1 Coríntios 7
William Barclay · Citado em PreceptAustin
1 Coríntios 7
Barclay - It must often have happened that when a man became a Christian he would have liked to break away from his job, and from the circle in which he moved, and begin a new life. But Paul insisted that the function of Christianity was not to give a man a new life, but to make his old life new. Let the Jew remain a Jew; let the Gentile remain a Gentile; race and the marks of race made no difference. What did make a difference was the kind of life he lived. Barton comments on the believer's status as slaves -- "The key phrase is “don’t let that worry you.” (NLT) The slaves should not feel that because they became Christians they could no longer serve as slaves because they deserved freedom. Unfortunately, they might have to keep living as slaves, but they should serve Christ wholeheartedly in their position.
1 Coríntios 7
Barclay - Here there is a picture in Paul’s mind. In the ancient world it was possible for a slave at a great effort to purchase his own freedom. This was how he did it. In the little spare time he had, he took odd jobs and earned a few coppers. His master had the right to claim commission even on these poor earnings. But the slave would deposit every farthing he could earn in the Temple of some god. When, it might be at the end of years, he had his complete purchase price laid up in the Temple, he would take his master there, the priest would hand over the money, and then symbolically the slave became the property of the god and therefore free of all men. That is what Paul is thinking of. The Christian man has been purchased by Christ; therefore, no matter what his human status may be, he is free of all men because he is the property of Christ. As Barton explains these born again slaves "were free to seek to better themselves, for Paul says, if you get a chance to be free, take it. Obedience to God, as always, is what matters most (1 Cor 7:19)." Charles Hodge: This of course is not intended to prohibit a man’s endeavoring to better his condition. If he is a laborer when converted, he is not required to always remain a laborer. The meaning of the apostle evidently is, that no man should desire to change his status in life simply because he had become a Christian; as though he could not be a Christian and yet remain as he was. The Gospel is just as well suited to men in one vocation as in another, and its blessings can be enjoyed in all their fullness equally in any condition of life." Free (1658) eleutheros See related verb eleutheroo) is an adjective which means freedom to go wherever one likes, at liberty, possessing the capability of movement, exempt from restraint, obligation or liability, unconstrained, unfettered. In the Greek culture this word pictured one who can go wherever they please) (from Homer down). For example, in one secular writing we find this statement "the temple of Artemis at Ephesus is open (free) to all". Eleutheros - 23x in 23v - Matt. 17:26; Jn. 8:33; Jn. 8:36; Rom. 6:20; Rom. 7:3; 1 Co. 7:21; 1 Co. 7:22; 1 Co. 7:39; 1 Co. 9:1; 1 Co. 9:19; 1 Co. 12:13; Gal. 3:28; Gal. 4:22; Gal. 4:23; Gal. 4:26; Gal. 4:30; Gal. 4:31; Eph. 6:8; Col. 3:11; 1 Pet. 2:16; Rev. 6:15; Rev. 13:16; Rev. 19:18 Do (make the most of)(5530)(chraomai from chrao = to lend) means to use, make use of, make the most of. In the present context the meaning is "to conduct oneself in a particular manner with regard to some person - 'to treat, to behave toward" (Louw-Nida) ILLUSTRATION - Back in the nineteenth century our sixteenth president realized something radical must be done about slavery in our country. Unwilling to look the other way any longer, on September 22, 1862, he presented what came to be known as the Emancipation Proclamation, an official document condemning human slavery. Abraham Lincoln, realizing that slavery is completely against human dignity, officially abolished it from the United States on that day. Tragically, little changed in the daily life of our nation, even though the slaves were officially declared free. You know why; you’ve read the stories. The Civil War was still going on. The plantation owners never informed their slaves. The vast majority of the former slaves couldn’t read, so they had no idea what the news was carrying. There was no mass media then to announce those kinds of presidential pronouncements. And so for the longest time, slavery continued even though it had been officially brought to an end. The war ended in April 1865. Do you know when Lincoln’s declaration was officially enacted? When the people finally began to leave their enslaved lives and make their way toward freedom? December 18, 1865—more than three years after he first released his proclamation. Lincoln had been dead for months. The word traveled out of the streets of Washington and down into the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, across the back roads of the