Why the New Testament Seems Soft on Slavery
The issue of slavery in the Bible makes a lot of Christians a bit queasy.
Please do not read the next line without reading this entire article. The New Testament seems soft on slavery because the idea of being a slave is not repugnant to a true believer. Of course, the idea of owning slaves is repugnant to a believer who understands the love of Christ for all people. None of us are our own. We are all the slaves of Jesus Christ and purchased by Him not out of selfishness, anger, greed, or hatred, but out of His love and self-sacrifice.
Slavery under the Old Testament law was a complicated issue that included a lot of different circumstances and is not easily understood today. That is an article for another day.
Unlike Old Testament Judaism, Christianity was a faith that God intended to be taken to the entire world. It was not confined to one particular nation or culture. It was not intended to be a cultural revolution but a personal one. While we help one another and disciple one another, every person who truly comes to Christ comes on his or her own. True Christian faith is individual, accountability before God is individual, and our walk of fellowship with God is personal.
New Testament Christianity sees all human beings as equal and equally valuable to God.
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)
This sameness before God is at the heart of New Testament doctrine. While this meant that the soul of the slave was as valuable as the master, it also meant that the soul of the master was as valuable as the slave. The book of Philemon addresses this specific issue beautifully. The book is not an appeal to the heart of a slave, but to the heart of a slave owner, because Philemon’s soul was valuable too.
It is important to remember that the New Testament condemns kidnapping people and selling them as slaves as was practiced from the 16th through the 19th centuries in the western world and elsewhere throughout almost all of recorded human history. The New Testament condemns “man-stealing” or as it is sometimes translated “kidnapping” as one of the most egregious of sins. (1 Timothy 1:10)
So why is there no specific commandment in the New Testament to free all slaves?
Consider these three reasons.
First, if this specific issue had been a theme of the Apostle Paul’s preaching, Paul and everyone associated with Christianity would have been hunted and executed by the Romans. A slave rebellion was one of the greatest fears of the ancient Romans. The salvation of the soul is higher on the priority list than the freedom of the body.
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? (Matthew 8:36-37)
The second reason is that Christianity seeks to change people from within, not to force change from without. Christians did not control the governments of the nations they reached. But they did preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and the value of a human soul. When Paul appeals to a slave owner (and Christian) named Philemon regarding his runaway slave, Paul makes the case that the slave (Onesimus) is now a brother in Christ and whatever Onesimus owes Philemon, Philemon owes Paul. (Philemon 12-15). Paul destroys the idea of enslaving a brother in Christ through doctrinal reasoning—by convincing him—rather than by commanding him.
The marching orders to the Church are to preach the gospel to every lost person everywhere (Matthew 28:19-20). This means that a slave owner’s goal must be the evangelization of his own slaves, who already do not belong to him but to God. The incongruity becomes obvious. It is impossible to see institutional slavery as compatible with New Testament teaching regarding the value of a human soul.
The third reason might be the most profound. According to Romans 12:1-2, all Christians are required to think of themselves, not as freedmen, but as slaves. We have not just been freed from the old master, we have been purchased by a new Master. We are not our own. We are not self-determining. We are the servants of Jesus Christ purchased by His love. The intent of the New Testament was not for Onesimus to see himself as a free man, but rather for Philemon to see himself as a slave.
Everyone who walks this planet is a slave to something. Either they are slaves to their own sin and its consequences or they are the blood-bought servants of Jesus Christ.
He does not force us into this servitude, we choose it in love as the only appropriate response to His sacrifice for us.