Christian Marriage Issues - keeping the Status Quo

I have been listening to the recordings online of the earlier parts of chapter 7 and there's been a lot of material that's gone over while I was out of town. I had to be out of town for two weekends so I missed a lot of opportunities to participate. But we'll pick up in chapter 7 verse 17 and we'll go through verse 24 here.

Roger had given this an initial title based on one outline, but I would re-title this section, Resting Where You Are. It just seems more appropriate than the initial one in this case, because Paul says three times that you should basically remain where you are. So we'll call it that. We'll go ahead and read from 17 through 24. It's there on the top of your handout.

Hopefully you've got your Bibles open as well. Only as the Lord has assigned each one, as God has called each, in this manner let him walk. And so I direct in all the churches. Was any man called when he was already circumcised? He is not to become uncircumcised. Has anyone been called in uncircumcision? He is not to be circumcised. Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing.

But what matters is the keeping of the commandments of God. Each man must remain in that condition in which he was called. Were you called while a slave? Do not worry about it. But if you are able also to become free, rather do that. For he who is called in the Lord while a slave is the Lord's freed man. Likewise, he who is called while free is Christ's slave. You were bought with a price. Do not become slaves of men. Brethren, each one is to remain with God in that condition in which he was called."

So as I was thinking about this passage in the greater context of chapter seven and then in the even greater context of first Corinthians, what would have been relatively common in the New Testament church is that someone who was a tutor or well-educated would get up in front of the congregation, the body that had gathered there together, and have the letter, and they would read it out loud.

So imagine, if you will, in this context, we've already made it through the first six chapters, and as whoever's reading is reading, everybody in the room is kind of thinking about who has the problem, that the letter has been addressing as they've progressed through the chapter. Oh, we've got this problem of arrogance about Paul and Apollos and Cephas. And we've got this problem of building materials and people destroying the temple. And we've got all these problems as they're building through it.

And everybody's going, oh, it's that person over there. And it's the guy who's sleeping with his father's wife. And they're like, that's him. And we all know who it is. But when we get to this chapter, In chapter 7 there is a very different set of problems because it's talking about all kinds of people in their relationships and the social constructs that are associated with that. And so then we start hitting the whole room.

Right? It's not just necessarily one person or two people, but there's people who are believers in marriages where there's a split between believers and non-believers, and we've obviously addressed that. So when we get to 717, one of the questions that I asked myself, and I've got here at the top of this section here under introduction, is what cultural norms might believers acquiesce to but cause them doubt? about what they should do and what their salvation should be today.

What are things that Christians do or do not do today based on either cultural norms or expectations? They sin all the time. It's just a given thing. For some Christians alcohol is off limits. For some Christians it's not. It's a personal preference. It's a liberty. I was thinking about the adultery part. We're talking about cultural practices that are normal and then change. I guess adultery could be the case. I hope that's not... I guess it's probably more common than I'd like to admit.

But there are cultural norms that believers tend to acquiesce to inside of Christendom. It's Christian culture. And so people will change their behavior patterns or do certain things based on that. maybe laser tattoo removal, or whatever else it is. Oh, Christians don't have tattoos, or they don't smoke, or they don't drink, or they don't whatever. And people will have these big swings in their behavior. What we're talking about here when we get into this is something that is physically focused on men in the first half when we talk about circumcision. Okay, so ladies, you can breathe a sigh of relief, right?

But we have this very real problem of people not being saved, and then coming to know the Lord, and then they're eager to do the most righteous thing. Right? How many of you remember when you were a new believer, and you just wanted to serve the Lord, and you were young and zealous, but you didn't know anything? And what did the mature Christians do when they came around and came alongside?

Slow down. Think about what you're doing. Let the scripture guide. Let the Lord be your shepherd instead of this. Hopefully that's what they said, Tom. I have to say that I've seen a lot of Christians, had the experience of older Christians came alongside and basically killed the fire. They just had a bucket of water and went, shh. They wanted to start doing stuff right away. Yeah. What do I do? How do I do Christian things?

You serve on this committee. And so very much that sort of behavior or pattern is Paul's concern here, only he's going to talk to us about circumcision. Before we get too far ahead of ourselves on circumcision, let's take a look at this principle here. It says, only as the Lord has assigned to each one, as God has called each in this manner, let him walk. And so I direct all churches.