Carolinas and into Georgia, then Alabama, then Mississippi, then Louisiana, then Texas, then Arkansas, announcing what had been true for more than a thousand days. Even then the word somehow either wasn’t believed or wasn’t acted upon. Those officially emancipated people, thinking slavery was the way they were condemned to exist, continued to live in bondage though they had been declared free men and women since the fall of 1862. (Embraced by the Spirit The Untold Blessings of Intimacy with God) Murray Harris - Roman slavery (excerpt from recommended text "Slave of Christ: A New Testament Metaphor for Total Devotion to Christ") There can be little doubt that ‘Rome evolved the most complex slave system of all the peoples of the premodern world’ (Patterson 1982: 88). The slave was so ubiquitous in Roman society that the standard text on the Roman law of slavery in the imperial period begins with the observation that ‘there is scarcely a problem which can present itself, in any branch of law, the solution of which may not be affected by the fact that one of the parties to the transaction is a slave, and, outside the region of procedure, there are few branches of the law in which the slave does not prominently appear’ (Buckland 1969: v). Estimating ancient population numbers is not a precise science, but it would appear that at the end of the first century BC there were some two million slaves in Italy out of a total population of five to six million (see Hopkins 1978: 99–102). In Rome itself this 1:3 ratio of slave to free may have been higher; indeed, some have argued that the majority of those living in Rome at that time were of servile extraction—slaves, ex-slaves, or their descendants. If the slave-free ratio throughout the Empire was 1:5 (Rollins 1976: 830), and the population of the Empire at the time of Augustus was 50–60 million (Hopkins 1978: 102, following K. J. Beloch), there may have been ten to twelve million slaves under Roman jurisdiction. It was the opinion of Westermann that ‘the numbers of slaves to be found in any group of [Christian] converts would presumably approximate the proportion of slaves to free, which existed in the particular town or city of each Christian congregation’ (1955: 150).21 At all stages of Roman history, the number of slaves in a household reflected the owner’s wealth and status. A poor citizen might have as few as one or two slaves, a senator as many as 400 or more, while the familia Caesaris, ‘Caesar’s household’ (Phil. 4:22), was a network of some 20,000 slaves and freedmen, who cared for the administrative details of the Empire. The prices of slaves varied, of course, according to supply and demand, and according to the slave’s level of education and skill. In the Hellenistic period 500–600 denarii was a normal price for an unskilled male adult, but a skilled worker such as a vinedresser could cost as much as 2,000 denarii (Jones 1974: 9f.). A denarius was a labourer’s average daily pay. It is therefore clear that slaves were not inexpensive. To be seen in public with an entourage of slaves was to display one’s wealth. We should not imagine that slaves were confined to menial tasks. They served in a wide variety of roles. In fact, one scholar has drawn up a list of over 120 different duties and occupations! For example, some served as employees of a city or of the state, being salaried executives with heavy responsibilities. Others were employed in business as managers of shops or of ships. Others worked the land as farm labourers, often in chain gangs in the case of condemned criminals, and sometimes in appalling conditions. Or again, many worked in city households, as cooks or cleaners, as tutors or doctors, or as sexual partners. With regard to this variety of role and status, S. S. Bartchy (1992: 61, 68) appropriately notes that ‘the only thing that slaves in the first century AD had completely in common was the fact of their enslavement’, ‘the fact that each of them had an owner’. Given the ubiquity of slaves and the bewildering variety of their roles, it is not surprising that slaves were not readily identifiable, either by outward appearance or by race or by speech or by occupation. Many, if not most, of the tasks assigned to slaves were also performed by free persons. This range of tasks undertaken by slaves falls into two broad, distinct categories (cf. Justinian’s Digest 32, 99): rural and agricultural on the one hand, including any work outside the city, such as manning the galleys or toiling in the mines; urban and administrative on the other hand, including household, municipal and imperial slavery. Rural slavery was often disagreeable; urban slavery, not infrequently quite tolerable, especially if master and slave worked side by side. A personal relationship between master and slave was more likely to be established with urban slaves who saw their master regularly than with rural slaves who rarely saw their