Bondservants & Masters

Morning.

Today's reading is from Ephesians chapter six, verses five through nine.

Bond servants, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart as you would Christ, not by way of eye service as people pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or is free.

Masters, do the same to them, and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their master and yours is in heaven, and that there is no partiality with him.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

I've got a couple of announcements before we get started.

First off, this week we begin our uh class that will be a five-week class called Redemption Story.

And we're gonna be going over these two books, which are the main thrust of it.

This one's called Creation Regained, and it's about the narrative of Scripture and how it is that we participate in that.

And this is called Shaped by the Gospel, and it is about how the gospel story, which is about the redemption of all creation, applies particularly to our lives.

So when we see our stories fit into this grand narrative of redemption, then we're able to discover where our lives become meaningful, how God is glorified even in ordinary lives like ours.

So if you'd like to sign up for that, which I highly recommend you do, uh it's uh August 25th.

So this Wednesday will begin in the evening.

And you can sign up in the app, uh, just download Redemption Church Denver, uh, type that in to your app store of choice, and uh you can uh tap calendar and sign up for that study.

Uh books are included, so we've got a bunch of these books.

So don't worry about buying books.

Next, uh we've got a member meeting next Sunday.

So a week from today, we have a meeting where we gather all the members of our CD.

Uh so if you're a member, uh we invite you to that and expect to see you there.

Uh we're covering some exciting things for uh the future of our church and uh re recapping and celebrating some things that have taken place already.

So uh yeah, it will be a helpful time and beneficial.

We also have a gift for you, which is exciting.

Swag.

There's member swag.

It's not even a coffee mug, which I know when churches give things away, it is a coffee mug.

But this time it isn't.

It's something even cooler.

Um also uh uh so it actually let me take a second and explain a bit.

Uh the structure of our church is based around membership.

So uh we uh have sort of crafted the uh the shape of our church where uh membership is central to how we approach disciple making in our church.

So uh the way that membership is structured is uh members are broken up into parishes, and over each parish is one of the church elders.

And uh parishes gather together at least once a month in the elders' homes and share a meal together, share our lives together, and that's the place where you can experience some of the deepest connection in our church.

So we've crafted this around membership because we see in scripture this gathering of believers that are under the authority of the church and that are then able to go out into the city to effect change.

So there's a uh so this is different than what many of us are used to, which is like a community group model where the community group kind of acts like a front door to the church and it's um sort of anybody comes into the group.

We've approached this differently, seeing that a group of members who are committed to each other, uh, who have committed to the church by vows and made real commitments provides the space for depth of relationship to really grow so that we can grow in maturity together under the structures of the church that God has given us.

So uh if you'd like to be a member, that's really the main way of participation at RCD.

Uh, just email info at redemption Denver and say, I'd like to be a member.

And we'll have an elder go through membership process with you, and we can structure things that way.

So that's a bit on that.

September 5th, which is two Sundays, uh, is a family service.

So there will be no RCD kids available September 5th.

Typically, what we're aiming to do is months that have five Sundays, we're having the fifth Sunday be a family service.

August had five Sundays, but uh my wife who runs Redemption Kids is going on a 30th birthday trip on September 5th.

So we made it September.

So you can count on five Sundays-ish, every five Sundays-ish around there.

So it will be a family service.

Um uh so no R C D kids will all gather together, kids and all, and worship here together.

All right.

You guys ready to pray and get into today's text?

Yes, please.

It's my impression of you as a collective.

Lord, thank you for bringing us together this morning.

Uh Father, I I from the images and the news that we've seen throughout this week in Afghanistan and the posts that I've seen of pastors, Afghani pastors who uh have such fear right now and are in such danger, Lord, uh, let us be with them in spirit, our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Let us remember and not take for granted the uh wonder of our ability to just gather publicly and enjoy worshiping you.

Lord, that is a blessing that we just received from you.

We praise you for that, Lord.

Father, we pray that you would be glorified in our gathering together, in our worship of you.

Lord, that your word would speak clearly to our hearts.

Lord, I pray that as we gather in this room, that you would likewise attend our children in the room just across the hall, that they would encounter your word as well.

Lord, we pray that you would soften our hearts to be able to engage with a passage with difficult categories, and that you would help us to gain an understanding of how this ancient text with an uh archaic institution deals directly with our lives now because of what you've accomplished in Christ.

