Tennesee Ernie Ford sings a gut-wrenching song about the sordidness of slavery. It is so, so bad he even pleads with Peter not to send summons to appear before God, for “he owes his soul to the company store”.
Clearly a mix-up of the soul and body, uttered at the height of bestial treatment received from the slave drivers. Martin Luther gets it right ca 1529: “The body they may kill: God’s truth abideth still, His kingdom is forever”.
While this kind of slavery has to do with historical anomalies involving race, colour, caste or class, there is another form of slavery that has to do with the condition of the heart of man in the spiritual realm. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” cries the prophet Jeremiah. Jesus was explicit in Mark 7: 21-23 “For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”
A fairly long laundry list!!
I can find several items there that belong to me, and I suspect, so can you.
In order to bring the matter into proper focus, let us recall Jesus’s judgment in the matter of the woman caught in adultery. He well knew the intention of the religious leaders and the pharisees who had laid a trap to catch her and were now laying a trap to see whether they could find fault with Jesus at a point where His compassion intersects the admission of Mosaic law. Jesus’s pronouncement “he who is without sin let him cast the first stone” was so profound that the marauding gang of self-righteous vigilantes slunk away in single file, their hitherto somnolent souls suddenly stirring and becoming sensitive to the charge of sin! This left the woman standing alone in front of the only person qualified to cast a stone at her; and He didn’t. He asked her not to sin and sent her away.
We are talking about slavery to sin, that does so easily entangle us (Heb. 12:1). Mere knowledge of what is good is not enough to overcome the power of sin that has invaded us! “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do” (Rom. 7:19). We can be rescued from this plight only by the intervention of another, more powerful spiritual force — the acceptance of the fact that Christ Jesus died to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:9. (idea borrowed in part from Theology of Work)
This of course does not mean that all of a sudden one becomes sinless and perfect; the great apostle Paul himself confesses “Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.” Philip. 3:12.
The point is, that a choice has been made – in one stroke or over a period of time – to start marching to a different drumbeat.
We do not often realize that it would be absurd to come to the cross with our burden and return without laying down the burden at the foot of the cross whereupon Jesus shed His blood for our sins as a sacrificial lamb. Which is why Paul stresses “that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts” Eph. 4:22. And then instructs believers to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ…………….” in Romans 13:14.
In the physical system of slavery that Ford bemoans, quite often death is the release. Alexei Navalny might not have been a slave in the classical sense, but there is little doubt Russia is ruled by an egocentric kleptocratic tyrant. Even within such a regime, there is scope for a spiritual dimension; we can choose whom we will serve this day and enjoy freedom in Christ (Josh 24:15), like Martin Luther King (Jr.) did. But as we indicated, there is a price to pay at this point of intersection, and quite often, it is supreme.
Watch this uplifting video:
Should tyrants be forgiven ?
difficult question