master but worked under the supervision of an overseer who was usually a fellow-slave. In fact, dismissal from an urban to a rural familia was sometimes viewed as a punishment. Rural slaves did not in any sense share in the status of their master, but urban slaves often gained a certain distinction, apart from their particular role, from being the slave of a master who had social status and wealth. This was most apparent in the case of ‘Caesar’s household’. To be an imperial slave was to be in the employ of the most powerful figure of the time and so carried with it a sense of prestige, if not privilege. But even within this familia there were clearly defined gradations of status. Another way in which ancient writers classified slaves was according to their responsibility, whether managerial or menial. Most slaves held menial posts as household servants or agricultural workers, but a minority held managerial positions of trust in the city or country, frequently indistinguishable from positions held by free persons. These ‘socially mobile’ slaves often enjoyed a higher standard of living than many free citizens. The Roman writer Suetonius notes that the grammarian Gaius Melissus preferred to be the slave of Maecenas, the leading literary patron under Augustus, than to be free, although he was later granted his freedom (Grammarians 5. 21, cited by Martin 1990: 194 n. 164). Slaves, then, did not form a single, homogeneous class. At one end of the spectrum were the ‘penal slaves’ (servi poenae) condemned for life to the mines; at the other, ‘Caesar’s slaves’ (Caesaris servi), the attendants of the emperor. In between these extremes were those slaves who themselves owned slaves. A servus vicarius (lit. ‘a slave taking the place [of another slave]’) was an under-slave bought and kept by another slave to assist him in his work. A first-century inscription from Rome speaks of a financier of the emperor Tiberius who had sixteen under-slaves (vicarii): To Musicus Scurranus [slave] of Tiberius Caesar Augustus, superintendent of the Gallic Treasury for the province of Lyon: [Dedicated] to him, as he well deserved, by those of his under-slaves who were with him at Rome when he died (ILS 1514 [= CIL 6. 5197], cited by Wiedemann 1981: 123f.). Perhaps the most notable first-century example of ‘a slave who made good’ was Marcus Antonius Pallas, who accumulated great wealth, and, as a freedman, became Claudius’s financial secretary with slaves of his own (see Oost 1958). Among slaves who were not part of the imperial familia, the most famous was probably Epictetus (c. AD 55–135), the Stoic philosopher whose lectures and Manual, published posthumously, greatly influenced the emperor Marcus Aurelius. In Roman law, slaves were ‘chattels’ (mancipia), ‘mortal objects’ (res mortales) (Justinian’s Digest 21. 1. 23. 3). A Roman could buy, rent or sell a slave, as he would a piece of property. An owner’s right to use and dispose of his slave as he wished was called dominium, ‘the right of absolute ownership’. Varro, the Roman politician and polymath, described a slave as ‘a kind of talking tool’ (instrumenti genus vocale; De Re Rust. 1. 17. 1). Owners of an estate would classify slaves as ‘articulate equipment’ as opposed to oxen which were ‘inarticulate equipment’. This concept of the slave as ‘property’ (mancipium) and the term ‘slave’ (servus) itself were both regularly traced by the Romans to a military origin. Slaves were mancipia because they were those captured by force of arms (manu capiantur; Justinian’s Digest 1. 5. 4). A servus was someone ‘kept safe’ or ‘preserved’ (servare), that is, not slain, in war. ‘Slaves (servi) gain their name because generals have a custom of selling their captives, thus saving (servare) them instead of killing them’ (Digest 1. 5. 4). Being a mere object (res), not a subject, in the eyes of the law, the slave was ‘rightless’. He lacked the right of recourse to the law for protection and could not be called as a free witness.28 Nor could a slave own property, make a contract that was legally binding, hold public office or serve in the army. Only when a slave was freed and became a citizen did he gain the right to become a property-owner, to act as his own legal representative, to hold office, and to serve in the army. So a slave was effectively marginalized and rendered powerless. Yet we must recognize that although legally slaves were objects, devoid of rights, in practice their personhood was not denied. They were permitted carefully circumscribed privileges. First, there was common-law cohabitation (contubernium, lit. ‘tent-companionship’), which was clearly distinguished from legal marriage (conubium). But a child born to a female slave belonged to her owner, irrespective of the status of the father. Second, slaves could be members of various religious, social or funerary clubs or ‘associations’ (collegia), albeit with their masters’ authorization (Buckland 1969: 74f.; Barrow 1968: 164–168; Bömer 1957–63). Third, it was customary for masters to allow their slaves access to property or money (peculium) that they could use as working capital ‘borrowed’ from the master. This ‘private purse’, a symbol of slaves’ sought-after independence, was technically always owned by the master but in practice it could be used at the slave’s discretion, ultimately to purchase his freedom. Fourth, one trace of the recognition that a slave was a person like any other, before the gods, was the fact that prior to manumission he was usually compelled to take an oath, placing him under a religious obligation, when free, to adhere to the promise of operae (‘works’), a work commitment to his former master, now his patron (Buckland 1969: 73f.). Fifth, ‘they could attend the theatre, the gladiatorial games, and the races and might, upon occasion, share in municipal banquets’ (Westermann 1955: 108). Further indications of a slave’s personhood in Roman practice are his criminal liability and his capacity to become a Roman citizen through formal manumission and to act for his master contractually (Szakats 1975: 39). There were two main ways in which slaves gained relief from their situation: they could run away or their master could set them free, that is, he could ‘manumit’ them. In one case the slave took the initiative; in the other, the master. These two means of relief, absconding and manumission, must be considered in more detail. Runaway slaves created a massive problem in the late Republic and early Principate (see Bellen 1971). During the civil wars, Augustus returned 30,000 runaway slaves to their masters for suitable punishment (Res Gestae 25)—punishment that ranged from death by crucifixion, to branding on the forehead with the letter F or the three letters FVG, standing for the word FVGITVVS, ‘runaway (slave)’ (see further Coleman-Norton 1951: 176). Under Roman law it was an offence to harbour a runaway (Justinian’s Digest 11. 3. 1. 2), but T. Mommsen has argued convincingly that the relevant law (lex Fabia de plagiariis) did not extend to the provinces, so that Paul was not legally obliged to return the runaway slave Onesimus to Philemon, his owner (whether or not Philemon was a Roman citizen). However that be, when a slave ran away, a master had reason for anxiety, for slaves were a costly investment (see above) and the apprehension of a runaway involved costs such as the employment of a slave-catcher,35 not to speak of the reduced resale value of a slave with a history of absconding and a master’s concern that other slaves in the household or on the estate may have co-operated in enabling the escape. The frequency of slaves’ efforts to run away illustrates the fact that a slave’s chief desire was to gain his freedom. Epictetus, once himself a slave, put it simply: ‘it is the slave’s prayer that he be set free immediately’ (Diss., 4. 1. 33). Indeed, if there was no prospect of freedom, as was the case for criminals working in the mines or on the rural estates, the lot of slaves was intolerable (cf. Cicero, Rab. Perd. 5. 15). But most urban slaves gained their freedom through manumission by their thirties at the latest (Lampe 1992b: 22). Expressed another way, the urban slave would serve his master between ten and twenty years before manumission. It is not difficult to identify a slave’s motives for seeking to merit or gain manumission. This would end the humiliation of being under the will and at the mercy of another human being. It would begin to reestablish his self-esteem as he acquired relative independence—freedom of choice with regard to employment and movement. He would be free from seizure as property and from involuntary sale back into slavery. If his master was a Roman citizen and he was manumitted formally, he would gain Roman citizenship (de Visscher 1946) and with it the right of legal marriage (matrimonium) and access to the courts and to public office. Emancipation would also enable him to begin a family line of free persons and citizens who could own property. And sometimes manumission led to marriage to the owner’s daughter or son, or even to the owner himself. Motivation for a slave-owner’s act of manumission was varied and usually many-sided, but while gratitude for a slave’s past faithful service sometimes prompted a master to act, self-interest of some sort was generally the governing factor. It may be the desire to marry the slave or to formalize a sexual relationship by marriage, the wish to gain a reputation for benevolence and magnanimity, or the hope of promoting eager compliance among slaves prior to their manumission. From the viewpoint of Roman society itself, manumission aimed at, or had the result of, integrating outsiders into society,40 enlarging the number of potential soldiers, and increasing the political power of the wealthy whose freedmen would vote for their patron. There is plentiful