Damariscotta Baptist Church

“Keep Walking Like Jesus”

One of the first marks of living differently will be what Paul wrote in chapter 5, verse 21, 

“Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.”

The story of the cross is our foundation story, which should be what shapes and directs how we operate. We should be checking our agenda, our selfish ambitions, what we want to do and have done. We should be coming around to the needs of others, in love and putting ourselves under them. That’s what Christianity is all about. 

Paul is sitting in prison and praying for these new churches and the people who are trying to live out this new humanity in the first century. 

He knows it’s not easy so he translates how it should work in a typical household setting. 

We went through part of the household instructions last week. Paul addressed the wives and husbands, and what marriage should look like with the Gospel as the center. 

In today’s Scripture Paul addresses the children. I find this interesting. If Paul is going to make a point to provide children with instructions it means there had to have been children as part of the church. It also means that he thought they were worth addressing. Paul was completely overriding a first century cultural norm. Children were considered to hold the lowest status in society in the ancient world (Barton and Muddiman 907). Yet, not according to the Gospel. You may recall that Jesus would pick children up and talk with them directly. An anomaly of His day. 

Notice what Paul tells them, verse 1,

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, 

What does he mean by “in the Lord?”

He doesn’t mean that your parents are in the Lord, or only obey Christian parents. His point is that your obedience is “in the Lord.” Remember, this is within the new humanity family, where each person is in submission to one another and puts themselves under one another. In whatever role we have with another, we are to actually live out that role as if the other person were Jesus. So, when a child who is a Christian, is obeying their parents, they are actually obeying and respecting Jesus. You respect and obey Jesus by coming under your parents’ place of authority over you. 

Following this command, Paul quotes from the Old Testament Scriptures, he reminds them of command of the ten commandments, 

 “Honor your father and mother” Deuteronomy 5:16.

Then Paul adds a little snippet of this being the first commandment with a promise, then he quotes the promise, 

“so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.”

Many of us read this, especially when we were kids and think, “Sweet! If I obey my parents I get to live an enjoyable life until I’m about 90 or something.” 

No, that’s not what Paul is saying. Before we take something out of context we need to go back to where it was written and read the five paragraphs before it and the five paragraphs after it and understand what was really going on when it was written. Paul’s readers would already have known this. Today, we need to go back and remember the context in which it was written. 

This commandment was given during the story of the Israelites when Moses had taken them out of slavery in Egypt and was leading them to the Promised Land. They had been parked at Mount Sinai for a year and God revealed to them the 10 Commandments as a part of His binding Himself to them, in a covenant relationship. The whole point was that Yahweh was now their God. He had rescued them by His grace and the commandments were given to explain how to relate to Yahweh. One of the commandments was for children to honor their parents. Why? So it would be well for these children as they venture to the Promised Land. 

Paul is reminding them that this is the first of the commandments that has a built in blessing. A core building block of Israelite families is for children to be obeying their parents, and it will go well with them. He uses this as an analogy for Christian children to do the same. 

Doing this commandment will provide a sense of peace and well-being for your life. It’s not rocket science. Think back over your own life. If you were a child who rebelled against your parents, or know of a child who rebelled, was life enjoyable? 

Paul continues to address the family members by next talking to the fathers, verse 4,

“Fathers, do not exasperate your children, instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.”

This is all about authority. I realize that we only have a few people here today that are parenting children at this time in their lives. But each one of us has been raised by someone poorly or well. Paul is addressing what the culture of parenting looks like in the new humanity. It begins with children obeying their parents, but parents are told not to provoke their children to anger. 

Let’s be clear. Paul is not talking about the times when there is a clash of wills and the child wants to do something that is clearly wrong and the parent stops them and then the child gets angry. What Paul is addressing is the times when parents provoke their children to anger by their doing and saying things from a selfish and messed up perspective. I think you know what I mean, Paul is addressing the times when the parent is arbitrary or inconsistent. Dad comes home from work and has had a hard day, kids are being kids, but Dad can’t handle it and sends everyone to their rooms because he needs quiet. It’s the selfish exercise of authority. Dad’s in charge and things have to go his way or the highway, rather than being attentive to the traits and temperaments of his children. It’s not paying attention to the huge impact that words and actions have on children’s minds and development. Step back, Paul’s culture didn’t put children into their daily agenda. Today’s parents need the same message, but possibly from a different angle. Parents have a responsibility to train and instruct a child, of the Lord. So whatever guidance you give your children as they grow up, doesn’t actually originate with you. Whatever authority a Christian parent has is an authority that originates with the authority of Jesus. It is through the teachings of Jesus that parents guide their children. Not necessarily taking cues from the ways you were raised as a kid, that’s not always going to be reliable. But centering on the teachings of Jesus which are rock solid. 