Lord, give us eyes to see that.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So our next text chronologically is uh chapter six, verses one to four.

But today we're skipping over one to four and going through five through nine.

Now, the reason for this is because chap because verses one through four deals with children and parents.

And so you know who would be great to have in the room when we're talking to children?

Children, yeah.

You guys should be pastors.

And so our family service on September 5th will be covering that passage, because that makes sense, right?

Yeah.

So today we are uh skipping over that bit, although we'll have to touch on it a little bit just to understand the context that Paul is speaking into with bondservants and masters.

But today we are skipping that and looking at bondservants and masters.

This is the third and final aspect of Paul's movement through the household to show us how the gospel transforms every aspect of our lives in these most ordinary relationships.

So the Roman household would have been children and parents.

Their lives would have had, you would have been a bondservant or a master in their social hierarchy, uh, and you would have had a spouse that you related to.

It's very ordinary human categories that we all live in.

And today we are looking at bondservants and masters.

So the most difficult part about this passage, uh this translation, the ESV, translates it bondservants and masters.

Others describe it as slaves and masters, and it's not a wrong translation.

We're dealing with this category of servant and master, somebody who is owned by another person.

And this was an ordinary category in the Roman household.

And today, to our ears, we hear slave and master, and we immediately think, why is Paul offering instruction within this particular institution of slaves and masters?

Why is Paul not stepping back and saying, hey, Rome, no more slaves and masters?

Right?

That's what we would expect him to do.

But instead, he doesn't do that.

Instead, he offers particular instruction to slaves and particular instruction to masters.

Now, what is Paul doing when he does that?

You know, just the fact that he offers instruction to slaves as slaves and to masters as masters has been used as a way of demonstrating that uh the church upholds the institution of slavery.

But that is not the case.

To offer instruction to people who are in a particular situation which is woven into the fabric of society in a way that is, in a sense, unchangeable with any stroke, especially by a small minority of persecuted Christians, is not to offer an affirmation of that institution.

So we shouldn't read that into it.

That would be a manipulative reading of the text.

But secondly, we need to recognize that the way in which Paul uh advises slaves and masters, the way in which he sees the gospel transform the way the slave lives as a slave and the master lives as a master, we'll see it makes this institution of slavery untenable.

It transforms it in the relationship between the slave and a master into something unrecognizable as slavery.

And we'll see that as time passes on and as the world is Christianized, this oldest of human institutions, which is slavery, is done away with.

Now it moves through terrible paths.

Uh our nation, in our abolition of in our abolition of slavery, uh lost 600,000 lives.

Many nations were able to do it peacefully.

But ultimately, it is the gospel which makes the institution of slavery untenable.

All right.

So what we're seeing here, then, as well as Paul's instruction to slaves and masters, is also a picture of Christian change.

How is it that when the gospel moves into the institutions in our world, it transforms them?

So that when it moves into an institution like slavery, it makes it unable to exist in the patterns that it existed in before.

And the thing to see in this is that Christianity is not revolutionary.

But rather, Christianity changes things reformationally.

Now, what's the difference?

A revolutionary transformation requires being in the position of power to effect change.

A reformational perspective allows you to affect change even when you are not the one in the position of power.

Now, Christianity does not fear being in the position of power.

It is not something where we would say, it would be bad if there was a Christian king.

No, it would be good if there was a Christian king.

Power is not feared by the Christian, but it is not coveted in order to transform.

So we do not need to overthrow in order to effect the change that we seek.

Instead, even the slave can participate in the transformation of the world.

So Paul addresses first slaves and then masters.

Ephesians 6, 5.

Bondservants, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart as you would Christ.

Now, the first thing to recognize is that Paul speaks directly to bondservants, as bondservants.

Now, what does that mean?

We'll see him later speak directly to masters.

And this is a letter that's written to churches to be read aloud in those churches.

So that means there are bondservants and masters both in the room.

They're both in the same church under the same gospel.

This would be shocking and unthinkable in the structure of ancient Greco-Roman society, that slaves and masters would have any place where they would sit as equals.

And yet, that's what we see here in the church.

He addresses slaves not as objects, but as morally accountable people.

And he addresses them as such in front of their masters, with their masters.

Now, ancient Greco-Roman slavery is very different from American Southern slavery, like triangle trade type of slavery.

It was not, it was frequently not lifelong.

The release of slaves into freedom and the acquisition of freedom by slaves was extremely common and legally very easy.

