ONE FOR ALL
ALL FOR ONE

We don't think much about there being neither slave nor free in our everyday lives. We think of slavery as a thing of the past. The truth is that there are possibly more slaves today than ever before.  But it may be that Paul uses “slave and free” as an example of two groups: those with means and the freedom those means provide, and those without means and the freedoms that aren’t theirs.  Paul wasn’t saying that there were no slaves, because there were. (Read Philemon) He was saying that, “in Christ,” slaves and free people are one.  Distinctions in the body of Christ over position, career, or income are not to be. The one with little economic or no economic lifting power has the same respect, vote, and participation as the person with huge economic lifting power. No preferential classifying based on these distinctions is valid in Christ’s Body.

This hurts the heads of some of Jesus followers.  However, Paul is clear in this most personal and self-defining of all distinctions, that in Christ they are gone and irrelevant.  The old mindset of “headship” is gone; “in Christ” that is all reversed. There can be no roles withheld or conferred based on gender identity.

What the church is called to is oneness!  We, being many - from many nations, cultures, backgrounds, races, language groups, political persuasions - “in Christ” we make up one, ONE Body of Christ. This was radical teaching for Paul and his Jewish culture.  It was radical teaching in the Roman culture of hierarchy and privileges based on those very identities.  It is radical teaching today in 2019 in our country and our world. Jesus’ Body, the church, is called to be the place where these human distinctions are totally irrelevant.