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The Parables of Paul

The Master of the Metaphor

Abingdon Press

The Slave: A Self-Portrait

Say what you will about Paul, he knew who he was. He was happy to recite his genealogical, academic, and religious résumé even as he disowned it. A number of his contemporaries (Paul never identifies them specifically) insisted that Paul wasn't an apostle because he hadn't been part of the original body of Jesus' disciples. Paul acknowledged that this was true and regretted that he was a latecomer, but he didn't let it get him down. Paul confessed that he didn't "deserve to be called an apostle" because he had persecuted the church (1 Corinthians 15:9); nevertheless he told those same people at Corinth that he wasn't "inferior to the super-apostles in any way" and that the people should know as much because through his ministry "the signs of an apostle were performed among you" (2 Corinthians 12:11-12). Paul knew who he was no matter what anyone might say otherwise. That's why it's interesting to see how Paul portrays himself when he tells us the kind of person he wants to be, and he does so with a picture. A metaphorical picture, that is.

We know Paul through two primary sources, the Book of Acts, where he is the lead personality in the latter half of the book, and in his letters, which are such a significant part of the New Testament. Most of those letters begin with what we today would call a letterhead, the name and office of the writer; and in our day, the address of the writer, including cell phone and e-mail. If Paul were writing today, we'd see his name—PAUL—in the center top line of a page, then perhaps centered directly below or more likely a line or two down on the lefthand side,we'd see his position. Where today someone might have "President," "Director of Activities," or "Consultant," Paul most often used the title that he loved above all others: APOSTLE. In his letter to Philemon, Paul chooses the title "a prisoner for the cause of Christ Jesus."

Apostle and prisoner: both terms were titles describing Paul's role. The first title had come to him by divine authority and by the recognition of many, though not all. The second came by some of the circumstances of his work. It was something like a twenty-first-century person who has fled from a tyranny and identifies himself or herself as "a citizen in exile."

In several instances, however, Paul chose to adorn his letterhead with a metaphor, a word picture of himself by his own choosing. He chose a powerful one. He used this metaphor in his letterhead on three occasions, so we know it wasn't just a passing mood or the reflection of some singular experience; rather, it expressed something that was often on his mind. It seems to me that it was the way Paul saw himself in his most reflective moments.

He used it in his letter to the church at Rome, the epistle that is usually seen as the most closely reasoned doctrinal exposition of all his letters. We could properly call Romans Paul's scholarly paper. There he names himself "a slave of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle" (Romans 1:1). It's a strange and counterintuitive combination. In it he ties the title he loves most and that he clings to in the face of all opposition, apostle, to a term that would seem not only to contradict that beloved identification but also to belittle it by association. "Slave" adds little but embarrassment to the title Paul cherished so highly. At the least it distracts, and at the worst it diminishes or contradicts.

Then there's Paul's letter to the people at Philippi. Philippi is generally seen as the church to which Paul felt the most intimate ties. He loved all of his people, no doubt about that; even in his occasions of strongest reproof Paul's love shines through again and again. But nothing to compare with the people at Philippi.

This time Paul includes his young associate Timothy in the letterhead: "Paul and Timothy, slaves of Christ Jesus" (Philippians 1:1). I dare say that in including Timothy in this metaphor Paul didn't intend to belittle Timothy. He praises him unstintingly later in the letter, saying "I have no one like him" (Philippians 2:20). He sees Timothy as "like a son [who] works with his father" (2:22, adapted). I dare say that Paul is in the same mood and figure of speech when he includes Timothy with himself as "slaves of Christ Jesus." It's a good title for Paul, not a hurtful one.

Then there's the letter to Titus, another young associate. This letter is seen by scholars as either one of the last that Paul wrote, or as a letter written by someone close enough to Paul to feel justified in writing in Paul's stead, expressing Paul's thoughts. Here again Paul links the metaphor, slave, with his key letterhead title, apostle: "a slave of God and an apostle" (Titus 1:1). It is significant that in what is seen as either the last of Paul's letters or one written by someone who is conveying the last of Paul's thinking, that slave is again the letterhead word. The word, that is, that he saw as the climaxing description of who he was.