And when you were released as a slave, it's not something that you wore around on your skin as you did in the American South, because it wasn't connected to your race.

And so release from slavery into freedom was something that was actually culturally feasible in a way that it simply wasn't in the American South.

It was not typically based on kidnapping, which all of American Southern slavery was based upon.

It was rather an economic position that the particularly poor were able to place themselves into or find themselves placed into and acquire food, housing, and labor.

But that's not to say, while we recognize the differences, we shouldn't think that we're talking about something wonderful or something that's that perfectly maps onto our employee-employer relationship.

The slave was thought of as subhuman in their role as a slave.

Aristotle, in his Nicmachian Ethics, says a slave is a living tool, just as a tool is an inanimate slave.

This is the description of a person who is owned by another person.

They are a living tool.

That's the way that they should be thought of, Aristotle said.

This is contemporary.

Now, we can see there that in the very institution itself, there is this dehumanizing aspect to it.

And yet, Paul in his letter speaks directly to the slave, not as a tool, but as a moral agent.

Someone who, just like their master, is accountable before the Lord, an image bearer before the Lord, just as their master is.

We also notice that Paul does not call the slaves to throw off the present condition that they find themselves in, but instead, almost unthinkably to modern ears, Paul says, Obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ.

So he says, to not throw off this present condition.

Elsewhere in 1 Corinthians, when he's talking to slaves and masters as well, he says, if you have the opportunity to acquire your freedom, take it.

So he's not saying, look, it's better, it's always better to be a slave.

It's always better to remain in the position that you're in.

That's not what Paul's saying.

Because he gives instruction elsewhere.

If you're a slave and you're given the opportunity to acquire your freedom, take the opportunity.

Acquire your freedom.

It's better to be free, right?

Amen.

And but yet Paul is talking to slaves within the reality of the condition that they find themselves.

Many slaves would be unable to acquire their freedom.

It's not a lack of heart or a lack of conviction or courage which would keep a slave in the position of slave.

It is a matter of fact of the society that they lived in.

And so Paul addresses them within those matters of fact.

He's not creating some fantasy world where he can uh where you can imagine, hey, if you just pulled yourself up by your bootstraps and understood the image of God that you carried within yourself, you'd never allow yourself to be treated this way.

To which the Sisile would say, allow myself to be treated this way.

What other options do I have here in Greco-Roman culture?

Thanks, Paul.

Please enlighten me.

Can you imagine the the burden that that would place on Christians who would become on slaves who would become Christians if they were entering into that?

Instead, he says, Honor your m your earthly masters, obey them with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ.

He recognizes the hierarchical relationship that they are involved in as slaves to masters.

And he says, This very place that you find yourself is your opportunity to serve Christ.

Right where you are.

Who do you have to serve, a slave?

You don't have to spend much time thinking about this.

You have a master, you know their name.

Serve them.

Obey them.

Honor them in the position that they happen to be in.

In the very same way, with the sincerity of heart that you would honor and serve Christ.

He moves into the hierarchical relationship that exists in the world, and he says, this where you find yourself here is the place that you've been called to serve.

So serve there.

Now, understanding the world in terms of relational hierarchies, I'm sure there's a better term that's not so like, I don't know.

We don't like things like that.

But that's the term we're going with.

So here we are, relational hierarchies.

There we live in a world that is structured with relational hierarchies.

And this is something that we would be able to see and map out much more plainly if I had kept the sermons in order and followed the text, but I didn't.

But we'd be able to see it much more plainly, we would where we see this principle established between children and parents.

That's a hierarchy that none of us question.

Because when we're eating out at a restaurant and we see parents acting like children and children acting like parents, we judge them.

Right?

Until you become a parent, and then you're like, I get it.

But the world is built on this family structure.

And so Paul, in the verses before this, he describes, uh in he directs he speaks directly to children, and he says, Children, honor your mother and father.

And he's quoting there from the fifth commandment, which is, children, honor your mother and father, that it may go well with you and you may live long in the land.

And so it's been typical throughout church history and then throughout the Old Testament, as it kind of expands the Ten Commandments, the breadth of our understanding of these sort of commandments, each one acting as like a like an atomic particle or like a seed of morality, they grow, and we can see there's there's even there's information in these commandments about the very structures of the world that we live in.

And so, though uh Westminster standards, when those were put together in the 1600s, one of the questions in the larger catechism asked this.

