Today we tackle one of the difficult passages in 1 Timothy: Paul’s words about slavery in 1 Timothy 6:1–2. How do we understand a passage like this in its first-century Roman context, especially when we know the terrible history of slavery in America? More importantly, how do we read Scripture when a particular passage seems to conflict with the larger story of the Bible? Today we’ll talk about the importance of context, translation, and reading difficult verses through the greater story of Scripture—the story of God moving toward freedom, justice, mercy, and liberation for the oppressed.
Join us for our daily reflections. In 10 short minutes, we’ll dig a little deeper into Scripture and help us better understand God’s Word.
You can read today’s passage here.
Click here if you’d like to join our GroupMe and receive this each morning at 7:00 a.m. CST.
Subscribe through Spotify -
Subscribe through Apple Podcasts -
Or, if you’d like to read the transcript of the video, keep reading!
Good morning. Good to be with you on this Wednesday morning. I hope you’re doing well and that life is going well for you.
We are in the midst of a busy season here at First UMC. We’re in stewardship season. We talked about it Sunday, and I’m looking forward to this coming Sunday when we’ll talk a little bit more about God’s fire in our lives.
Next week, we’re going to celebrate our 100th anniversary in the sanctuary with some really cool things, a potluck, and a lot of other good stuff. Then we’ll have our time of commitment at the end of the month.
I’ve always loved stewardship. When I first started preaching, I didn’t really like talking about it. But now I’ve come to see it as part of a bigger whole of our lives. I never want to browbeat people about giving. I just want us to understand that God deserves all that we have and all that we are.
And speaking of God deserving all that we are, today’s passage is a hard one.
I want to provide a little bit of context, but I also want to talk about how we read the Bible.
Today we’re in 1 Timothy 6, verses 1 and 2. Paul writes:
He talks about those who are “under the yoke of slavery” and tells them to regard their masters as worthy of honor, so that the name of God and the teaching might not be blasphemed. He then addresses slaves whose masters are believers and tells them not to take advantage of that relationship.
Two verses.
But there is a lot here.
So I want to do three things today. First, I want to provide some context for slavery in the Roman world. Then I want to talk about slavery in the American context. And finally, I want to talk about how we read Scripture.
First, slavery in the Roman world.
I’ve shared with you before that biblical translation is more of an art than a science. There are so many words in Greek that don’t translate perfectly into English.
Here Paul talks about those who are under the “yoke of slavery.” Some translations use the word “bondservant,” and there’s a real debate about which term is more appropriate. There isn’t always a perfect one-to-one translation.
But whatever translation we use here, we need to understand that this passage is talking about slavery. These were people who, for all intents and purposes, were owned by another person. They were not free agents. They were not employees. They were slaves.
Now, there are some important differences between slavery in the Roman world and slavery in the American context.
Some people in the Roman world entered slavery because of debt. Others were enslaved as a result of warfare and conquest. And slavery could take a variety of forms.
Slavery in the Roman world also was not based on race in the way that American chattel slavery was.
That distinction is incredibly important.
American slavery was a racialized system in which Africans and their descendants were enslaved. The American system of chattel slavery was one of the great evils of our history, and its racial character was a fundamental part of that evil.
Roman slavery and American slavery were not identical systems.
But that does not make Roman slavery good. Slavery is still the ownership and exploitation of human beings.
And this is where we have to be very careful when we read Scripture.
Because before the Civil War, many American Christians used passages like this one to defend slavery.
I read a great book a few years ago called The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, and one of the things it discusses is how the Civil War became a theological crisis for American Christianity. Christians were reading the same Bible and coming to radically different conclusions about slavery.
Many people who supported slavery pointed to passages like this one and said, “The Bible clearly supports slavery.”
Others took a more moderate position and said, essentially, “The Bible may regulate slavery, but the overall direction of Scripture bends toward freedom.”
And abolitionists often struggled with how to use Scripture in the argument because they knew there were passages like this one.
But here’s something I think is incredibly important:
African American Christians, including enslaved Christians, often read the Bible differently.
They didn’t read the Bible primarily as a book about slavery.
They read it as a book about freedom.
Why?
Because they understood the story Scripture was telling.
What is one of the dominant narratives of the Old Testament?
Moses leading the Israelites out of slavery.
God hears the cries of enslaved people, delivers them from Egypt, and leads them toward freedom.
And you see this movement throughout Scripture toward inclusion, justice, mercy, and freedom.
Then Jesus comes, and one of the first sermons Luke records Jesus preaching is about proclaiming release to the captives.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously talked about the arc of the moral universe bending toward justice.
And I think there’s something important about that idea when we read Scripture.
The story Scripture is telling is not a story that glorifies slavery.
It is a story that moves toward freedom for the oppressed.
That’s why I think the African American church was able to read these difficult passages in a different way. They understood the story the Bible was telling, and they placed the hard verses within the larger story of Scripture.
And that brings me to the final point: How do we read Scripture?
I was talking with a young man recently about Scripture and about understanding its depth. We were talking about how important it is to apply nuance and to understand context.
But I told him something I’ve said before:
We can nuance ourselves to hell.
We can explain away almost anything if we want to.
So we have to read the Bible with integrity.
And that means we have to read the whole thing.
We can’t just read the parts we like.
We can’t ignore a difficult passage because we don’t like it. We have to wrestle with it.
This passage is hard.
Christians throughout the ages have struggled with passages like this one. Paul was writing in a particular context, to people living in a particular world. We need to understand that context.
And at the same time, we need to read Paul alongside the rest of Paul.
Paul also says that in Christ there is neither slave nor free, because all are one in Christ.
Paul condemns those who engage in kidnapping and enslaving people.
So we have to read the hard verses.
But we also have to read them in the broader context of what Scripture is telling us.
Be very careful of what I sometimes call the “clear reading” of Scripture.
“Well, the Bible plainly says…”
Okay.
Let’s look at the translation.
Let’s look at the context.
Let’s look at the broader story.
And let’s ask what Scripture is really telling us and where the story is pushing us.
I’ve told you before: read the hard parts through the easy parts.
But I actually think we need to go one step further.
Read the hard parts through the greater story of the Bible.
Because sometimes it’s not just one verse against another verse. Sometimes the greater story of Scripture gives us the framework for understanding a difficult verse.
That’s how I think we have to approach passages like this.
And I understand people who struggle with the Bible because of verses like these.
I really do.
It grieves me that verses like this have caused harm.
It grieves me that preachers have preached sermons defending slavery and used passages like this to justify it. It grieves me that the Bible was used to justify families being separated and people being treated as property.
So we have to wrestle with these things.
We have to understand the world Paul lived in.
We have to understand the terrible reality of American slavery.
And we have to understand the larger story of Scripture—the story that bends toward freedom, justice, mercy, and liberation for the oppressed.
If we’re going to read the Bible faithfully, we have to read all of it.
Even the hard parts.
Especially the hard parts.
So thanks for being with me today. I hope this has been helpful.
I’ll pick up tomorrow with the rest of chapter 6.
See you then.