Christians are called to obey all the traditional social authorities. Children are told to obey their parents (Ephesians 6:1, Colossians 3:20), servants are told to obey their masters wholeheartedly out of fear of God (Ephesians 6:5-6, Colossians 3:22),
wives are told to submit to their husbands (Ephesians 5:22-23, 1 Peter 3:1), and all believers are told in several places to obey the civil authorities who are identified as God’s ministers (Romans 13:1-7, Titus 3:1, Hebrews 13:17).
Submission to and obedience to these authorities is treated consistently, in the New Testament, as part of the obedience we owe God. Of course there´re also commands to those entrusted with authority not to abuse it: fathers are told not to provoke their children (Ephesians 6:4)
Husbands are told to love their wives as Christ loves His Church (Ephesians 5:25-28), masters are reminded that they too have a Master and are told not to threaten their servants (Ephesians 6:9).
The Holy Scriptures also declare that the earth and everything in it, belongs to God. The Psalmist says “The earth is the LORD's, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein” (Psalm 24:1)
“Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine”, God declares, in Ezekiel 18:4. He then goes on to say “the soul that sinneth, it shall die”, an assertion of His right as the owners of all souls to punish the soul that disobeys.
Rather than belonging to ourselves, therefore, we belong to God.
In the Sacred Scriptures, there is not the slightest sympathy with Lockean/Whiggish/Liberal concept of self-ownership anywhere, a thought which argues individuals who have no other property, have at least their own selves as their own, their lives and their liberty.
