, female—all are born in the image of God. And that consideration alone has a kind of leveling effect. And so there was opposition to kidnapping. That was a given in Christianity. There is an opposition to cruel and harsh treatment. That is a given in Christianity. And so on.
And so, for example, in 1 Timothy chapter 1 verses 9 and 10, where the Apostle Paul lists a list of horrible vices, in the middle of it he lists man-stealers. Kidnapping. In Revelation chapter 18 we have the same thing where doomed Babylon is condemned in part because she treated human beings as cargo. The same kind of concept. That’s what Christianity has to say about that.
Furthermore, there is a specifically gospel factor that the apostles brought to bear on the practice that changed it drastically. For example, in Ephesians chapter 2, verses 11 and following, the Apostle Paul, as we saw some time ago here in Ephesians, that there is a oneness in Christ that transcends every barrier. Racial or whatever kind, our oneness in Christ transcends every barrier. We are all brought in Christ with equal access to God Himself. And so Paul writes in Galatians 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Greek. There’s neither slave nor free. There is no male and female. You are all one in Christ Jesus.” And in saying that, he gives a kind of, as I say, a leveling effect, or as I like to say, more than a leveling effect, it’s an equally exalting effect of the gospel in which all are equally brought into access to God. And of course, in the Protestant principle in particular, there’s not even the distinction between clergy and laity, all equally brought with equal access to God. And so Paul writes in Colossians 3 verse 11, “Here there is no Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave-free, but Christ is all in all.” There is an equally exalting effect in the gospel for all who are in Christ, a spiritual equality where none is given a higher standing than another.
Well, if you take that kind of thing, even just in broad strokes that we’ve looked at it so quickly, if you take that kind of teaching seriously, it has to transform attitudes. And so, for example, in 1 Corinthians 7, verses 22 and 23, Christian slaves are referred to as brothers and sisters. Again, Pendleton, bringing the Christian slaves into the membership of the church. We have another example of this in Paul’s treatment of Onesimus, recorded for us in the book of Philemon, a brief letter that Paul writes to Philemon. There is some discussion, some debate about this, but most think that evidently Onesimus was a slave of Philemon’s, a runaway slave. Some say perhaps he stole some things from Philemon. He’s running to Paul. Paul is sending him back to Philemon. Whatever the exact situation in that regard, the fact remains that what Paul did in sending Onesimus back to Philemon is he imposed a Christian fellowship between them that transcends every other consideration. So if he is still Philemon’s servant, he is still his servant, but it’s brought into a new context entirely.
Both Peter and Paul commanded masters to show compassion, to show justice to their slaves. They were forbidden to abuse their status with slaves, and their position was never to be abused, never to oppress their slaves. And when we come to household codes like this in Ephesians 5 and 6, the Apostle Paul not only commands wives, but he commands husbands. And he not only commands children, he commands parents. And he not only commands slaves, but he commands masters. And that was unheard of. And in fact, you’ll see here in verses five through nine of Ephesians six, particularly in the latter verses, that Paul brings up the point and presses it that both—both the masters and the slaves—must consider that they have a higher Master.
Well, again, if you read that in even a cursory kind of fashion, if you take it with any kind of seriousness, it has to transform attitudes, and it has to put different structures in your mind, different ideals. And so we find in the early church, slaves even took on leadership positions in the church. A fascinating piece that I read many years ago from F.F. Bruce, a renowned New Testament scholar. He’s been gone, I guess, 25 years or 30 years—I don’t know, maybe more than that now. Been gone for a good while. Very highly respected man. Made the case that we have in the early church a bishop by the name of Onesimus. And we can’t be absolutely certain, but there is real historical evidence to make the link that this is the man, in fact, that Paul returned back to Philemon and now a bishop in the church. Well, given the equally exalting effects of the gospel, why not?