So what happens when someone becomes a Christian and they're in a certain part of their lifestyle or the world. Something changes, their whole worldview shifts over on being focused on Christ. But maybe they were engineers, maybe they were plumbers, maybe they were whatever they were, and maybe they were in today's culture, maybe they were Jewish, or maybe they were Muslim, or Hindu, or any of these other religions, there's going to be things that were manifest in their lives right before they were saved that may have been cultural or traditional within their world right up until that point. Right until they died with Christ.

And so Paul says that the Lord has assigned to each one as God has called. In the previous verses he was talking about singleness and marriedness and, okay, do you separate? Do you get a divorce with your wife or your husband because they've not believed in those things? But Paul is saying that the Lord has called you at that point in time. Maybe not everything needs to shift radically. You need to figure out and seek the Lord's wisdom on those things.

When we look at what that means for us today, the appropriation of these truths is going to be quite different in First World America than it would have been in certain cases with the Church 2,000 years ago, and yet there's a lot of overlap as well. So the Lord has assigned to each one, as they were called, let them walk in that manner. If we're abiding, that is going to be the deciding factor. An abiding believer is going to be walking in that assignment that they were saved.

In this case, because this is a transitional verse, he's coming out of the marriage passage from earlier, he's going, okay, you're yoked with a guy or a gal, right? And now Now you're identified with Christ. You died and were buried and resurrected and ascended with him in the heavenlies. If your spouse doesn't come along, that's it. So he's saying, transitionally, there's an assignment. You were called, let's live in that manner and walk in the Spirit.

And then he says, and so I direct in all the churches. Now why does he say, and so I direct in all the churches? Why would you emphasize that if you're Paul? Because he's the apostle of the Gentiles, not just the one church. Okay, right. He's setting up as an apostle churches wherever he goes.

But also, what is it that is just so common for us as human beings when we hear that there's a restriction or some statement about doctrine and application? What do we love to do? Criticize? Well, we'll criticize for sure. But sometimes we like to look for the loopholes, right? You might have noticed that during this political season loopholes are some of people's favorite things.

But what we have here is Paul saying this is universal, this is across all the churches, not just you extra-special First Corinthians. Remember, these people are very arrogant, right? They want to be higher in the social echelons and social strata. And so all of those things are coming out, and Paul is calling them out and saying, this is what I teach.

And there's not an out for slippery theologians. No slippery theologians allowed here. This is clear. It's consistent with what God is doing. You're not special. You're special in Christ. You're not special in your unique doctrine. an appropriation of those things.

So he continues on to emphasize through analogy, in parallel principles, he emphasizes as we dig into 18 about circumcision. So was any man called when he was already circumcised? He is not to become uncircumcised. been called in uncircumcision, he is not to become circumcised. Alright, so let's take a moment and look at circumcision. As I mentioned a few weeks ago when I taught last, before the lesson got started, if there's any topic that a Bible teacher loves, it's anything but circumcision. Because this is always a good opportunity to try to use words that are vague and hand-wavy because nobody wants to say them but let's talk about the biblical history of circumcision and I'm gonna speak very bluntly in fact I contacted April and I said so if Ali's gonna be here I'm gonna tone things down but we're all adults here and I'm not being perverse okay so we're gonna just be blunt about these things if the scripture has it we're going to own that the scripture is inspired by God. That being said, I'm not going to go out of my way to be overly discussing certain things.

In the Old Testament, the first mention of circumcision is for Abraham in Genesis 17. Why does it matter that circumcision shows up in Genesis 17? It's before the law. Genesis 17 sets Abraham apart from all the other people. That's good, I can't disagree with that.

Wasn't that when God established His covenant with Abraham? He establishes the covenant with Abraham and what's interesting about it is God has already promised things to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12. In Genesis chapter 12 he promises to Abraham, after he's already called him out of the land, Abraham goes and in Genesis chapter 11 and 12 it articulates, I'm going to give you the land, the seed and the blessing, and there's no contingency on it. Then we get to chapter 15 and we get I want to give you the land, and the seed, and the blessing, and all Abraham has to do is believe.

And God has already promised, and God will fulfill those things, so that when we get to chapter 17, the circumcision is a sign, or a token, or a sign of the covenant, but it is not a contingency of the covenant. It's a sign of what's there. And Abraham and all of his descendants and all the men in his household are to have the foreskin of their penis removed. So we're going to see here that the circumcision is something that is a physical reminder of God's promise for the land and the seed and the blessing.

