Paul's Address to Bondservants in Colossians 3
In Colossians 3:18-4:1, Paul shows the fullness of Christ in the home. The first four verses are directed at husbands, wives, parents, and children. Then, in verse 22, he addresses bondservants, or slaves. It is a passage that is not easy for us to read today. The issue of slavery is a very sensitive subject, and rightfully so.
Paul’s address to husbands, wives, parents, and children addresses God-ordained and God-blessed social structures. In this address to slaves, Paul is stepping into a social construction of oppression that God does not condone. Some wonder why Paul didn’t attack the institution of slavery head-on. Why give instructions rather than condemnation? Because radical social change never happens in an instant, and in the meantime, the gospel has something to say to everyone in any situation. Paul is applying the gospel to this reality, showing how the fullness of Christ makes a difference today amid everything going on.
It’s important to point out that this passage should never be viewed as the Bible’s approval of slavery. Like anything, to understand what the Bible says about a topic, we have to take the Bible as a whole. If we take the totality of what the Bible says, we could never conclude God is pro-slavery. In fact, the Bible is the very reason we have any anti-slavery ideas at all. Passages like ours today introduced a new idea to the world. No one else was saying anything remotely close to this. It was the idea that slaves were inherently equal to their masters, just as wives were to husbands and children to parents. Paul destroyed the normative social constructs as he brought the fullness of Christ to bear upon their lives. This was a radical new idea. Paul turned his modern world’s view of humanity on its head. If we do away with the Bible because we believe its views of human equality are too backward, we are cutting off the branch we’re sitting on. The only reason we have those ideas of human equality at all is because the Bible quite literally gave them to us. No one in the ancient world talked to slaves as inherent equals to masters. Only Christians did that. Luc Ferry is a French philosopher. He is not a Christian. Some years ago, he wrote a book called A Brief History of Thought. Here’s what he said about Christianity.
Christianity was to introduce the notion that humanity was fundamentally identical, that men were equal in dignity - an unprecedented idea at the time….This idea may seem self-evident, but it was literally unheard of at the time, and it turned an entire world-order upside down. (Pp. 72-73)
Without Christianity’s idea of human equality found in the gospel of Christ, we would never have our modern ideas of social equality. The Civil Rights Movement would never have happened without Jesus breaking into the world with this new vision of humanity. Christianity changed the social game. So, just because Paul addressed slaves doesn’t mean he’s falling in line with the social norm. By addressing slaves as human beings with moral agency and being on the same level as masters was quite literally a new thing. God is the first abolitionist. He’s the originator of the Civil Rights Movement throughout the world.
The Bible has some amazing verses about this. One we’ve already seen in Colossians 3:11. “Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.” Pauls said almost the same thing in Galatians 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” In the Christian church, there is no room for sexism or racism, or any other social separation into upper and lower classes. We are all one in Christ Jesus. We are used to that idea today, but that’s only because the Bible gave us that idea. Every person who has ever fought for social equality has done so because the Bible gave them the framework of understanding. The moral ground for every civil rights movement is the Bible. God gave us these ideas. This is just one of a million ways Christianity changed the world.
We see this play out early in the Church’s history. Inside the Colossian church sat at least one slave that we know of. His name was Onesimus. The house in which the Colossian church met was likely owned by a man named Philemon. Philemon also owned Onesimus. One day, Onesimus escaped and ran to Rome. He apparently stole something from Philemon on the way out and was hoping to hide in the big city. But by God’s providence, he came into contact with Paul, heard the gospel, and was saved. Later, Paul wrote a letter to Philemon. We have it in our Bible. In it, he appealed to Philemon in Christ to receive Onesimus back not as a bondservant but as a beloved brother (16). He asked Philemon to receive Onesimus as he would receive Paul and promised to repay any debts Onesimus owed. It was a radical thing to ask. No one else in the ancient world would ask such a thing. It’s the kind of thing only the gospel makes possible.
The Christian gospel speaks to all people in every situation all the time. You cannot get any socially lower than a slave. But Jesus doesn’t ignore the lowly. He speaks directly to them. This is nothing new for God. Remember in Exodus when Israel was in slavery? God heard their groanings. Fast forward thousands of years, and here is a slave in the Colossian church wondering how what Paul is saying applies to his life in bondage. He was seen as equal to a tool with no rights or dignity, and then he hears this: “Bondservants….” Jesus is speaking to him. That’s glorious. In the hands of our Savior, even the lowliness of slavery can be a glorious calling in Christ. I don’t say that flippantly. I say it because the Bible says it. Slaves are not nobodies to Jesus. They are somebodies on the same level as the richest man.