The next relationship Paul addresses is that of slaves. 

“Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.”

Okay, let’s stop for just a moment. 

I would like you to stop and think about what image popped up in your mind after hearing and reading that sentence. 

For those of us reading this passage in 21st Century America the word “slaves” has a lot of loaded imagery. It’s not comfortable. The thoughts we have come from history lessons, movies that we have seen, books we have read, people we have listened to, family stories that we have heard.

When we hear the word “slaves” we are reminded of one of the saddest chapters of our country’s history. Over 150 years ago, the Atlantic slave trade with Britain brought slaves tothe American colonies. The wealth and productivity of the colonies was being done on the backs of black Africans who were kidnapped on a large scale, against their will. It’s the story we have in our head. 

It’s a tragic story and an embarrassing story, I believe for our country. But it’s there and we can’t get around it. 

Here’s where contextualization is vital in the understanding of Scripture. We need to take off our 21st century glasses and step back in time to understand what slaves were like in the time Paul was writing this letter. 

Slavery in the 1st century was in some ways the same, but in many ways completely different. The Atlantic slave trade was about one ethnic group, kidnapping and enslaving another ethnic group. Then the Africans were segregated and separated from the white people. Roman slavery was different. On any given day, were Paul to walk through a city in Rome, anywhere from 30 t0 50% of the people he met would have been slaves, we’re talking huge numbers. Slavery was not based on any ethnic bases whatsoever. Romans were enslaved to other Romans. Slaves were integrated into almost all levels of society. Some slaves even held highly prestigious positions in society. Mainly because the origin of slavery was different. Some were prisoners of war, a lot like the Atlantic slaves. There was also a type of slavery that we don’t have a category for, it was called bond slavery. Our equivalent would be something like bankruptcy. Basically a family who had a shop of some kind goes under, they lose it all, they go bankrupt and have a huge amount of debt. There were no social programs to assist them. They didn’t have unemployment or welfare. It wasn’t like they had federally insured banks they could get loans from. Your only recourse was to find someone wealthy enough in your connections of people to buy you, family and all. Everything you own, plus everyone in your family becomes their property. You stay that way until you can earn enough money to buy back your freedom. Which happened very often. That was the dream of all Roman slaves. To save enough money to buy their freedom. 

The thing the two types of slavery had in common was that one group was owned by another. Slaves had no rights whatsoever. A master could do whatever he wished to do, they could deprive, they could abuse, they could even murder their own slave. This is an institution where the human condition could take over and be absolutely dark and destructive, and it was. 

We may look at this scenario and think, Hey Paul, you have the message of equality, the truth of love and how humans are supposed to behave, abolition! Let’s Go! It wasn’t like Paul had any problems with being in prison or risking his life. What’s the issue Paul? Why didn’t he stand up for freeing the slaves?

That would again be importing our cultural glasses onto first century life. Just stop and think for a moment of the heroes we have that made a difference in our country to help abolish slavery, or segregation. 

We have Harriet Tubman, Frederik Douglass, Martin Luther King, Jr. who were each deeply devout Christians. We need to also remember that they were alive in a time, and a place and culture where there was a place for them to gain momentum and have influence. It’s called democracy. 

Go back to Paul. There was one guy on top, his name was Caesar. How many protests did he allow in Rome? Zero. If you said anything against Caesar, you die. The moment Paul, with his small little communities of 30 and 4o in the house churches, would stand outside and protest, “Down with slavery!” Zap! You are done! There were no qualms about crucifying people in large numbers. 

Paul had the message, but there wasn’t even a prayer that he would influence the people at the top and make a difference. What could he do? 

Exactly what Paul did, verse 5,

“Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ”

Paul was very specific, “just as you would obey Christ.” 

Christ was not Jesus’ last name, that title meant “Messianic King.”

Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, King Messiah, doing the will of God from your heart.

Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, King Messiah, not people,  because you know that the Lord, Our King, will reward each one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free.

We need to stop again, right here. Because you can read that paragraph and come up with two completely different things. This is where I want you to take off your cultural glasses and walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.

So what is Paul getting at?

If I’m a slave and regardless of how I got there, and I become a Christian, what is my relationship to my Master. Paul says, you are to be over the top, with integrity and have a work ethic that makes you one of their most hard working slaves. 

But what’s the motivation for doing so? 

Paul said four times – who the slave should actually be serving or obeying – Christ Jesus – Go back and check it out, the slave who has become a Christian no longer serves someone on earth, but serves Jesus. 