And it removes the likelihood that one would accuse Abraham as not having faith. Okay, if Abraham already had faith and he believed, and that's why we know in Romans chapter 4 he was saved prior to the circumcision, and Paul calls that out. We also know that Abraham had faith because he had the circumcision.

If you didn't trust God to actually deliver on his promise of the land and seeing the blessing as a man, trust me, you're not going to go out and cut off your foreskin. So we know that Abraham had faith, and this was a physical obedience as an act of faith.

It did not save him. It did not guarantee God's fulfillment of the promise, because those were separated. And in fact, in the latter half of Genesis chapter 17, we see that God walks through the three separated carcasses, or cleaved carcasses, by himself, and Abraham has to be asleep on the side. So that's the kind of covenant that is, but this is a token or sign of that covenant.

So every descendant of Abraham was to be circumcised. And then what happens when we get to the Mosaic covenant? Every Jew is to be circumcised. And in fact, they even have a ceremony after Moses brings the law to Israel and says, all right, let's double check our work. Let's make sure everybody here is circumcised. But there's a really really important provision that I want to point out in the Mosaic Law that we should take a look at here.

If you turn to Exodus 12.48 and I know we don't spend very much time in Exodus in this church because it is a telling of the law as is Deuteronomy.

So Exodus 12.48 They're talking about ordinances of the Passover, or details of the Passover. In 47, all the congregation of Israel are to celebrate this, and then in 48, but if a stranger sojourns with you, a Gentile, a non-Jew sojourns with you, and celebrates the Passover to the Lord, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near to celebrate it, and he shall be like a native of the land." He shall be like an Israelite, a Jew, but no uncircumcised person may eat of it. So here specifically in the Old Testament there's a provision for Judaistic evangelism. and for Gentiles to become part of the nation of Israel. So circumcision was part of that, but evangelism should have been there.

Did Israel do a great job of evangelizing? No, but they were good at trading and making money and getting captured and hauled off and then coming back. That was their skill set. I say that jokingly, I love Israel. But there's a provision here that you could join Israel even after Even though you weren't a Jew, you were a Gentile, but after that you'd be considered a Jew, but it required the circumcision. So historically circumcision was associated tightly with being part of Israel because it was part of the law. Other cultures did do circumcision in various ways, but the Jews were known very specifically for that because on the eighth day you were to circumcise a young man, a young male, even if it was the Sabbath.

So this part of the law trumped the other part of the law. So that's a context for Old Testament understanding of circumcision. In the New Testament we find circumcision is not required. This is one of the passages right now in 1 Corinthians that we would go to to prove that out. We would also be able to look at Romans chapter 3. the biblical use of circumcised or uncircumcised throughout predominantly the New Testament, you'd say, oh, that person is part of the circumcision.

Why were they part of the circumcision? Who is the author usually Paul referring to? The Jews were circumcised. They were the circumcision. Their whole identity ethnically was linked inextricably with circumcision. So they were the circumcision. And all the Gentiles were the uncircumcision.

We can take a look at that. Let's turn to Acts 10.45. This is when the gospel comes to the Gentiles.

So we'll take a look at Acts 10.45. where we see, I'll start at verse 44 here, but while Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who were listening to the message. He was at a Gentile's house. And then in verse 45, all the circumcised believers who came with Peter were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles also.

So we have the circumcised and the uncircumcised. And that was a tremendous revelation to them because they thought, basically up until that point, that the Christian movement was sort of viewed as just a sectarian subset of Judaism. But here God's doing something that is much greater on the outside. As it turns out, it's part of the fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham. who's the first one recorded as being circumcised, right? So the circumcision matters there. In the Old Testament there are places, for example, Samson goes after a wife in Judges chapter 14 and they said, his family was like, really? His dad gave him the really talk.

Really, you want me to go and deal with the Philistines, the uncircumcised? They're not God's people. They're not holy. They're not sanctified. They worship idols. But what does his dad do? That's my favorite part. His dad goes along with it. That's unfortunate. That's a reminder for parents. Don't go along with your kids just because they want something. Which is why my parents never took me to Toys R Us as a kid. No, I'm joking. They did. They just hated it.

When we follow through, let's take a look at the New Testament, Romans 3.30. Actually, we'll start in 29.

Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also. Since indeed God, who will justify the circumcised by faith, and the uncircumcised through faith is one. So we see that circumcision and uncircumcision references the Jews and the Gentiles.

One of the things I always like to point out when I can is that Adam was not a Jew. Everybody thinks Old Testament Jews and they move on. Adam was not a Jew, Abraham was not a Jew, Noah was not a Jew. It's not until Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. God renames Jacob Israel and all of his descendants are Israelites and those are the Jews. Abraham was a Hebrew. Just a piece of theological truth that's worth knowing. So then Paul says that they should stay where they're at.

Was he already circumcised? He is not to become uncircumcised. Has anyone been called uncircumcision? He is not to be circumcised. So staying where you're at, or resting where you're at. In this passage we see the Jewish or circumcised and Gentile uncircumcised believers were not to change their physical condition. Why does it matter that it's their physical condition? Yeah, the law is what is involved with circumcision. And if your parents had you circumcised on the eighth day as they should have to be obedient as a Jew, you you can reverse that as it turns out there's surgical reversal and there's some other physical stretching reversal which I had.

I researched this there's some interesting things in my Google search history but I wanted to know was he joking? Was Paul joking? Is this an exaggeration? Because I had previously not heard of going from circumcised back to uncircumcised so it turns out that there are techniques to achieve that.

But he was not, which kind of blew my mind. But there are three elements here. The purpose of circumcision for the Old Testament saint was a sign or a token based on covenants that the New Testament saint is not under. We died to the law when we died with Christ. We were identified with him. So that probably makes sense.

Galatians 5.23, let's turn there for the second one. We might as well let Paul say it rather than Randy. Galatians 5 verses 2 and 3. He says, Behold, I, Paul, say to you that if you receive circumcision, Christ will be of no benefit to you.

If you're receiving circumcision in accordance to the law. And I testify again to every man who receives circumcision that he is under obligation to keep the whole law. So not just the Ten Commandments. Not just the Ten Commandments plus circumcision and remove the Sabbath.

You don't get to do that. It's the whole thing. All or nothing. So conformity of the law only in part would not fulfill any of the law. And then the third one, staying in the conditional state prevents the concept of works from entering into the equation. Having a reversal or having the circumcision would not gain either Jew or Gentile anything.

What is the book of Galatians predominantly focused on? It's focusing on the Judaizers who are coming in and saying, you've got to fulfill the law. It's convenient that you know Jesus and all that, but you've got to fulfill the law because really that's part of salvation. And so Paul calls that out there in great, great detail. I happen to co-teach with Roger and Bob through Galatians some years ago, and I remember as we were going through that, it's like, if you can make your way through Galatians and still think that the law is part of the New Testament Church, I commend you for your absolute blindness. There are teachers out there who've written whole commentaries trying to justify why the law is still for the believer.

And those are the same people that would want you to be circumcised if you weren't, or whatever else. Tom? I think people here might have heard the definition of insanity as doing something and expecting different results. Doing something over and over and expecting different results, yeah.

It is insane that you would make your way all the way through Galatians or for that matter 1 Corinthians and still walk away with this idea. Now I wanted to just ask this because of our culture today and things that are hot topics in the media sometimes.

Does it matter if we circumcise our children today? I will say that I have two daughters so I didn't have to make that choice. But does it matter? Is there a spiritual or theological impact of circumcising your children today? It doesn't matter. And it's one of those things where there are people who have very strong opinions about it on either side, and it's something that I'm basically at the point as a believer saying, as a parent, that's your liberty. you can make that decision for your children. They probably won't care one way or the other because they won't remember and they'll only know what they know. So let's keep going through the text after we've asked that fun question about decisions parents get to make.

Oh, I will say this. If you go online you can find interviews with people who are Gentiles that converted to Judaism and got circumcision as adults. And they'll say this was a thing I had to do to follow the law today as an adult. This was the right thing for me to do because I wanted to follow Jehovah or Yahweh or God or whatever they say. Could you tell me what that reference was again? Which reference? Oh, let's see here, we were in Acts... I thought I had it written down here. 1045, I'm wondering. Yeah, I think so. Acts 1045 is where we went earlier.

Randy, isn't it kind of interesting though that they would convert to Judaism and want to be circumcised, but yet they wouldn't keep the rest of the law. The whole... They can't. They can't. Yeah. Right. I mean, it's impossible. I mean, even though You know, they I mean, it's impossible. Yeah, they they know that it's impossible. Yeah.

