Tuesday: More Than a Slave
WEEK 10
TUESDAY
MORE THAN A SLAVE
Colossians 4:1; Luke 4:25-28
We saw yesterday that the method of emancipation of the depressed classes of society was by giving them the Holy Spirit on the same basis as the rest. That emancipated them at the center. The sense of inferiority was broken at the center—within. Emancipated there they began to be emancipated at the margin in social relations. Unless that inner emancipation takes place, the outer emancipation is ineffective. You can’t get people out of the slums unless you get the slums out of people, for they will soon make their new environment into slums again.
We have found in India that you really can’t raise the outcastes’ standing before people until you raise their standing before God. When they realize they are children of God and as such equal before God and therefore equal before people, then they are really emancipated. Until that happens, the inner sense of inferiority pulls them down to an inferior position outwardly.
This is seen in the exquisitely beautiful letter of Paul to Philemon in regard to his converted slave Onesimus. Paul says, “Maybe this is the reason that Onesimus was separated from you for a while so that you might have him back forever—no longer as a slave but more than a slave—that is, as a dearly loved brother” (vv. 15-16). The whole method of Christian emancipation is summed up in that sentence—a slave silently walks out of slavery into brotherhood, and a “dearly loved” brotherhood.
When the master and the slave both knelt side by side and received the bread and wine in Communion, they arose knowing that the master-slave relationship was gone, killed at the heart. They heard the words, “Neither be called masters, for you have one master, the Christ” (Matt 23:10 RSV). And the chains fell off both master and slave. The master, too, was shackled by the shackles with which he had shackled the slave. He was in inner conflict over the system and needed emancipation—and got it.
Alongside the corrupt system of slavery was placed the incompatible principle that slaves received the Holy Spirit on the same basis as the rest. That killed the system.
O Lord, your silent forces working in our hearts are breaking our chains and making us free. We are free in every person’s freedom and bound in every person’s bondage. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: It is impossible to enslave
a Bible-reading people.