Well, I'll just read it.

Uh, question 126.

What is the general scope of the fifth commandment?

The fifth commandment is honor your mother and father.

And it says the general scope of the fifth commandment is the performance of those duties which we mutually owe in our several relations as inferiors, superiors, or equals.

Now, these are not relations of value, which we'll see later very clearly, but these are real relations of order in the world.

They're actual structures.

Children are not parents.

Parents are not children in the family.

The brothers and sisters are not each other's parents.

There are real structures of superiority, inferiority, and equality.

And what is the fifth commandment at its heart pointing towards?

Work well within those structures in the places that you find yourself.

Where you are inferior to someone, where you are under someone else's authority, respect their authority.

Where you are in authority, operate in the way that you've been called to this position of authority.

So we see that clearly in the family, right?

It has these structures built into it.

And the family is where society comes from.

We see a picture of this in the very history of Israel itself, because there's a promise given to Abraham, and the promise is that he will become a family, and then that family will become a clan, and then a tribe, and then a nation.

And then if it's lucky, it will become the most powerful thing of all, a multinational corporation.

I don't know, they didn't have those.

It's just a funny idea.

But we see that there's this microcosm of development, and the same pattern works at every other level.

And that pattern is established in the family, and that pattern is there's authority delegated some places, there's submission delegated other places, and there's equality delegated other places.

And just consider your own life.

They grade your work.

And when it doesn't work like that, you know, things get very, very strange and seem to be pretty disordered.

If you're an employee, then you have a boss who you expect to hear from in some helpful ways, that you expect to receive feedback from.

And you may have others that work beneath you who you're expected to give feedback to and to help manage and support.

And likewise, you may have coworkers who you you don't need any more feedback from.

You know, we don't relate to each other like that.

You know, stay in your lane.

And those are real positions that you live in, and you can you can notice, you know, it's where things become frustrating and annoying.

How am I doing in this job?

I just haven't heard anything from my boss.

You know, that I don't even really know where I am.

It's super disorienting.

Well, yeah, that's it, they're not moving in line with the position that they've been placed in.

And it becomes disordered.

A citizen that acts like a king is useless and annoying.

A king that acts like a citizen is probably even more harmful.

It's like we need you to make a decision on this.

This is this is yours.

So the world is structured in these ways.

And although slave and master is one of the most horrific examples of a hierarchical world that's gone bent, we still see in this a clear call to obey the fifth commandment, which is to operate in line with the positions that we are found in.

Now, let's see how that actually works practically.

In Ephesians 6, 6 through 7, he continues speaking to bondservants.

And he says, uh, describing the way that they ought to be uh serving their masters.

He says, not by the way of I service, as people pleasers do, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man.

So here's the question.

How do you, as a slave, work for, not even double-mindedly, but with a sincere heart, which means like I'm really working for the benefit of my master?

How do you operate in that way without the complete loss of your dignity and your soul?

You know, how does that not become, what's that, what's the name of that term where the captors fall in love with their Stockholm Syndrome, yeah, thank you.

How does that not become just some like twisted version of Stockholm syndrome?

Right?

Oh which is probably like a bad reading of Beauty and the Beast.

The reason is because their service to their master points them upward to the ultimate service of the one to whom all authority in heaven and on earth belongs, who is Christ.

So bowing a knee to an authority that's been delegated all the way down, that you see ultimately the only reason you have this authority is because on some level it's been delegated to you from Christ.

Means that when you bow your knee in sincerity of heart to that authority, it is no loss of dignity.

Instead, it is positioning yourself as the servant of the highest king, which is ultimately the greatest thing we can aspire to as people.

The most wonderful position that a creature can find is directly serving the Lord, their creator.

And so there is no loss of dignity in what he is calling this slave to do.

Instead, there is an embodiment of the very humanity which he has rescued into them, saying, in Christ, Christ is always your highest authority.

And so you may operate even with sincerity of heart, which would mean it's not like I'm just gonna do this work, but I'm gonna keep this part of myself over here that isn't really interested in it, just so I can preserve myself.

There's another way, but the only other way is to see ultimately the service that I am rendering is not because of something intrinsic in the master, but is honoring Christ.

You see, Paul is saying to the slave, in the position that you find yourself, this very work which you think might need to be taken out of the way in order for your life to be meaningful for the Lord in any way, this master who it seems like is constantly robbing you of your ability to participate in Christ's glory out of freedom, the very one who's says, uh who, by the nature of the relationship, gives you no choice in what he asks of you.

