what does the bible teach about slavery?
In the third week of our series through Titus, (9/21/26) we studied Titus 2:1-10. The final two verses of that section read, "Slaves must always obey their masters and do their best to please them. They must not talk back 10 or steal, but must show themselves to be entirely trustworthy and good. Then they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive in every way" (NLT). This, along with other verses in the Old and New Testament, are unsettling to us as 21st century Americans. It’s really easy to read a verse like this, put it next to our modern understanding of slavery, and conclude that Christianity is pro-slavery.
There has been plenty already written on this topic, but I want to do my best over the course of a few paragraphs to provide a helpful overview for us. Once upon a time, I was studying to become a history teacher at CMU and this was the topic of a research paper of mine, so I’ve done some digging! For this article, I’m going to focus on slavery in the Greco-Roman world, and, more specifically, what I believe was Paul’s approach regarding it.
In conversations like this, something that’s important to remind ourselves of is that the Bible was written for us, but it was not written to us. So first: slavery was a normal part of the world the Bible was written to. Slavery was deeply woven into the economic and social structure of the Roman Empire. Some historians estimate that up to 1/3 of the population of the Roman Empire was enslaved. And unlike the slavery of American history, Greco-Roman slavery wasn’t race-based. People from every ethnic background were represented among the slave class, with masters and slaves often having the same ethnicity.
Rather, it was an economic system that preyed on prisoners of war, the poor, and the vulnerable from across the empire. In a society without bankruptcy laws or debt forgiveness programs, people who fell into unpayable debt sometimes sold themselves or even their own children into slavery as a way to survive or to settle accounts. Many slaves in the Greco-Roman world held highly skilled positions such as teachers, doctors, business managers, and other positions of authority working on behalf of their masters. However, in many cases, it was still a brutally hierarchical and violent institution.
I share all of this to make the point that when Paul tells Christians how to live as slaves and masters, he's speaking into a society with an enormous and complicated institution of slavery already in place. To get a full grasp of Paul’s approach to this topic, we need to read the other things he wrote on the topic of slavery. For this piece I want to specifically look at Paul’s instructions to masters.
Ephesians 6:8-9 says, “Remember that the Lord will reward each one of us for the good we do, whether we are slaves or free. Masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Don’t threaten them; remember, you both have the same Master in heaven, and he has no favorites.” And Colossians 4:1 “Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a Master in heaven.”
You may be thinking, that’s fine, but why doesn’t Paul just say something like “Masters, free your slaves?” Why doesn’t he just outright condemn slavery and say to end it? Well, he actually does condemn slavery in 1 Timothy 1:10. He lists slave trading among a list of other sins. And there’s a short little one chapter book in the New Testament called Philemon. It’s written to a runaway slave owner. And in the letter, Paul pleads with Philemon that when his slave Onesimus comes back to him that he would have him “no longer as a slave, but as a dear brother” (1:16). The Bible often gives instruction on how to live in a fallen system, which doesn’t mean approval of the system itself. Slavery was the economic backbone of the entire Roman Empire. It was so embedded into the fabric of society that to call for its immediate abolition would have been politically unthinkable and, practically, impossible. Christianity at this time was a minority group that had no political influence whatsoever.
In the centuries leading up to Paul’s letters, the Roman Empire had seen multiple major slave uprisings, all ending in horrific massacres. In the First Servile War (135 to 132 BC), over 20,000 enslaved people were crucified as a public warning. For Roman citizens, a call to free all slaves would have been seen not as justice but as a recipe for violent chaos. So instead, I believe the goal of the writers of the New Testament was to speak to the heart, which, in turn, would lead terrible institutions like slavery to collapse. In fact, it was the ethos embedded in Scripture itself that was the driving force behind Christian abolitionists like John Wesley, William Wilberforce, Jonathan Edwards the Younger, and so many more, to fight to end slavery.