So again, although the Apostles were not political revolutionaries, their teaching was revolutionary. You just have to see that. We can say that formally the Apostles did not denounce slavery as an institution. And there may have been various reasons for that, like the economic structures and the reality of needing to go into a situation of indentured servitude in order to pay a debt and protect your family and so on. There may have been reasons for not denouncing it as a concept itself. But in a society where their teaching was taken seriously, it would be very difficult for slavery even to survive. In fact, F.F. Bruce writes, “What Paul’s letters do is bring us into an atmosphere in which the institution of slavery could only wilt and die.” It was a countercultural gospel that inevitably did away with the institution of slavery itself.
In fact, that is what happened in the coming centuries after the Apostolic Era in Christianized Europe, what we call Christendom. It eventually became slavery-free. Slavery was accepted in all of the cultures of the ancient world forever, but it was in Christianity—it was in Christianity that the idea arose that slavery ought to be abolished. The popular attack that Christianity caused slavery just isn’t true. And it’s very obviously not true. Miroslav Volf, in his book, A Public Faith: How Followers of Christ Should Serve the Common Good, he writes that the New Testament teaching so transforms the master-servant relationship that while it is still there in form—the servant is still to work for his employer and so on—the New Testament teaching so transforms the master-servant relationship that while it is there in form, slavery has been abolished even if its outer institutional shell remains. I think it captures it very well. The gospel so undermines slavery as an institution that where the gospel went, slavery eventually disappeared. That’s the history. The gospel transformed hearts, and there were new structures of ideals that demanded something different.
Now, having said all of that, we have to acknowledge that while Christianity itself so undermined slavery that it led eventually to its complete abolition, Christians themselves have not had a spotless record on this. Christians are sinners too. And when economic factors came in and greed took over, such as in the Old South, slavery was accepted, slavery was defended, and the Bible was even used to do it. And we just have to admit it, that even though many of these were Baptist and Presbyterian pastors and theologians whom otherwise we would regard very highly, they’re just wrong. And there’s no justification for it.
But even given that, we have to acknowledge, even with secular historians who have written this, it was evangelical Christians who led the fight for the abolition of slavery. For example, most famously, of course, William Wilberforce. Many of you are familiar with the name Thomas Sowell. He’s a political commentator, has a column that you’ll see. I’m sure many of you are familiar with him. He’s an African-American scholar. In his book called Race and Culture, he poses the question, “How did slavery stop? How was it that slavery was brought to an end?” And he points back to the evangelical awakening in England. Deeply committed evangelical Christians with a conscience now shaped by the gospel carried on a relentless kind of campaign that eventually forced abolition through Parliament. So that eventually it was English gunboats that stopped the slave trade in the Atlantic. British gunboats which before would have been used to protect those ships, now brought the practice to an end. Both with regard to African slaves being brought to America and the even more—if you can imagine it—millions more African slaves taken to the Arab world. And British gunboats now brought against it to stop it because Christians were convinced that the gospel demands a higher morality than that.
So, in Ephesians chapter 6 then, verses 5 through 9, that’s my introduction to the sermon which we will get to next week. But notice, Paul again does not denounce slavery as an institution here. He’s not a political revolutionary. I’ve said all of this. It would have been useless in that world to call for the abolition of slavery. It would have just brought persecution on the Christians. And in that economy, there could be a place for indentured labor and so on. So he didn’t denounce it as a concept itself. But speaking to Christians—and this is what you have to see—speaking to Christians, he worked from the inside out. And what he said so served to undermine a system itself, that the institution itself, so undermined by the gospel, finally had to give way. It was something the gospel just couldn’t tolerate.
Next week then, we’ll look at it and hopefully bring it a little closer to home that there are principles here, I think, that come to bear with employers and employees both that are important for us in our own day, in our own economy. Let’s bow together in prayer.
Our Father, we’re thankful for Your word that speaks to issues on which we need to be informed and have a clear understanding. We pray that You would use this to shape our minds, help us. Although we don’t have this practice of slavery in our own day, we do have relationships and we still have concepts of high and low. May we find in our own experience the gospel taking shape. Help us, Lord, to see that the gospel gives freedom for all and help us to rejoice in the great exaltation that is ours together in Christ. We pray in His name, amen.