Gotta Serve Somebody

The scriptures referred to are Romans 6:12-23.

Dr. Gregory Aldrete, a professor of history, is skeptical of people who believe in reincarnation and claim to remember past lives. Because most of them remember being kings or queens or other powerful and famous people. But statistically, they should remember being an endless succession of farmers because throughout most of history that is what 90% of people were. And if you lived during the time of the New Testament, there was a 10 to 20% chance you would be a slave. You could have been captured in a war, born to a mother who was a slave (regardless of whether your father was), or you could have been abandoned on the side of the road by parents who couldn't afford to keep you and then picked up by someone who raised you as a slave. No one race was specifically held as slaves, though people usually preferred to enslave ethnic groups other than their own. Wealthy Romans especially liked to have a Greek slave as tutor for their sons or as their personal physician. It showed you had exceptional taste.

My point is that slavery was so common that Paul seized upon it as a metaphor in our passage from Romans. He would agree with Bob Dylan's song Gotta Serve Somebody. Nobody is truly free from having to work for someone else. CEOs of big companies have got to meet or beat the expectations of the stock market and investors in their quarterly earnings or they can be voted out by the company's board of directors, as Steve Jobs once was by Apple. For the last several centuries kings have not been free to do whatever they want, because to fight wars they need the support of nobles for the soldiers and of parliament for the money. King John did not sign the Magna Carta willingly. Not wanting a king, the drafters of our Constitution explicitly state in Article 2, Section 3 that the president is to see that the laws passed by Congress are “faithfully executed.” That is why it is called the executive branch. The Office of the President doesn't legislate or make laws; it executes them, carrying them out just as Congress says.

Paul is saying that on a personal level we all start out as slaves of our bodies and our basic human nature. We act to fulfill our needs, of course, but also to satisfy our desires, not all of which are good for us. Businesses know this and cater to our desires to buy things that have no practical value but offer novelty, or to experience things that thrill us or give us various kinds of pleasure. Today's companies, using what we've learned about addiction, design products and services that trigger dopamine, the craving chemical, in our brains. They sell us foods not found in nature but which have been formulated to have the right balance of sugar, salt and fats so that we cannot stop munching on them. I dare you to eat just one Oreo or Dorito chip. They engineer video games that keep us playing level after level. They create videos that keep us watching one after another. They even present the news in a way to frighten or enrage us and thus keep us engaged.

In Paul's day, people who ran businesses, cults or nations may not have had the science or technology we do but they knew that if you really wanted to entice people, you played to their desires and stirred up their emotions. So going to the city of Corinth was like going to Vegas. Corinth even had a temple to Aphrodite, the goddess of love, with a daily procession of temple prostitutes whose sandals were embossed with Greek letters so their footprints said “Follow me.” Emperors knew that they could distract people from the problems the government wasn't solving by offering them bread and circuses. They sponsored gladiatorial games so you could watch men fight animals or other men to the death. They flooded the Colosseum with water and staged mock naval battles.

The houses of the wealthy had man caves called androns where the men drank with their friends and brought in entertainers to provide music, jokes and acrobatics. The women in the family were prohibited from entering the andron but prostitutes were invited. For that matter, the men of the household were free to have sex with any of their slaves, whether female or male.

Paul knew, therefore, that the idea of being a slave was repugnant, which is probably why he apologizes for “speaking in human terms.” (v. 19) But his point is that human beings are always ruled by something or someone. Rather than letting ourselves act at the whim of sinful desires, he says it is better to be ruled by the God revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. After all, we were created by God in his image to rule the earth as his vice-regents. (Genesis 1:27-28) But we decided that we knew how to do it better than God and disregarded his rules. We wanted to be like God, not in terms of his morality, love and fairness but in terms of his power. Figuring that knowledge is power, we learned prematurely how his good gifts could be turned to evil purposes (Genesis 3:1-7) and we ruined the world with evil schemes and violence. (Genesis 6:5, 11-12) In seeking to be masters of the world, we found ourselves instead to be trapped under the rule of thousands of petty tyrants and enslaved to our worst desires.

The word “redeem” means literally “to buy back or ransom.” In the Old Testament, when a person sold himself into slavery to repay a debt, a kinsman could redeem or buy him out of slavery. (Leviticus 25:47-49) Paul uses the imagery of Jesus redeeming us. (Galatians 3:13; Titus 2:14) So we are no longer enslaved to self-destructive sins that will lead to death but we belong to God in Christ which leads to eternal life.

Still we bristle at the idea of being anyone's slave, even God's. We want to be our own masters. And what do we do when left to our own devices? Today we literally turn to our devices and let our phones take over our free time, as they try to sell us other people's merchandise, other people's ideas and propaganda, or sell our personal information to those who will use it against us. Or we go to places where we pay to ingest addictive substances like alcohol or drugs, or indulge in addictive activities like gambling or thrill seeking. We pay others to cook for us, or show us multi-million dollar movies, or let us watch millionaire athletes play games. We even let AI think for us. And we wonder why we increasingly feel our lives are empty, meaningless and without purpose.

