Mar 31 2022 Day 316 1 Corinthians 7:1–9:27

Whoever was called in the Lord as a slave is a freed person belonging to the Lord, just as whoever was free when called is a slave of Christ.



To be clear, I have no idea whether Paul was talking figuratively or literally about slavery and slaves. If he was arguing that if you were an actual slave when you were called, I would counter that slavery is a construct that is entirely against Jesus’ message of loving thy neighbor. The notion of slavery and horrid conditions being something to be endured was something used to further oppress oppressed people by the church. Don’t worry about your squalor; your reward will come in heaven. Bunk. This line of thinking spawned an entire theological movement of liberation theology, which sought to dispel the notion that God had any interest in keeping the oppressed shackled. So, if Paul was speaking literally, all I can do is vehemently disagree.

But if he’s talking figuratively – we are slaves to sin, to worldly desires – I agree. When we realize we are captives to our desires, to the world’s values, to the expectations of others – it is through Jesus’ love that we realize we are in fact free. True, our own desires continue. But I’m not enslaved by them. True, the world’s values remain, but I’m not enslaved by them either.

In their book, Made for Goodness, Desmond Tutu and his daughter Mpho Tutu write about freedom and God. They first lay out three things we know from scripture. First, we are made to be good. One of their arguments for this position is that what we take for news are the exceptions to this – when people are bad and evil. If that were our common and normal state, it wouldn’t be news. Second, we are perfectly loved just as we are, so we can stop trying to be good. Third, God holds out a perpetual invitation to us to return to wholeness in God, rather than the anxious striving of this world.

The book then outlines that we are free in God, similar to Paul’s words. And for freedom to be truly free, we must be free to choose goodness or evil. The question they pose and then answer is, when we fail or fall or suffer, where is God and how do we find our way back to God? The answers lie in the previous three truths. We are made for goodness, we are perfectly loved, and we are always invited to return. As long as we are always free to return, and as long as we remember we are always loved perfectly as we are, we are free in Jesus.