Well, except, you know, like then you have the things like what Mike Doyle was saying, the people across the street from him who will lease out during the Passover. They're not supposed to have any. The leavened bread. So they lease out the area of their kitchen to someone else that holds the leavened bread so they don't have it. It's not in their home. It's not in their home.

Oh my gosh. And that suffices. And the thing is that you cannot fulfill the law. You really can't do it not in Israel. You have to be in Israel to do it, first of all, which Mike's neighbors are not. And so they're not able to fulfill it, but what they do is they spiritualize it.

All of those offerings and the sacrifices are now prayers, which is way cleaner than butchering animals as it turns out. It's like, hey, you do the ceremonial washings and you do the thing and then you're good. But yeah, the conversion to Judaism, the funny thing is that I did notice one pattern was that a lot of the guys had found a cute Jewish gal and the parents were orthodox and they were willing to jump through whatever hoops were necessary to get the gal. So that was an interesting thing. So we'll keep moving here though.

He says circumcision and uncircumcision are nothing, okay, are null or void. and have no value. It is of zero substance. It would be one way to translate that. Since salvation is by faith alone in Christ alone, the outer form of circumcision or uncircumcision brought or wrought no benefit.

I've got a footnote there. The singular exception to that in the New Testament is when Paul circumcises Timothy. And why does Paul circumcise Timothy? Let's just rabbit trail on why that happened. His dad was a Gentile and his mother and grandmother were Jewish. I'm going to also assume his grandfather was Jewish, but that's it, neither here nor there. And so Timothy was not circumcised because his dad was like, nope, we're not doing that. That's not what we Gentiles do. And Timothy couldn't go into the temple and preach the gospel with Paul because he was uncircumcised. So they circumcised him, let him heal, and then they went and preached the gospel. So that brought benefit, but it was very specific. It was not normative. acts as historical, not prescriptive.

As Paul articulates in Galatians 5.6, we see that circumcision and uncircumcision mean nothing but faith working through love.

Can the outward part of a man reflect his walk with the Lord? His nature, his personality. His physical form. Can that reflect his walk with the Lord? It doesn't. If you're a Jewish boy and you got circumcised on the eighth day, does that mean you believed anything? No. It just means that on the eighth day your parents followed the law and had you circumcised.

You could be the prodigal son. The prodigal son went out And he wished his father was dead, took the inheritance, and went out and partied and paid for harlotry. And then just barely to stay alive, he sold himself into indentured servitude and fed pigs. He violated all of the law, but he was circumcised.

I bet you that. It's a story, so it's not technically true. But he was Jewish. That would have been the case. But the inward circumcision of the heart is another phrase that Paul uses elsewhere in the scriptures. So having been circumcised or uncircumcised is generally irrelevant. So let's keep going here.

He says, but what matters is keeping the commandments of the law. I'm sorry, not the commandments of the law, but the commandments of God. We want to make sure that we're actually saying this is not the law. And why do we know that it's not the law? And I've got three reasons here, and I want to make sure that we have those that are contextual. And we know that it's not the law, but it's other directions for New Testament believers. Because as Paul had just, as we just read in Galatians, circumcision for obedience to the law would have required you obey the rest of the 613 laws. So you got one, now you have 612 to go. So that doesn't work.

In 1 Corinthians 14.37, Paul articulates that he himself was writing the Lord's commandments for the church. So same letter, same author, to the same audience.

He's saying commandments are not the law. And also, and this is most important, the word that Paul uses most other places for law is the Greek word for law, namos. And so I've got other places here in the very same book, 9, 8 through 9, 9, 20, 14, 21, 14, 34, and 15, 56, where Paul used the exact same Greek word, namos, for law that is used throughout the rest of the New Testament, and he doesn't use that word here.

Commandment is not namaz. So what are the commandments? We've got to know what it is he's telling them they've got to obey, but it's just not the law. What are the commandments? So there are theological commandments, like the book of Galatians is a theological commandment that happens to also articulate don't fulfill the law. So there's theological commandments.

There are moral commandments, such as Ephesians 4.28.

Ephesians 4.28, Paul says, stop stealing. If you're stealing, stop it. And then there are ecclesiological commandments, like 1st and 2nd Timothy and Titus, the pastoral epistles.