The last time I checked, Jesus treats His slaves by giving up His life for them. Promising them His presence in order to become a whole new and different kind of human. 

So, yes, serve your human master but in actuality you belong to Jesus. He bought you with His love, life which was given for you. 

This whole new humanity identity is quite profound. Because the slave could turn around and say, you know what, Jesus is my real master, so go do your own work. But instead, Paul teaches them that their identity is so shaped by Jesus’ love for you, and what He did for them that they realize their whole freedom in Christ, is what allows them to recognize that although the human master may have a role in their life, he does not own them, Jesus does. 

Paul reshapes their identity. Instead of going with abolition or against segregation, or using violence to change things, Paul claims the cross is where it stops. 

The cross is where the human accomplishment of violence being the tool where humans dominate each other, is put to death. Instead, we claim our new identity in Christ, “You don’t own me, you are not the boss of me, Jesus is, therefore I serve you as I would serve Jesus.” 

Next, Paul lays into the masters, Christian masters. 

“And masters, treat your slaves in the same way.”

Stop for a minute and catch the nuance of what Paul just wrote. Is Paul actually telling the masters that they are to do the same as a slave? Is he thinking the master is equal to the slave? 

Paul goes on to say, 

“Do not threaten them,” 

As soon as the master uses violence to determine power, they have stepped into the human way of things, not the new humanity way of things. In God’s point of view, no human owns another human. 

Christian masters are like any other human that belongs to Christ. Each person is owned by Jesus and on their personal journey so don’t use threats, why? 

Continuing with verse 9,

“since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.”

That’s intense. Paul doesn’t use the abolitionist flag, but he does undo the very essence of slavery. Paul reminds the masters that they don’t actually own people, because their real master is Jesus. Oh, and by the way, Jesus doesn’t play favorites. 

Instead of going for abolition, which wouldn’t have flown at that time, Paul went for the truth of the cross and ingrained amongst the believers the very essence of the gospel, within their everyday life. 

Paul went for reshaping how people think, regardless of your role in society, when you are together as a family of Jesus, that doesn’t  matter at all. The ground is level at the foot of the cross. Paul sent this message to all of the congregations he wrote to:

Galatians 3: 26

So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 

I Corinthians 12:13 

For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.  Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.  

Colossians 3:11

Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.

For Paul, the roles given by humanity are just that, 

roles given by humanity. 

They do not define us as members of the new humanity. 

Those who chose to become a member of the family of God are called to let go of human labels, and realize we are all one in Jesus Christ. Because of that, all of the relationships we have look totally different than they did in the 1st century or in the 21st century. 

How you relate to each other as husband and wife looks different.

How you parent your kids looks completely different as a Christian than it did back then and how it is done now. When it came to slavery, Paul sowed the seeds that would one day undo slavery. He was not in a place, or a time to have any sort of influence to carry that out. 

But, 

Martin Luther King Jr. was in such a place and time to make that difference. And he comprehended his place in history by saying, 

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” 

Paul uses the most effective way for these new Jesus communities to reshape and influence Roman society. It was not going to happen by a protest, or a political process they had no access to. Instead, Paul focused on little Christian communities of believers who did things differently.

I encourage you to take time today to read the shortest book in the New Testament, Philemon. It is a letter Paul wrote to a Christian slave owner to convince him to take back his slave who had run away who stole from him, but had become a Christian. Paul had encountered this slave, and was appealing to Philemon the owner to do the Christian thing, and take him back. Culturally, Philemon had the right to have his slave killed. Yet, Paul appeals to his Christian beliefs to not only take the slave back, not just as a slave, but as a brother in Christ. 

I know you have probably heard sermons before how this passage is about your work ethic and how you should honor your boss. But really, it’s about slavery, which doesn’t exist anymore because it is inconsistent with the gospel. 

Paul, in his context, is being wise and showing people how to navigate and understand every relationship, in day to day life. Regardless of what culture you are in, Paul is putting across the idea that in every relationship you are in, whether it’s marriage, parent/child, slave/master, that every single one of them needs to be run through the story of the gospel. Our lives should become about telling this story, in every one of these relationships. 

Check in time. 

Think of the relationships you currently find yourself in. Whether marriage, or family, or work, 

think of someone who you have struggles with in that relationship

and put before God the idea that in order for you to be a Christian and live like a new human, 

you need to wrap that relationship around the Gospel story. 

This means showing that person 

grace, and mercy, whether they deserve it or not, 

whether all your friends think they deserve it or not, 

but because as a Christian, and because Jesus is our King,

we treat them like Jesus would. 

If Christians today would put this message into practice, what a different world we would be. 

Let’s pray.