One thing we are no longer doing as much is helping others. According to the Gallup Poll, charitable giving has dropped from 87% of Americans in 2001 to 76% in 2025. Only 17% of Americans are giving blood today as opposed to 21% who did so in 2001. The percentage of Americans who are volunteering has risen from 56% during the pandemic to 63% today, but that's still 2 points lower than 10 years ago. (One word of caution: these are self-reported figures. People might be exaggerating to the pollsters to make themselves look more generous with their time and money.) Yet science tells us that giving to others makes us happier than getting things for ourselves. Which means it took us 2000 years to confirm what Paul tells the church in Ephesus: “In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said, 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.'” (Acts 20:35) How does it do that? When we serve Jesus through serving others, it blesses us by giving our lives meaning and purpose. (Matthew 25:40)

God gives each of us gifts in the form of talents and an ability to develop certain skills which we can use to serve him. And using those talents and honing those skills usually gives us satisfaction. Sharing them with others makes us feel needed and gives us a feeling of belonging. This is not like being a slave who is simply assigned a task and expected to do it whether they have an aptitude for it or not. Slavery to sin, just like any addiction, diminishes us as a person. You are reduced to that one thing. But serving Jesus lets you be more yourself, the unique and whole person God created you to be.

But what about the people who were actually enslaved to other human beings? Some people fault Paul for not calling for the abolition of slavery. That's possibly because, like the American South, Rome would rather fight wars than end slavery. Slave revolts were not uncommon and Rome put those rebellions down brutally. The most famous was when gladiator Spartacus led a revolt of 70,000 slaves in 73 BC. They were able to defeat Roman armies again and again in the Third Servile War. But when Rome finally defeated Spartacus in 71 BC, they crucified the 6000 surviving fighters along 100 miles of the Appian Way. The cross was primarily a punishment for slaves and rebels.

Paul did say, however, that if a slave could get his freedom, he should do so. (1 Corinthians 7:21) He told slave-owners to treat their slaves fairly and not to threaten them “because you know that both you and they have the same master in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.” (Ephesians 6:9) He wrote to a church leader named Philemon whose runaway slave had become a Christian and was helping Paul. Though legally Paul had to return the slave, Paul asked Philemon to treat the slave, Onesimus, as if he were Paul himself, and said he was receiving him back not as a slave but as a brother. Paul strongly hinted that Philemon should free Onesimus so he could continue to help in Paul's ministry. And he must have because he let the letter be circulated.

Famously Paul said, “For 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 Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female—for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:26-28) We are all equal in God's eyes, regardless of external distinctions.

Then Paul goes on to say, “And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's descendants, heirs according to the promise.” (Galatians 3:29) He goes on to explain that “the heir, as long as he is a minor, is no different than a slave, though he is the owner of everything.” (Galatians 4:1) When you are a child you are not free to do as you please. You have to wait until you reach maturity. Paul then says, “But when the appropriate time had come, God sent out his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might be adopted as sons with full rights. And because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, who calls, 'Abba! Father!' So you are no longer a slave but a son, and if you are a son, then you are also an heir through God.” (Galatians 4:4-7) Being a slave of God is a temporary state, like being a minor. You are to grow spiritually so that you become a mature Christian.

And we see this with Jesus and his disciples. They called him Master and did what he told them to do. But on the night before he was crucified, he said to them, “I no longer call you slaves, because the slave does not understand what his master is doing. But I have called you friends, because I have revealed to you everything I heard from my Father.” (John 15:15) They had learned all they needed to act as friends of Jesus, carrying out his wishes out of love and not merely because he was their master. In a sense, though, he was still their master, the way Queen Camilla is both King Charles' wife and also his subject. But if someone loves you greatly, you want to serve them.

As we said, we all gotta serve someone. And you want it to be someone worthy of being served. The best candidate is Jesus. Because he also knows what it is like to serve someone. In Philippians we are told that Jesus “though he existed in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be clung to, but emptied himself by taking on the form of a slave, by looking like other men, and sharing in human nature. He humbled himself, by becoming obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:5-8) Jesus said of himself, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45)

And Jesus gave his disciples an example of his humility and willingness to serve by washing their feet just before the last supper. He did the task of the lowest of slaves, washing the feet of those who had walked all day in the mud and muck of the roads and streets in sandals. He said, “Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.” (John 13:14-15) The truly great serve others. (Matthew 20:25-28)

When we say that someone is playing God we mean they're exercising power to decide the fate of others. But if Jesus is the God whom we are imitating, it means serving others by helping them and making them and their lives better. It means being humble and not afraid to get your hands dirty. It means not being a slave to the desires of an unredeemed human nature but growing in the Spirit of Christ, so that one day we will not need laws to tell us how to act because as mature Christians we will just know and do what is right.