When we say ecclesiological, that's a good $5 word. It just means the study of the order of the church. How should the church be operating? Paul writes and establishes with Timothy how the church should be operating. We go to 1 Timothy chapter 3 or 1 Peter chapter 5 and we find out what eldership looks like and what deaconship looks like. And how should the church be operating? We can look later in 1 Corinthians 12-14 and see how the church should be operating.

So those commandments exist, they're just not the 613 laws of the Old Testament. And we just need to articulate that there. Through the outworking of the Holy Spirit, God is able to move beyond the restrictions of a legal system that might need to be updated due to technology, and the Holy Spirit empowers us like the law is unable to do, except possibly through fear. If the law motivates in any way, it's through fear.

We've already had discussions in this class about how under the law there's different technological hoops and things, because the law doesn't address any of modern technology. It's actually very static to the technology of the time. And as new tools and new technology were developed, the Jew had to basically either adapt what was in the law or ignore something. And the Jews are not known for ignoring things, so they adapted. But the technology is there, but as believers we don't worry about it.

We can still use a microwave by the Spirit, or drive by the Spirit, it doesn't matter. We have shoelaces. Nobody thinks about shoelaces as technology, but that's a piece of technology. That's why Velcro is dope. Velcro, does it still work? I don't know.

But all those things come together, and so we see that the commandments are there as kind of a guideline and a foundation. But if we abide by the Spirit, not only will we fulfill the New Testament commandments, but greater things will be done in our lives. Alright, so then Paul repeats himself on purpose. In verse 20, each man must remain in that condition in which he was called. So he says the same thing that he said earlier in 17, and he's going to say the same thing in 24. Because he's repeating himself, we're going to skip over that temporarily, and we'll come back and close on the repetition. So after dealing with this repetition of calling, then we get in verse 21, Were you called while a slave?

Do not worry about it, but if you are able also to become free, rather do that. Slavery is actually a topic that I find fascinating not because I think slavery is great. I find it fascinating because as I've learned more about the history of slavery what was its early roots actually was not where it went. It got dark and gross. Slavery was initially this idea of you would sell yourself into servitude only as sin corrupts things. It went from just simply being I'm going to serve you until I pay off my debt it got gross. It went dark, dark places.

By the way, I read a book that had a lot of information about slavery. There have been multiple times in world history where slavery was common. and then for most parts wiped out and then it became common again and then wiped out. And even today we have slavery. How many of you are familiar with the US's number one slavery event? Who knows what that is? What's the number one slavery event in the United States? You all celebrate it. You have people over at your house. Nobody? The Broncos just won it this last year.

Hundreds, and the estimates are in the thousands of women usually, although could be others, could be boys or men, are brought into the United States, smuggled in, and sold for sex slavery in the United States during the Super Bowl. It's the number one event in the United States in which that takes place. So just in case you thought slavery was all gone, it's not. There are a couple organizations out there trying to end slavery.

I totally support that. That's great. But let's dig in from modern slavery. Let's look at the context of the New Testament slavery situation and then let's dig into why Paul is saying what he's saying here. That matters a lot. So slaves in the New Testament may have become slaves due to kidnapping or as spoils of war, being born to parents who were slaves. Some of them would have been bond servants. That would be voluntary slavery where you'd sell yourselves into slavery because of debt. You might sell your children into slavery because of debt. So slaves may be well-educated and act as tutors in a household.

That was actually a pretty common scenario in the New Testament time. It would have not been too ridiculously Uncommon to actually think of the New Testament letters, the epistles that Paul wrote, or Peter wrote, or John wrote, being read out loud by a slave in a church. Hey, Eunicius, you know how to read. Here. And he's a slave, and he's reading to the body that was there. So those letters would have been read by slaves, possibly, in some of the churches.

Slaves could be in charge of all household goods and in charge of financial transactions. So it wasn't just, you're going to go out and work in the fields like we think of in U.S. slavery. But it could have been actually household administrative duties that could have netted the master or the slave owner quite a bit of money and financial benefit.

Just unfortunately, not the slaves. They didn't get any of that benefit usually. Slaves were expected to work and do their master's bidding first before taking care of their own needs. So that right there is where we're starting to get into some of the negatives, not just some of the opportunities in their work. It was not uncommon for slaves to be abused sexually and it was legal for a slave owner to give their slave as a sexual partner for guests as well.