Even when you do that forced labor, you can honor Christ.

Do you see that the sliver of freedom that's there?

Now imagine uh imagine for a second that you have a terrible boss who asks things of you that are impossible for you to measure up to, or it give provides you things vaguely in a way that aren't able to be accomplished.

How is it that, or or perhaps even well, let's just stick with those.

How is it that you can you can move in that type of space in a way that is joyful, foolhearted, not crushed?

Well, Dorothy Sayers, uh novelist and essayist uh in England after World War II, she uh she developed this phrase for Christians in their work.

She said, What the Christian is called to do is to serve the work.

Our job is to serve the work.

And what she's making a delineation between is the Christian often says, uh, we need to serve the community.

But one of the best ways and one of the greatest means that the Lord has given us to serve the community is just the ordinary work that He's given us every day.

She says, it's the work that serves the community.

So your job is to serve the work.

What's been given to me today?

I'm able to serve it, knowing that the Lord will see it, will recognize it, and that this very act of service is glorifying to the Lord.

That I am participating in the very calling of my humanity.

This, in effect, this ability to serve the work, it frees you from the double-mindedness, which Paul talks about as I service as people pleasers.

You don't have to have a double-mindedness about your work, where it's I'm just doing this job in order to get my boss off my case, or I'm neglecting this work in order out of some sort of revenge or power play with my boss.

Instead, you're able to just serve the work, do the thing that needs to be done, trusting the Lord that he will accomplish the glory through it.

You're able to serve the work.

And then Paul is never short of incentives.

And so he offers to the slave this incredible incentive.

Says Ephesians 5, verse 8, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or is free.

Ephesians 5:8

So the slave, what it what does it mean?

Part of what it means to be a slave is it doesn't matter how much work you put into it, things don't get better for you.

This is not a position of advancement.

You remain in this condition.

But Paul is saying, we serve a Lord who sees the things that are done in secret.

We serve a Lord who you can't outgive.

You can't outwork, but he will participate, he will see the things that you've done in secret, and you will be rewarded for them.

Now, as Christians, oftentimes we get weirded out when we talk about rewards, because it's but it's all by grace, right?

And so why would we be rewarded for our particular works?

But this is not a discussion of salvation.

This is simply a way of showing us that the Lord is just and that the Lord desires to take care of his people.

Now, what will the slaves' rewards look like?

We don't know if it will be in this life or the next.

But yet they can take heart in your work, even if it feels dead end.

You can take heart that in serving it when you feel invisible, you're not.

That when you serve the work that you've been given as to the Lord, it is seen.

He will reward you.

In our world, we we think uh we have so many options.

Uh but it's not uncommon.

And we and we think like if there's a problem with my work, then it's just like, well, I just need to change.

And if you have a problem with your work, it's because you just haven't made the right change.

But there are real circumstances that you are in where you are bound by these circumstances.

You must stay in this challenging job because of what it accomplishes for your family right now, because of the needs that you currently have.

So, how do you live in that world without we often frame that as like a failure.

This is a recipe for losing your soul.

This is the way you give up on your dreams.

This is uh like, you know, there's like a whole little subculture of Instagram, of hustle culture, and how you need to be building your own kingdom and empire and things.

Neglecting that we live in a world of constraints.

How do you operate when you are very constrained into the position that you are in?

Is it that you just wither away because you aren't able to realize your dreams?

No, you serve the work that's in front of you, knowing that the Lord sees and rewards what he, even the work that is done in secret that seems invisible.

Now Paul turns to masters.

Verse nine says, Masters, do the same to them, and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their master and yours is in heaven, and that there is no partiality with him.

Imagine being in the room.

Slaves and masters gathered together.

This is already a strange thing we're doing.

You know, waking up on the Lord's Day morning, Sunday morning, and you know what are you what are you doing today?

I'm going to church.

Me too.

Okay, maybe we'll ride together.

You know, we we have the same social engagement this morning.

It's already a little strange, probably, in the home.

And then they're reading the letter.

Great, we got a letter today from the Apostle Paul.

Oh, cool.

That's very interesting.

Um, he's talking to slaves, and the masters sit there.

Obviously, he's talking to slaves.

Obviously, he has instruction for slaves.

But every level of society offers instruction for slaves and how to treat your slaves.

