Romans (13) Clouded by Slavery

In the first half of Romans, the most common theme is “slavery” to evil. Humans are slaves who needed to be set free. The spiritual powers demanded “death” of the person as their ransom. This was harsh, but they had the power to do it, because humans had freely submitted to them. Therefore, the main purpose of Jesus was to “redeem” people who were trapped in sin by the powers of evil. He paid the ransom demanded by willingly dying on the cross.

In the season following the Reformation when the scriptures were made accessible to everyone through English translations, and for many years in America, slavery continued to be an acceptable part of the Christian culture. This ambivalence towards slavery made Christians reluctant to deal with passages in the scriptures that condemned slavery. Exodus was an account of God rescuing his people from slavery in Egypt, and establishing them in a land of their own with his good laws to enable them to live in freedom and at peace with each other, without the need to enslave people.

When the Christians read Romans, they avoided the obvious reading that Jesus paid the ransom to set us free from slavery to the spiritual powers of evil. They preferred a message that God was angry with his people and needed to be appeased. They focussed on Jesus’ death as a sacrifice that dealt with God, and ignored the major theme that Jesus delivered his people from slavery to the spiritual powers of evil.

If they had emphasised Paul’s message that deliverance from slavery to evil, they would have had to face up to their own practice of slavery, and they did not want to do that. Now after slavery has been ended in the Western world, the same emphasis on God being offended has continued, and the message of deliverance from slavery is still being ignored.

The main theme of Romans is that we have been released from bondage to sin, death and fear (Rom 8:15) and been adopted as children of God.

You received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ (Rom 8:15-17).