“You who are slaves must submit to your masters with all respect. Do what they tell you—not only if they are kind and reasonable, but even if they are cruel. For God is pleased when, conscious of his will, you patiently endure unjust treatment. Of course, you get no credit for being patient if you are beaten for doing wrong. But if you suffer for doing good and endure it patiently, God is pleased with you.”
Read within the lens of American history, this passage is especially difficult to swallow. The Bible was misused by slaveholders to defend slavery in the American Civil War era, just as the Bible has been misused to oppress women or condemn inter-racial marriage. As we read the Bible, we need to travel back in time to understand the cultural and historical context in which it was written.
Being a slave in the Roman Empire was still slavery. We don’t need to dress it up or pretend it was something different. In the midst of that, it was not mass enslavement of an entire ethnic group by capture and torture. Some slaves in the days of the early church may have been captured as prisoners of war. Others sold themselves into slavery to pay a debt (perhaps the earliest form of slavery to the “credit card”). If slaves became Christians, then their demonstration of their faith was submission. We recall the words of Jesus, “Love your enemies.”
Here’s your freedom for today: God notices when you are oppressed. If you are doing the right thing and get treated badly anyway, God sees. He doesn’t overlook or forget a faithful servant. Patient endurance in the midst of being treated badly for doing what is right is an honorable position in the kingdom of God. (Keeping in mind that in the case of slavery ending the abusive relationship is not physically possible, while other types of relationships do enable us to leave an abuser.) All of us become slaves to Jesus when we sign our lives over to him. Our earthly position matters far less than this eternal one.