The Slave King
the only boss friend you'll ever really have
“This letter is from Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, chosen by God to be an apostle and sent out to preach his Good News.” So begins Paul’s letter to the church in Rome. Why did he call himself a slave? To understand, we have to go back to the God’s slave laws, which come, unsurprisingly, right after God’s jubilee laws. Bondage and release, thematically tied together.
As for your male and female slaves, whom you can obtain from the nations who live around you, you may buy slaves from them. You may also buy slaves from the foreigners who are living among you, that is, from their families who are with you, children who have been born in your land. They may become your property. You may provide such slaves as an inheritance for your children after you, to hold as property, and make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your brothers among the people of Israel with harshness. (Leviticus 25:44–46).
God delivered this law to his people immediately after their harsh enslavement by the Egyptian state. They had spent generations following the Egyptian Code of Federal Regulations, which changed every week just like ours do today. They knew nothing else, so this new, unchanging Law was quite a revelation, for a bunch of slaves.
Unfortunately, they took no heed of the command to not be harsh masters, like the Egyptians had been to them. They followed the earlier example of Sarah, who was harsh to Hagar the Egyptian (their later captivity seems rather karmic in that sense). There is evidence that they blew off God and his jubilee laws for most of their history. Instead of free men, they still thought like slaves, and slaves love to beat other slaves.
God permitted six kinds of servitude. Five types were various situations for the servitude of fellow Hebrews; the last type was for the servitude of foreigners. Hebrew slaves had an escape clause:: the time of Jubilee, when slaves were released. Foreigner slavery, however, was perpetual and inter-generational.
So did Paul consider himself a Hebrew slave? He certainly noted of his heritage: “of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.” So, perhaps he had a right to a Jubilee release. But he goes on to say “…But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.”
Paul's renunciation of his Hebrew privileges makes sense in the light of the example of his Master, who said: “My Father has always been working; and so also I am working.” Paul therefore was just copying his Master, who did not live as if equality with God was something to be grasped, but instead, made himself a slave. So Paul considered himself a foreigner, not a Hebrew; thus, subject to permanent bondage. It’s little wonder then that Paul was called to minister to foreigners!
When you have a Master King who obeys his own rules, thus, isn't harsh with his slaves, this is a feature, not a bug. Man blows off God’s laws, but God doesn’t. Serving in such a house, one is likely to tell his master, “pin my ear to your door forever”. After all, this is a deacon-King who wears an apron and waits on tables.
It's either work for the King, or somebody else. There are no middle options. Even our King considered himself no better than a foreigner; he suffered outside the camp., so that his people could be redeemed from the curse of being a foreigner.
Footnote:
Christ fulfilled the jubilee laws, thus nullifying slavery, announcing this publicly at the sermon in Nazareth (the shortest sermon in history, consisting of only a scripture reading followed by one sentence). The people despised the idea of slaves being set free so much, they tried to throw him off a cliff. Someday, I’ll write about how Christians, much like the Hebrews blowing off God’s Jubilee laws for thousands of years, blew off God’s abolition of slavery for 1,700 years.