Much of this blog has been swimming around my head for a while and, after listening to a recent Bible Project podcast[1], I decided it was time to try to gather my thoughts into something coherent and put them down for you. In some ways it builds my recent talk on Communion and also talk Paul Penney’s talk on “Living Lovingly”.
At the time of Paul, Roman society had a very clear hierarchical structure (see below). At the top was the emperor, below him the governors and senators and below them, regional leaders etc. Pretty much all power rested with these very few people. Below this group was the rich merchants and artisans, who, while rich, had no real power. Below that were the slaves and freemen and women who had absolutely no power at all. Even further down the pecking order were the widows and orphans and other “expendibles”.
These structures were set in place, and only very few had power. It meant that 85% of the population of the Roman Empire were effectively on the underside of its might and ruled by oppression. It is reckoned that at the time of Paul 50% of the population of Rome was slaves. This was a structure of, what Tim Mackie calls, “honour” and the higher up the structure, the higher your honour or value. In effect, the vast majority of the people had no value at all. Our modern idea of “self-worth” would have been utterly alien, or even ridiculous, to them. Worth was derived from status and status was all about who you were, who you knew or who you were related to.
It is in this culture that the church was born. A kingdom where Jesus is the king, not the emperor, and where people’s value is not in their status within the empire but in their status in the family of God. Being called “children of God” or “brothers and sisters of Jesus” (Matt 13, Mark 6) was being ascribed the highest status – the king’s brother or sister.
This cuts through every part of the Roman culture and brings in a totally different set of values. No longer is your status derived from your worth within the hierarchy but your status is as a brother of the true king. Not only that, we are all brothers and sisters together. No one has more value than anyone else. We are all the same. We all have the same worth as each other.
Mackie suggests that the Greek word doxa which is normally translated as “glory” would be better understood as “honour” or “worth”. In Romans 8:21 Paul, referring back to creations, reminds his readers of “freedom of the doxa of the children of God”. Put it another way:
“The freedom of the worth of the children of God.”
In a culture where 85% had no worth, this was mind-blowing. Even more so, when one witnessed the communities of wealthy nobles and merchants eating with slaves, poor people and expendibles; calling each other “brother and sister” and sharing communion as equals, because:
“There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
– Gal 3:28
Our very great friend, Pastor Sam, leads a number of churches in Tamil Nadu, India. On a recent visit, we went to one of the churches in a rural area. This church is led by Suresh, who was raised in Sam’s orphanage, and we have known him since he was a boy. It is wonderful to see. The church is mainly low caste, poor Indians, but there are one or two high caste women in it.[2] Sam told me that they had approached him and offered to pay for a new church to be built in their area, which is predominantly high caste, because then their friends and family would come. Sam is a man of total integrity and despite the much needed offer of finances, he refused, because he said that his churches were for everyone and if they could not come to a church and mix with others of low caste then he did not want anything to do with it.[3]
Don’t get me wrong, it was not all a bed of roses. In fact, I would strongly suggest that the majority of Paul’s letters are addressing the issues arising from the Roman assumptions of the people and the consequent disunity, especially in the letters to the Corinthians. We see Paul giving the church a right proper telling off for the rich eating all the food (because they arrived early, having no work to do) and the poor having none (1 Cor 11:17-22). We see him urging the church to submit to Stephanas, who was clearly a leader of the church but, according to Douglas Campbell, was a low status Roman (1 Cor 16:15-18).
Worth comes from being brothers and sisters of Christ. Not from status.
What About Today?
If Paul wrote to the church in the UK today, what would he say? We do not derive status from set hierarchical structures in the same way, so our value is not caught up with that. We do see status is derived from wealth and success and power though and linked to that we also see people deriving status from self-worth from personal improvement. Many years ago, I remember John Wimber saying that he and his wife spent their day off one week perusing the top 20 Christian book titles. He discovered that only one was not about self-improvement. How many Christian songs are about “what I want” or “who I am”?
We no more derive our worth from this than from a set hierarchy. Our worth is that we are children of God. We were born as a child of God and collectively, we will always be his masterpiece.
We are brothers and sisters of the king. We are children of the creator. We are one body and no one has more value than anyone else.
Hear this.
You are loved. You are children of God. Nothing can separate you from his love. The status or value of the world counts for absolutely nothing. It does not matter if you are black, white, rich, poor, middle class, academic, on benefits, a lawyer, a businessman, straight, gay, man, woman, sporting, slim, overweight, young, old, classically beautiful, or not, adult or child… Your value is the same (whatever social media tells you). You are a child of God and a brother or sister of Jesus. We need to be freed from the world’s values and realise our real worth.
As Paul puts it:
We are to be set free from the slavery and corruption into the freedom of the worth of being children of God
– Rom 8:21
[1] https://bibleproject.com/podcast/honor-shame-culture-and-gospel/
[2] The caste system is actually illegal in India, although it still exists pretty much everywhere, and it is very similar to the hierarchical system of ancient Rome.
[3] We love Sam!
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