Chains Shall He Break: What the Bible Actually Says About Slavery

Few topics make modern Christians more uncomfortable than slavery in Scripture. We rush past those passages or explain them away. But if we're honest with the text, and honest with history, there's something far more radical happening than most of us realize.

The World Paul Was Writing Into

To understand Paul's household codes in Ephesians and Colossians, we have to understand the world that produced them. In Aristotle's framework, which shaped the entire Greco-Roman social imagination, the household ran on a rigid hierarchy of authority. Men led with absolute power. Women existed to serve men and bear children. Aristotle even described women biologically as "deformed men." Children were simply small, undeveloped adults who should be seen but not heard. And slaves? They were "animate tools," subhuman by nature, with some people born to be enslaved and others born to be masters.

How convenient for wealthy, able-bodied men.

Into that world steps Paul. And here's what's radical about what he does: he addresses wives, children, and enslaved people directly, as moral agents capable of making their own choices before God. In a culture where these groups were invisible, Paul insists on their visibility. There are no second-class citizens in the kingdom of heaven.

A Very Different Kind of Slavery

Still, the question has to be asked. Why doesn't Paul just call for abolition? Why doesn't the Bible, as a whole, ever demand the dismantling of the slave system?

Answering that honestly requires us to understand how different ancient slavery was from the chattel slavery of the American South. In the Ancient Near East, slavery was not primarily race-based. People could become enslaved through poverty, debt, warfare, or birth. Many arrangements were limited in duration. Some societies had age thresholds at which certain enslaved people were freed. Some enslaved people could earn wages in their off hours and buy their freedom. Women might serve as household managers. Men might oversee estates or raise children.

The Law of Moses put formal limits on the practice. Every seventh year was a "Sabbath year," during which Israelites enslaved to fellow Israelites were to be set free. Then, after counting seven cycles of seven years, the fiftieth year was to be a "Jubilee," an economic reset in which all slaves were released, land returned to original owners, and debts cleared.

That said, let's not romanticize it. Some masters were brutal. The Torah's protections for enslaved people were real but limited, more closely resembling property law than criminal law. Runaway slaves were to be returned. Killing an enslaved person carried consequences similar to destroying property. Even within God's covenant community, enslaved people were still enslaved.

My honest reading is that God did not design or endorse slavery. But it was woven into the economics of the ancient world in ways no single letter, or even empire, could unravel overnight. This is similar to how Jesus approached divorce: God didn't command it, but he regulated it, and pointed toward something better.

The Groundwork Being Laid

The Spirit of the Lord God is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and freedom to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor... (Isaiah 61:1-2)

While no biblical author stands on a platform and demands immediate, universal emancipation, the groundwork for freedom is unmistakably being laid.

It starts with Jesus. Throughout his ministry, he elevated the least of society: beggars, widows, children, servants. He taught that "the greatest among you must be the servant of all," and that "the first will be last and the last will be first." On the night before his crucifixion, he took the literal posture of a slave and washed his disciples' feet.

When Jesus told the religious leaders, "You shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free," they pushed back: "We are Abraham's descendants and have never been slaves." Jesus redirected: "Everyone who sins is a slave to sin. But if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed." (John 8:32-35) His point was larger than social liberation. He came to break the worst bondage of all.

This distinction matters deeply when we get to the debates of the 18th and 19th centuries. Southern preachers argued that slavery was "biblical." And technically the case could be made from a pro-slavery side using Scripture – people can make the Bible say almost anything they want to. But here is the question that should give us pause: is owning another human being as personal property Christ-like? Can you hold someone in chains while genuinely practicing "love your neighbor as yourself"? While truly believing in doing unto others as you would have them do unto you? I don't see how.

There is a world of difference between what is "biblical" and what is Christ-like.

Redefining the Relationship

Paul understood all of this. When he wrote to the churches, he knew their congregations included enslaved members worshipping alongside wealthier benefactors. So he did something quietly revolutionary: he told them to treat one another the same way, regardless of social position. He told enslaved church members they were working for the Lord, not just their earthly masters. He told masters not to threaten, not to beat, reminding them that they had the same Master in heaven to whom they would answer.

When Paul wrote about spiritual gifts in Romans and 1 Corinthians, he had enslaved believers in mind. If a slave had a gift for teaching, administration, or prophecy, Paul expected them to use it for the common good. His lists of church roles, including pastors, teachers, elders, and deacons, carry no restriction based on social status. Could an enslaved person have been a pastor? An elder? Based on Paul, it certainly sounds possible.

The most striking example is Onesimus – runaway slave who encountered Paul, heard the gospel, and became a believer. Paul sent him back to his master Philemon with a letter that quietly detonates the whole system: "Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back forever, no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother." Onesimus was sent with Paul's companion Tychicus, to deliver Paul's letters to the Colossians, to Philemon, and perhaps even to Ephesus (Colossians 4:7-9, Ephesians 6:21). A formerly enslaved runaway serving as a courier for the apostle. It's hard to imagine Philemon receiving that letter and returning to a master-slave dynamic with someone he now had to call his brother.

Truly he taught us to love one another; His law is love, and his gospel is peace. Chains shall he break for the slave is our brother, And in his name all oppression shall cease.

Paul and the early church leaders knew they couldn't topple the entire economic architecture of the Roman Empire overnight. Loudly preaching abolition would have brought Rome's full wrath down on these small, fragile communities. But what they could do, and did, was redefine these relationships within their own communities. That was not a small thing. It was a seed.

The Work That Remains

The race-based chattel slavery practiced in the United States and the United Kingdom was so far removed from the ancient world that comparing the two does a disservice to the depth of its evil. The African slave trade is a stain that will take generations to fully reckon with. Those who try to justify it using Scripture have lost their connection to the heart of Christ entirely. I am grateful for the men and women who fought for abolition in the 18th and 19th centuries, on both sides of the Atlantic.

But the work is not finished. By some estimates, more people live in slavery today than at the height of the African slave trade, many of them women and girls trafficked into the sex trade. Even here in the United States, where slavery is formally outlawed, the 13th Amendment still contains an exception that permits forced, unpaid labor (i.e. slavery) as punishment for a crime. That clause is not incidental to our world's-highest incarceration rate.

We have work to do – the work of Christ which began 2000 years ago, the work of justice and peace and freedom.

In a world of darkness, let us shine his light all the brighter. In a world full of oppression, let us proclaim freedom. In a world full of violence, may we be peacemakers. May we all stand on the side of "liberty and justice for all," and mean all.

And let us not get discouraged when progress seems slow. There is a line that the abolitionist minister Theodore Parker wrote in 1853, later made famous by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

It bends. But it doesn't bend on its own.

Lord, come quickly.