“more than a slave, a beloved brother” Philemon 1:16
Notice how Paul compares Onesimus’ social status (as slave) with his spiritual status (as beloved brother).
Q: Is Paul mixing social realities with gospel realities? 🤯
A: Yes, the gospel changes everything.🙌🏾🙌🏾
/2 Remember, slavery was NOT incidental to the Roman economy and social caste system. Slavery was the heart of the Roman economy and slavery defined the social caste.
When Paul reveals that the gospel is antithetical to the slave system, it’s social, political, and economic TNT
/3 “for slave traders…& for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine that conforms to the gospel”1Tim 1:10
Mixing categories again. Paul is claiming slave trading (a legal profession in the ancient world at the heart of the Roman economy) is contrary to sound *doctrine*.
/4 Paul calls slave trading “contrary to the sound doctrine that conforms to the gospel”
Don’t miss this, because it has HUGE implications!
Paul is saying that slavery an unjust social & economic system is 1) a doctrinal issue 2) a gospel issue
The gospel & social justice
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In America, persecution doesn’t come when you talk like Jesus is Lord. It comes when you live like Jesus is Lord.
/2 When you live like Jesus is Lord over Racism, they will bomb your churches, beat and tear gas you for marching for justice or even kill you on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, and in prayer meetings at Mother Emmanuel AME.
/3 When you live like Jesus is Lord over misogyny, they will denigrate and mock you with ugly names like man-hater, Femi-Nazi, and Jezebel, troll and bully you, and try to push you out of the church.
Though there is much triumph in Ruby’s story, there is also much tragedy, particularly for the church. It’s almost certain that many of the teachers who refused to teach Ruby, the student who harassed her, & the mobs that threatened her were members of Christian churches.
Consider how these Christians treated a 6year old child of the church because she was black.
Until we recognize the complicity of the church in creating unsafe and toxic environments for black christians, we won’t completely understand this story.
Can you imagine if deacons and pastors from white churches had helped escort Ruby bridges into an integrated classroom. If they had treated Ruby Bridges as if she was a child of their community, a member of their body, deserving of equal access and education as a coheir in Christ
John Laurens was an American soldier and statesman from South Carolina during the American Revolutionary War, best known for his criticism of slavery and his efforts to help recruit slaves to fight for their freedom as U.S. soldiers.
John Laurens: A Man of His Times
George Bourne was a 19th-century American abolitionist and presbyterian pastor, who proclaimed "immediate emancipation" of American slaves in a theological treatise. He refused to serve communion to unrepentant slave holders.
George Bourne: A Man of His Times
Juliette Morgan was a librarian & civil rights activist in Montgomery, Alabama. The great grand daughter of a confederate general, Morgan stood against her family & began pushing for integration after attending an interracial prayer meeting.
Church leaders,
Jesus will not hold us accountable for the well-being of the national economy, but he will *definitely* hold us accountable for the well-being of his people.
👆🏾This is not a false dichotomy. The history of America is replete with examples of communities who have suffered so that the US economy could flourish.
Of course a healthy economy helps people. But the immediate costs must always be weighed against the long term benefit.
Reinhold Neibuhr’s “moral man and immoral society” is a classic treatment of the inherent selfishness of institutions which often sacrifice individuals so that institution can thrive.
The scribes and pharisees had turned the 1st century Temple into that kind of institution.
Joseph was a poor exploited ethnic minority, without freedom or rights in a land and culture not his own.
Potiphar was wealthy, politically well-connected, influential, socially elite, and powerful.
*BUT*
I’d rather be The Lord’s Joseph, than the world’s Potiphar.
Joseph was sold into slavery, i.e. poor & had no rights. At the height of his success in Potiphar’s house he was still a slave unable to go home.
Potipher’s wife leverages Joseph’s ethnicity against him to get rid of him (this “Hebrew” slave you bought to mock “us” [Egyptians])
Joseph’s ethnic marginalization cont: Text says Potiphar concerned himself “only with the food he ate.” Egyptians considered Hebrew shepherds inferior & would not receive food from their hand or eat with them at table. (see Gen 43)