evidence that during the last century BC and the first century AD, hundreds of thousands of slaves gained their freedom. We can gather the extent of manumission by examining statements about the 5% tax that was levied on freed slaves and deposited in the sacred treasury. From such data for the period 81–49 BC, T. Frank deduced that half a million slaves were freed during that time. If this tax was designed ‘to discourage manumission and preserve the native Roman character of society, then it must be pronounced a dismal failure’ (Duff 1958: 30). In any case, many masters avoided paying this tax by means of informal as opposed to formal manumission. Augustus met this threat to the distinctiveness of Roman civilization by the lex Fufia Caninia of 2 BC, which on a sliding scale limited the number of slaves that a master could free in his will. For example, if 100–500 slaves were owned, the limit was one-fifth, and the upper limit was set at 100. But manumission never brought absolute freedom, for in Roman society a manumitted slave entered a client—patron relationship with his former master, a relationship which involved particular duties prescribed by the patron. Such patronage was ubiquitous. As E. Ferguson (1987: 45) observes, ‘Everyone from slave to aristocrat felt bound to display respect to someone more powerful than himself, up to the emperor.’ Scholars are disagreed about the general lot of slaves in the Roman Empire in the first century AD. Clearly the treatment of slaves varied greatly, depending on many variables, such as the nature of the slave’s work, how he was acquired by his owner, where he worked (the city or the country, in a family setting or on a plantation), whether there was the hope of manumission, and the temperament of the master. At one extreme we know of cases where masters showed kindness to their slaves. Pliny the Younger is a notable example. When one of his highly gifted slaves, called Zosimus, contracted tuberculosis, Pliny sent him to Egypt to recuperate and later to the farm of his friend Valerius Paulinus. ‘Nature has so made us that nothing serves to incite and inflame our love for something as does the fear of losing it—a sentiment I have experienced regarding Zosimus more than once’ (Ep. 5. 19). Also, Pliny permitted his slaves to make ‘a kind of will which I observe as carefully as if it were valid in law’ (Ep. 8. 16), although legally slaves could not own or bequeath property. Then there is the general admonition of the Stoic philosopher Seneca, who, in one of his Moral Letters, bids masters cultivate their slaves’ respect, not their fear: ‘The person who shows respect also shows love, and love and fear cannot be mingled. So I judge you to be entirely right in not wishing to be feared by your slaves, and in lashing them merely with words; only dumb animals are admonished by the whip’ (Ep. 47. 18–19). At the opposite extreme, since slavery was based on coercion, it was often true that fear and mutual hostility governed the master—slave relationship. The Roman historian Tacitus expressed a wide-spread sentiment: ‘Now that we have within our households nations with different customs and foreign cults or none, you will never coerce such a mixture of humanity except by fear’ (Ann. 14. 44). This mutual hostility is epitomized in the common Roman proverb, ‘There are as many enemies as there are slaves’ (totidem hostes esse quot servos; Seneca, Ep. 47. 5). And so we read of horrendous punishments inflicted on slaves, such as crucifixion, the breaking of bones, amputations, hot tar, restraining collars and the rack. Now on the premise that ancient sources generally mention only what is exceptional practice, it could be argued that such punishments were uncommon. If slaves were expensive commodities, would masters maim or kill them for minor infractions? We may grant that the punishments mentioned above were probably extreme. But there must be limits to our suspicion of the sources, for ‘Roman literature abounds with examples of incidental cruelty to individual domestic slaves’ (Hopkins 1978: 118).47 Without fear of contradiction we may say that the flogging of slaves was simply routine. In the comedies of the Roman satirist Plautus, the slave is by definition ‘he who is whipworthy’. There can be no doubt that there was an improvement in the west of the Roman Empire with regard to the treatment of slaves, both legally and practically, during the first three centuries AD; in the eastern provinces slavery had always been more humane. This amelioration of slave conditions came about partly as a result of the rising number of slaves born in their master’s house and therefore to greater responsibility and privilege within the family, but also it was partly due to a growing public antipathy towards the arbitrary power of the paterfamilias (‘head of a family’ or ‘proprietor of an estate’) and to the increasing humanitarianism among the general populace. However, humanitarian gestures by legislation or by individual masters were almost always prompted by self-interest, viz. the desire to preserve the value of the slave for the greatest possible return on the investment. It is impossible to ignore the negative stigmatic associations of slavery during the Roman Republic and Empire (see Bradley 1994: 144f., 176–180). The name ‘slave’ (servus) was regarded as a term of disgrace and insult (see Vogt 1972: 94). When Tacitus describes crucifixion as ‘a punishment belonging to slaves’ (servile supplicium; Hist. 4. 