So when we put Titus 2 alongside the rest of Scripture, we certainly can’t say the Bible supports slavery, nor should we pretend the Bible contains a modern political abolition manifesto. God’s word is doing something deeper (as it always does!) by teaching His people how to live as citizens of His kingdom in the middle of broken human systems.
There has been plenty already written on this topic, but I want to do my best over the course of a few paragraphs to provide a helpful overview for us. Once upon a time, I was studying to become a history teacher at CMU and this was the topic of a research paper of mine, so I’ve done some digging! For this article, I’m going to focus on slavery in the Greco-Roman world, and, more specifically, what I believe was Paul’s approach regarding it.
In conversations like this, something that’s important to remind ourselves of is that the Bible was written for us, but it was not written to us. So first: slavery was a normal part of the world the Bible was written to. Slavery was deeply woven into the economic and social structure of the Roman Empire. Some historians estimate that up to 1/3 of the population of the Roman Empire was enslaved. And unlike the slavery of American history, Greco-Roman slavery wasn’t race-based. People from every ethnic background were represented among the slave class, with masters and slaves often having the same ethnicity.
Rather, it was an economic system that preyed on prisoners of war, the poor, and the vulnerable from across the empire. In a society without bankruptcy laws or debt forgiveness programs, people who fell into unpayable debt sometimes sold themselves or even their own children into slavery as a way to survive or to settle accounts. Many slaves in the Greco-Roman world held highly skilled positions such as teachers, doctors, business managers, and other positions of authority working on behalf of their masters. However, in many cases, it was still a brutally hierarchical and violent institution.
I share all of this to make the point that when Paul tells Christians how to live as slaves and masters, he's speaking into a society with an enormous and complicated institution of slavery already in place. To get a full grasp of Paul’s approach to this topic, we need to read the other things he wrote on the topic of slavery. For this piece I want to specifically look at Paul’s instructions to masters.
Ephesians 6:8-9 says, “Remember that the Lord will reward each one of us for the good we do, whether we are slaves or free. Masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Don’t threaten them; remember, you both have the same Master in heaven, and he has no favorites.” And Colossians 4:1 “Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a Master in heaven.”
You may be thinking, that’s fine, but why doesn’t Paul just say something like “Masters, free your slaves?” Why doesn’t he just outright condemn slavery and say to end it? Well, he actually does condemn slavery in 1 Timothy 1:10. He lists slave trading among a list of other sins. And there’s a short little one chapter book in the New Testament called Philemon. It’s written to a runaway slave owner. And in the letter, Paul pleads with Philemon that when his slave Onesimus comes back to him that he would have him “no longer as a slave, but as a dear brother” (1:16). The Bible often gives instruction on how to live in a fallen system, which doesn’t mean approval of the system itself. Slavery was the economic backbone of the entire Roman Empire. It was so embedded into the fabric of society that to call for its immediate abolition would have been politically unthinkable and, practically, impossible. Christianity at this time was a minority group that had no political influence whatsoever.
In the centuries leading up to Paul’s letters, the Roman Empire had seen multiple major slave uprisings, all ending in horrific massacres. In the First Servile War (135 to 132 BC), over 20,000 enslaved people were crucified as a public warning. For Roman citizens, a call to free all slaves would have been seen not as justice but as a recipe for violent chaos. So instead, I believe the goal of the writers of the New Testament was to speak to the heart, which, in turn, would lead terrible institutions like slavery to collapse. In fact, it was the ethos embedded in Scripture itself that was the driving force behind Christian abolitionists like John Wesley, William Wilberforce, Jonathan Edwards the Younger, and so many more, to fight to end slavery.
So when we put Titus 2 alongside the rest of Scripture, we certainly can’t say the Bible supports slavery, nor should we pretend the Bible contains a modern political abolition manifesto. God’s word is doing something deeper (as it always does!) by teaching His people how to live as citizens of His kingdom in the middle of broken human systems.
