Daily Devotions
Did the Bible Condone Slavery?
Reading for March 7th: Deuteronomy 24-27
"If a man is found stealing one of his brothers of the people of Israel, and if he treats him as a slave or sells him, then that thief shall die. So you shall purge the evil from your midst."
Deuteronomy 24:7
Did the Bible condone slavery?
This is a charge made by skeptics of the Bible. It is true that there were regulations regarding masters in the Bible (Eph 6:9; Col 4:1). There are instructions to how Christian slaves should respond to their masters (Eph 6:5-8; Col 3:22-25).
However, all of that does not suggest that God approved of what happened in the African slave trade which including the buying and selling of people like cattle, separating parents from their children, whipping, sexual abuse, and other forms of inhumane and ungodly treatment. To equate the slavery that existed in America with the slavery that was regulated in the Bible is quite a stretch.
On the most fundamental level, the Bible condemned that form of slavery. Not only does this text in Deuteronomy condemn the stealing of a fellow Israelite for the purpose of selling him as a slave, the New Testament expressly condemns this practice (1 Tim 1:10).
Some are concerned about the fact that our relationship to Jesus Christ is described as that of a master/slave relationship. Jesus does not force submission out of us. We present ourselves as slaves to him (Rom 6:16-18).
Father, we present ourselves to your Son as obedient slaves.