I'm no psychologist, but in years of receiving all kinds of correspondence (before the Internet took over a substantial share of written communication), I have developed an interpretive law: "By their letterheads you shall know them." Sometimes it is the title or the size of type or the choice of typeface, sometimesthe placement on the page, and sometimes the amount of information accompanying the title; in some cases enough for a brief biography. As I said earlier, Paul knew who he was and needed no one to tell him. Further, he had lived with a wide variety of people, from scholars to shopkeepers to craftsmen to religious leaders to government officials, large and small, and to slaves. And when he chose a name for his letterhead that went beyond his office, apostle, or his temporary state, prisoner, he chose slave. If Paul had been able to have his picture on his letterhead as is now sometimes the case with the Internet, he would have chosen to portray himself with the garb and demeanor of a slave. He wanted to be seen and remembered as a slave. A slave of Christ Jesus, or of God.

If, then, you want to construct a parable in which Paul plays the lead role, begin it this way: "And behold, there was a slave ..."

Paul knew a great deal about slaves. So did almost everyone in the first-century Roman world. In fact they knew slavery so well that I doubt that many thought about it very much. Slaves were a key part not only of the economy and of the workforce but also of the whole pattern of daily life; they were part of the social and economic landscape. In any given day the average resident of Rome might easily see more slaves than free persons. By responsible estimates, as much as half the population of Rome may have been slaves in Paul's time. This was not racial or ethnic slavery but an accompanying factor of war. Slaves were something that made war singularly profitable for the conquering nation and its people. When the Romans, with their practiced military skill, conquered some new territory, they brought home slaves of every kind, from those with the most menial skills to what today would be seen as professional ability. What better, in a wealthy home, than to have a slave who was your resident physician or lawyer or accountant—and also able, when necessary, to serve table guests at a dinner party. What better than to have a respected scholar as a daily tutor for your child.

But whether the slave was a physician or a gnarled laborer, he or she was still a slave. The owner had the power of life and death, and if the owner was a petulant, insecure person he could exercise that power by anything from daily humiliation to beatings or execution. Aristotle defined a slave as a piece of living property. When Paul chose to call himself a slave, he knew what the word meant. It was not a romantic phrase or a piece of philosophical poetry. Paul knew better than that. He knew slaves; they were among his converts. He also knew what he was saying when he wrote, "There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor free; nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28).People in the twenty-first century who critique Paul for not campaigning against slavery have no idea how radical a standard the apostle was laying out for the church and its relationships. But Paul knew what he was saying, and so did the original recipients of his letters.

And I repeat, so did Paul when he called himself a slave, and when he gave that title to Timothy, his beloved young associate. He knew that a slave's daily tasks and eventually his or her life or death depended upon the will (and whim) of the master. Nevertheless, he chose to call himself a slave; specifically, a slave of Jesus Christ.

This would be a daring word no matter in what setting Paul might have written it, but it is especially significant when the apostle uses it in his Letter to the Philippians. It's in this letter that Paul recites the dramatic description of our Lord's entry into this world. He reminds us that although Christ Jesus

... was in the form of God,
he did not consider being equal
with God something to exploit.
But he emptied himself
by taking the form of a slave
and by becoming like human beings. (Philippians 2:6-7; italics mine)

With that phrase, "by taking the form of a slave," Paul lets us know why he cherishes this metaphor-portrait of himself. By calling himself a slave of Jesus Christ, Paul is also telling us that he intends to be like Jesus Christ.

In another of his letters Paul tells us God's purpose in all the ministries of the church—those of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers: it is that we will all become "mature adults—to be fully grown, measured by the standard of the fullness of Christ" (Ephesians 4:13). What is the goal of the Christian life? It is to become truly mature; that is, to become like Jesus Christ. And what is the fullest expression of maturity, of Christlikeness? To do what Christ did, to take the form of a slave!

See, then, that for Paul the slave-designation was not a title of humiliation or of abasement, but—of all things!—a title of achievement. This is Paul's declaration of maturity. He has grown up to the fullness of Christ, following his Lord to the greatness of complete, willing subjection to the purposes of God. By being a slave Paul is uniquely near to the image of Christ.

Paul had a further understanding of the role of a slave that wouldn't naturally occur to us. It came to him by way of his upbringing in the Hebrew Scriptures. In a culture centuries before Paul's time, the law of Moses had dealt in a straightforward way with a social and economic problem in their society. In severe economic circumstances a person (more likely a man) could sell himself into slavery to a fellow Hebrew. This "Hebrew slave" would serve for six years and then in the seventh year he would "go free without any payment" (Exodus 21:11).