Uh, you know, Aristotle discusses how to dis how to properly discipline your say your slaves.

Um, Seneca discusses how to properly discipline your slaves.

This will be just like that.

So, instructions to bondservants.

Now, masters.

You know the uh instructions that I just gave to the bondservants?

Masters, do the same to them.

What?

Honor with fear and trembling.

Approach with a sincerity of heart.

Serve as though I'm serving Christ.

This is a strange room I found myself in.

It's it's an unthinkable command.

He remains within this structure, right?

This institution.

And then he turns to masters and he says, the the things, all the things that I just said of your servants that uh you were nodding along with the whole time, same to you.

It's the same to you.

Render services to the Lord, respect towards your servants.

Immediately his he says, and stop your threatening.

What is slavery without the threat of violence?

What is the institution of owning another person if you if you don't own their body?

And yet, Paul says, not even threats.

You're no longer allowed to manage your slaves.

If you're a Christian master, you don't get to manage your slaves with threats anymore.

What he's saying is you have this power in the relationship.

You have this power over this whole person because of the structure of the relationship.

And I prohibit you from utilizing that power in terms of the way you relate to this person.

Do you see how dynamic this is?

How how how it yeah, Paul doesn't um Paul doesn't outright condemn slavery.

Is is the Bible not just the root of Western culture, which is built upon you know only examples of oppression?

Says the one who turns to the master and says, Do the same as I called of your servant.

That's also required of you.

And you may not use this power which you do have over this person as the basis of your relating to them.

Now, what is the reason for that?

You can't you can't continue threatening like this, you can't rely on this inequality of position like this.

Why?

Because you know, master, that he who is both their master and yours is in heaven, and there is no partiality with him.

When Christ looks down on the slave and the master, he does not see a distinction.

There's no partiality with him.

He is not saying, look, there's one who I can really speak to, and there's one who needs to leave the room.

There's no partiality.

And so when this transcendence of God as the ultimate master and is master of both of them, when they're sitting in church together, they say, we actually, you know, we both have the same Lord.

So this hierarchy that we participate in down here, where we're where we operate the way that inferiors and superiors operate with one another, when we view ourselves in the depth of our humanity, the reality of who we are, when we come before the Lord, we relate as brothers and sisters.

We relate as equals.

So in order for us to properly participate in the hierarchies that we are in, we must firstly see each other as equals before the Lord.

And that causes this transformation of the way that we would participate within those hierarchies.

Now we see this clearly as Paul writes elsewhere, that uh uh there is uh no partiality with the Lord.

He writes in Galatians 3.28 that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, which we saw was like the whole first part of Ephesians, there's neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

We see that principle here of oneness in Christ Jesus.

So what does that mean?

Does it mean that uh uh Paul in in this verse that when we when we look at the way that Christ is, that he removes all of the distinctions from the world, that he removes all of the of the hierarchies that exist in the world, that he removes all the dynamics of culture, and that once you become a Christian, you step out of the world and step out of this individual story that you're a part of, and you step into a Christian world.

Where we all look the same and dress the same.

And I don't know if you've watched a cult documentary recently, but they have uniforms.

Is that what Christianity is to look like?

Does this first mean the elimination of hierarchy?

Now, this is these are the this is the binary that our culture thinks in.

We think there is either hierarchy or there is equality.

And we have to pick one.

There's either going to be hierarchy or there's going to be equality.

And it's one or the other.

The story of the gospel, what happens in Christ Jesus is far stranger than that.

It's far more dynamic than that.

Christ doesn't destroy the hierarchy, He fills it.

So that it operates in the way that it was designed to from the very beginning of the world.

He doesn't come in and say, see, the world was built on these hierarchies.

There's the heavens and the earth, and there's God above all those, and I put humanity above those, and I structured families in this way, and husbands and wives and children.

He doesn't say, look, I got it wrong the first time.

Those hierarchies went so bad that I'm just going to get rid of all of them.

And so now I'm going to come to the bottom and then I'm going to eliminate all of the distinctions between you because you can't handle them.

You just hurt each other with the distinctions that I give you.

No, he doesn't say that.

Instead, he says these were designed for flourishing.

And so I am going to restore them, these hierarchies that are built in the world, the way children relate to parents, the way kings relate to citizens, they've they're meant to create flourishing in the world, and so I'm reorienting them, and I'm f I will fulfill every part of the hierarchy.

