PT-1 "Christianity and Slavery"

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/23/2017 10:11 PM

My Worship Time                                                       Focus: PT-1 Christianity and Slavery

            I am not exactly ready to jump into the first verses of Philemon as I think that it is best to look at the topic of Christianity and Slavery and then we will look at an overview of verses 1-7 in our next SD.  We have talked about slavery in earlier Spiritual Diaries from our study in the book of Colossians.  One of the sermons that I was listening to on Colossians by John MacArthur had a lot of talk about slavery.  In that sermon MacArthur mentioned a book that he wrote entirely on slavery, and so I went online and bought the book and read it, which helped me understand more about slavery.  He mentioned in the sermon and also in the book that the Greek word for slavery in the English translations of the Bible is watered down and not translated slave which it should be.  We read in Philippians chapter 2:7 “but emptied Himself, [Christ] taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.”  The word in the Greek for bond-servant is “doulos” which is the word for slave.  Jesus was a slave of the Father while on earth. In the sermon I talked about John MacArthur says that there is a book out called “Kittle” and in that book it gives all of the history of the different Greek words from the Bible.  Some of the words have many pages to help us understand how they were used during the time of Christ when the Greek language that the Bible was written in was used.  Koine Greek was used at that time and then soon after that it was not spoken.  The story goes that this language goes all the way back to Alexander the Great.  When he began to conquer all of the Greek “states” he would take the best of their languages and made one new Greek language “Koine Greek” and the reason that he did this was because of a new type of military system that he was using and he wanted to make sure that all of his orders that were given to his generals could not be misunderstood.  Along comes the New Testament which is written in this language and we have the perfect language for it to be written in.  Ok back to what the Kittle has to say about “doulus” and from what MacArthur said in his sermon there is only a half of a page stating that “doulus” means slave and always did.

            Why are we looking at Slavery and Christianity?  Well Philemon was the slave owner of Onesimus, and he was the one who ran away and ended up talking to Paul in Rome where he became a Christian, so in the book of Philemon we see both Christianity and slavery. 

            During this time slavery was taken for granted as a large number of people who lived under the Roman Empire were slaves, including doctors and other highly educated people.  MacArthur states that up to one third of the population of the Roman Empire were slaves.

            Slaves were actually not considered persons under the Roman law, but the chattel property of their owners and they could be sold, or exchanged or given away or even seized to pay their master’s debt.  Slaves had no legal right to marriage, and slave cohabitation was regulated by the masters who owned them.  There was much cruelty done to slaves and they could do nothing about it.  “The Roman writer Juvenal told of a wealthy woman who ordered the crucifixion of a slave and refused to give any reason except her own good pleasure.”  It is things like this; the way a master treated their slaves that gave slavery such a bad name.  We see that Jesus was a slave to His Father, and so His Master was the perfect Master, as He is the Master to all born-again believers in Jesus Christ.

 “ Chattel slavery is a system of slavery where enslaved people are considered legal property and are treated as such. The term "chattel" comes from Medieval Latin and Old French, and is similar to the word "cattle".” 

 

            We will continue to look at this subject in our next SD.

6/23/2017 10:39 PM