But there was more to the contract. If he had gained a wife and children during the years of slavery, and if his experience with his master had been a very good one, he could "clearly [state], 'I love my master, my wife, and my children, and I don't want to go free,' then his master will bring him before God. He will bring him to the door or the doorpost. There his master will pierce his ear with a pointed tool, and he will serve him as his slave for life" (Exodus 21:2-6). Did Paul see himself as such a love slave? Was he finding his service for Christ so rewarding that he knew he could only make it better by choosing to see it as full slavery, made more beautiful by the piercing of his ear, so to speak, at the door of his master's house?

There is still another picture of slavery that was surely part of Paul's thinking when he chose to call himself a slave of Jesus Christ. It is a very different one. Where the pictures in Philippians and in Exodus are significant by favorable comparison, there is one in the Epistle to the Romans that is powerful by its contrast. Also, as with Paul's letter to Philippi, this allusion comes in an epistle in which Paul has made slave part of his letterhead. Some novelist has observed that readers often find points of significance in a novel that the writer never had in mind, and it's easy for us to do this in our reading of the Scriptures, so I don't want to belabor the point I'm about to mention. But perhaps Paul made his allusions in Philippians and Romans, letters where he identified himself as Christ's slave, because the theme was so strong in his soul at the time, as shown by the other material in each letter.

In the letter to the Romans, Paul looks at slavery as he himself has known it at its worst. He uses the word as a metaphor, and an altogether ugly one. He wants the strongest word possible to describe his experience in his relationship to sin. Paul's world was no different from ours in its casual attitude toward sin. The culture of his time was as adept as ours in excusing itself. One of the things we learn from the biblical story in the garden of Eden is that we humans have always had a remarkable ability for self-excusing. Adam blamed his sin on Eve, and Eve blamed hers on the serpent. Succeeding generations have continued perfecting this skill; some have been more sophisticated than others, and the first century of the Common Era was one of the most accomplished in this matter. The relative prosperity of the Roman Empire, its entertainment, its literary breadth, its comfort with crudeness in the midst of learning—all of these made it easy to rationalize sin or to live comfortably with it.

Paul knew better. Part of his attitude was shaped by his studies as a Pharisee. The Pharisees may often have majored in minors, but at their best they realized that sin is humanity's key problem. Certainly Paul's vigorous-but-failed attempts as a very earnest Pharisee made him realize the power of sin. So Paul put it sharp and clear: he was a slave to sin, and so are we all unless we choose instead to become slaves to righteousness (Romans 6 and 7).

Paul was a tough-minded thinker. He believed that we humans are going to live for one thing or another and that the choices we make eventually lead to slavery. Most people, unfortunately, don't think about the matter long enough or seriously enough to see how controlling our patterns of thought and conduct eventually become. Paul knew the power of these daily choices, and he chose to become the slave of Jesus Christ.

A practical, pragmatic question remains. How do we live out this life as Christ's slave? If we take seriously our slavery to Christ, it means ready servitude to others. That is, it means giving up our rights in matters large or small in order to help others. If we choose such a life pattern, we can become victims of persons who live off of willing and helpful people; that is, we can become what counselors sometimes call "enablers," people who make it easy for others to avoid self-responsibility.

There's no universal answer for this problem because it shows itself in daily issues rather than in broad, philosophical categories. But as a principle of life Paul saw himself as the slave of Christ, and he lived out that slavery in his service to other persons; how else, after all, do we serve Christ than through people and through God's creation? This meant that, on occasions, service to one person made it impossible to serve another; to serve Christ is through persons, but sometimes decisions have to be made between those persons. At a pragmatic level, this is a matter of daily judgments. But as a principle our slavery to Christ is a life-commitment.

I have begun our study at this point because if we want to understand Paul's parables we need to begin by understanding Paul's person: getting inside Paul's set of mind and spirit. We have to know the basis for Paul's reasoning. This begins with Paul's self-image: Paul sees himself as a slave of Jesus Christ's. And he sees this slavery as a beautiful thing, a life to be pursued.

We begin our study of Paul with his letterhead where he calls himself a slave. It would be a holy achievement if we could finish our study claiming Paul's letterhead as our own.

The Christian Life as a Sports Fan Sees It

When I was a very young preacher I read a book on preaching written by an outstanding pulpiteer of the first quarter of the twentieth century. The author raised a question: "What does a preacher do when the congregation's attention is wandering?" His answer: "Take them out to the country." It was sound counsel for its time. In those days a substantial percentage of America's population was involved in agriculture, and those who were not had family or friends who were. Talk about farm life, and the odds were high that you would get the attention of your audience.

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Excerpted from The Parables of Paul by J. Ellsworth Kalas. Copyright © 2015 Abingdon Press. Excerpted by permission of Abingdon Press.
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