Now, how does that happen?

How is the hierarchy fulfilled?

Well, in uh Philippians 2, verses 5 through 11, listen to this.

Philippians 2:5–11

How would a relationship between slaves and masters operate if this text had happened?

Okay, that's the thought experiment.

You ready?

How would the relationship between slaves and masters work in the world?

How do we work that out?

If we knew in our minds that this event happened, have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father.

What happens to our normal hierarchical structures when our Lord, where we all confess this one is the Lord, is the one who humbled himself to beneath a slave, to a criminal who is dead on a cross, convicted like a criminal.

And then because of that humiliation, God sees fit to exalt him to all authority in heaven and on earth.

What does that do with our authority structures?

Does it eliminate them?

Most certainly not.

But it shows that the way up them is down.

It shows that in the midst of them, even the slave is glorified.

Thanks.

I don't I don't get that a lot.

It kind of froze me.

I don't know what to do.

What is the world like when it's transformed by the gospel?

It's brought into its right order.

What would it be like to have a king?

You know, to have a leader.

This is what we crave in our hearts.

It's not that we would get rid of leaders, it's that we would have leaders that would lower themselves for the sake of those that they lead, and saw the essence of their exaltation as lowering themselves.

Slaves and masters, that dynamic, it can't exist in this paradigm.

Even if the even if, you know, the when when the slave and master walked out of the church in Ephesus, it was too different.

How could they relate anymore?

The slave was spiritually set free.

The master was made a slave of Christ.

Together they might sing that next Christmas, although it hadn't been written yet, O holy knight.

Remember the line?

Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother, and in his name all oppression shall cease.

How can that be?

Because the Lord, who is over all, humbled himself, so that we, his enemies, might be brought in and exalted with him.

That is the foundational story of the world.

Transforms these relationships as they're oriented towards the gospel.

What Christ requires of the slave, he did for you.

He became for you.

He humbled himself.

The Lord humbled himself that we might be saved.

That's why we come to the table, his table that he invites us to.

And at it, he says, This bread is broken, and that's his broken body, and his blood was poured out, so that we might participate in his exaltation, his feast.

Our Lord serves us at his table.

Let's see if there are any questions.

I just started to introduce communion and just made sense.

What should we do with otherwise good theologians who condone, supported, or even participated in slavery, i.e.

Jonathan Edwards?

I think we we have to.

You know, there's a there's a lot of questions in this.

One of them is what do we do with sinful people who we read?

And it generally, of course, we we take the wheat and leave the chaff.

You know, Jonathan Edwards is a wonderful theologian.

I understand our joy in the Lord because of Jonathan Edwards.

His proofs of God are heretical for the Trinity, so you leave that.

But you know, why is it why is it that Charles Spurgeon was able to see the horrors of slavery that was around him and Jonathan Edwards wasn't?

I don't know.

I don't know.

Oh we shouldn't we should remember when we offer these critiques, reflecting back on those who have come before us, that it's easy for us to say.

Slavery is unimaginable to us because we never inherited slaves, which Jonathan Edwards did.

And when he inherited these people, what does he does he free them into a world that is absolutely hostile towards them?

Does he should he spend all his time campaigning against the most particular horrific corrective evil of our society?

Or should he have spent his time preaching and teaching?

I don't know.

I don't know.

Those are difficult questions for our hearts, questions that many of many of us face in similar ways.

I'd say we approach them with an understanding of their humanity and of the difficulty of the context that we work in.

Is that the word that was used?

For uh I mean Edward is not a slavery apologist, but we do not become apologists for Edward's position on slavery or silence on slavery.

But we look back with humility, taking the wheat and leaving chaff.

I mean, how else do you treat a person?

Does that answer the question?

I'm getting like 50-50.

We'll just go with 50-50.

That's actually not bad odds.

Yeah, Zach answers all the questions about Jonathan Edwards and slavery.

All right.

We come to the table.

What a grace we have that this institution is gone.

You know, in the shape that it was.

What a reshaping of the world to remember that the way of our exaltation is humility.

As we come to the table, it's let our hearts be transformed by that and celebrate the humility of our Lord, which brings us together, so that we might call each other in all of our different statuses in society, brothers and sisters in Christ.

Father, I pray that you would bless our participation in the Lord's Supper, and that you might grant us wisdom to grasp and apply this text in our lives today.

Lord, lift us up in Jesus' name.

Amen.