And I highlight that not because I want to talk about sexual deviancy, But when we see what Paul is writing here, and that's a possibility, that at least to me, when I think of my heart strings in the church, I would think, okay, if I'm a free man, I'm going to come along and be like, alright, you're a slave, let's get you out of that.

You're being forced into sexual behavior that is not biblical, it's not good for a believer, let's get you out of that. I bring that up not because I'm trying to weird anybody out, so I apologize if that's a little blunt. Being a slave would have been morally repugnant for a believer, and so Paul writes here, if you can, get by yourself out of slavery. Very intentionally trying to move believers into a biblical, wholesome situation. As a social construct, Paul was not pro-slavery.

In the U.S. history, some of my least favorite things I read in my history class, or saw video snippets of, were preachers, so-called preachers, promoting slavery, saying, see, Paul said it was okay, or Peter said it was okay, and promoting slavery in the United States. My heart aches when I see that. Fortunately, it's generally not an overt practice today, but as I mentioned earlier, it is a problem.

In 2 Peter 2.18, Peter repeats much of the same sentiments and also adds that Christ was an example of suffering and submission for those who were slaves. He was an example to the slaves. Listen, Christ endured, you endure also. As was common, I believe what Paul wrote here was also something he commonly shared amongst the body.

And they probably said, let's get our brethren and sister out of this. But Paul continues on here and he says, buy yourself or legally get yourself out of bondage. Because what's the ministry of the church if all of the slaves are becoming Christians and running away? which was technically illegal and they could be killed. That's not something that the church needs to have at that point in time. That your presentation of the gospel is going to fall on deaf ears because you guys are the guys trying to stir the slaves up. But also don't you think that because of the time and what the culture was, Paul is saying, I think what you just said, I mean I think that's what you just said, we don't want to encourage you to run away so that you would be killed or we don't want to incite riots we want to be an example so if there is a way and actually there are incidents that are talked about where the slave owner did Give them their freedom. And the book of Philemon I think is probably a phenomenal example of that because Onesimus was a runaway slave and Paul writes the book to the Philippians and wait Colossians. He writes to Philemon and it was Colossians not Philippians.

But he writes to him and says, please give him to me as a brother. I think that he wants to make clear that sure, you can become free, but also it's the same thing with a wife or a husband who's married to someone who's not a believer. You can be an example. And I think his mindset is, yes, it's better for you to be free, But in fact, being an example, your owner may also become a believer.

And that parallel is very strong there. That's why the flow is here. And then he moves back into principles of singleness in marriages because it's flowing in that same train of logic. We've got to deal with this. It's here. It's a social construct. If you can get yourself free, get yourself free. don't run away.

He says you're bought with a price. He says to the slave, you're free in Christ, you have liberty in Christ. And he says to the free man, but you're a bondservant to Christ. Paul starts his letters, most of them, with Paul and Timothy, bondservants of Christ. They have submitted themselves to willful service of Christ. And I know that was the second bell.

Let me just say one last thing here as we're on the last page. Paul's repetition of remaining in your condition in verses 17, 20, and 24 is used to emphasize the doctrine, the practical application that you remain where you are because spiritual growth is a critical next step after salvation and changing your social situation may not be fruitful because it could change your focus.

If you're getting circumcised, or going through the process of uncircumcision, your focus is not on Christ, it's on male anatomy. Which, as it turns out, is not setting your mind on things above. Not shocking there. And if you're a slave, doing something illegal, your whole energy is going to be focused on not getting caught for the rest of your life.

That's not focusing on the Lord, and it makes Christianity linked with disobedience, which is not what Paul is encouraging. So he says, stay there. What we can see, though, when we look at marriages, or encouraging runaway slaves, or creating division in the churches, is that Paul is against it. Let's not have this division. Let's not have disobedience. Let's focus on Christ. Any other thoughts or questions on this? I know that we spend a lot of time not thinking about circumcision and slavery, so this is an exception.

Okay, let's close in prayer and then we'll head on upstairs. Heavenly Father, thank you that we can study your word. Thank you that these topics, which are sometimes a little tough, have a lot for us to learn and glean. in principles of abiding. And we just thank you that we can walk together in these things and encourage one another in these things. We do want to lift up those who are in slavery and bondage today, that you would liberate them and that the believers would come along and be part of your hand in that. We thank you in Jesus' name.