11), he means that the worst form of death is appropriate and reserved for the lowest grade of human beings. This is a pointed testimony to what T. E. J. Wiedemann (1987: 25) aptly calls ‘the conceptual inferiority of slaves’. Also, slavery was seen, especially in legal texts, as tantamount to death, while the members of one private club of slaves spoke of themselves as ‘comrades in death [commorientes]’ (Barrow 1968: 168). So we must demur at D. Tidball’s (1984: 115) contention that ‘by the time of Paul it [slavery] was not a severe and cruel institution’, and G. Corcoran’s (1980a: 3) view that ‘slavery as Jesus and his audience knew it was essentially benign and accepted as normal’. ‘Accepted as normal’—yes. ‘Essentially benign’—no. The final evaluation of Hopkins (1978: 121, 123) may stand: The viciousness of Roman slavery, the exploitation, cruelty and mutual hostility are worth stressing because modern accounts often focus instead on those elements in Roman philosophy, literature and law which point to the humanitarian treatment of slaves, and to the willing loyalty of some slaves to their masters … The mitigation of slavery by philosophical belief and imperial decree probably made little impression on the routine corruption implicit in a elite culture which took the massed subservience of slaves for granted. 1 Corinthians 7:22 For he who was called in the Lord while a slave, is the Lord's freedman; likewise he who was called while free, is Christ's slave. Amplified For he who as a slave was summoned in [to union with] the Lord is a freedman of the Lord, just so he who was free when he was called is a bond servant of Christ (the Messiah). Wuest for the slave who was divinely summoned by the Lord is the Lord’s freedman. Likewise, he who was divinely summoned when he was a freedman, is Christ’s slave. (Eerdmans Publishing - used by permission) NET 1 Corinthians 7:22 For the one who was called in the Lord as a slave is the Lord's freedman. In the same way, the one who was called as a free person is Christ's slave. NLT 1 Corinthians 7:22 And remember, if you were a slave when the Lord called you, you are now free in the Lord. And if you were free when the Lord called you, you are now a slave of Christ. ESV 1 Corinthians 7:22 For he who was called in the Lord as a bondservant is a freedman of the Lord. Likewise he who was free when called is a bondservant of Christ. NIV 1 Corinthians 7:22 For he who was a slave when he was called by the Lord is the Lord's freedman; similarly, he who was a free man when he was called is Christ's slave. GNT 1 Corinthians 7:22 ὁ γὰρ ἐν κυρίῳ κληθεὶς δοῦλος ἀπελεύθερος κυρίου ἐστίν, ὁμοίως ὁ ἐλεύθερος κληθεὶς δοῦλός ἐστιν Χριστοῦ. KJV 1 Corinthians 7:22 For he that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord's freeman: likewise also he that is called, being free, is Christ's servant. YLT 1 Corinthians 7:22 for he who is in the Lord -- having been called a servant -- is the Lord's freedman: in like manner also he the freeman, having been called, is servant of Christ: ASV 1 Corinthians 7:22 For he that was called in the Lord being a bondservant, is the Lord's freedman: likewise he that was called being free, is Christ's bondservant. CSB 1 Corinthians 7:22 For he who is called by the Lord as a slave is the Lord's freedman. Likewise he who is called as a free man is Christ's slave. NKJ 1 Corinthians 7:22 For he who is called in the Lord while a slave is the Lord's freedman. Likewise he who is called while free is Christ's slave. NRS 1 Corinthians 7:22 For whoever was called in the Lord as a slave is a freed person belonging to the Lord, just as whoever was free when called is a slave of Christ. NAB 1 Corinthians 7:22 For the slave called in the Lord is a freed person in the Lord, just as the free person who has been called is a slave of Christ. NJB 1 Corinthians 7:22 You see, anyone who was called in the Lord while a slave, is a freeman of the Lord; and in the same way, anyone who was free when called, is a slave of Christ. GWN 1 Corinthians 7:22 If the Lord called you when you were a slave, you are the Lord's free person. In the same way, if you were free when you were called, you are Christ's slave. BBE 1 Corinthians 7:22 For he who was a servant when he became a Christian is the Lord's free man; and he who was free when he became a Christian is the Lord's servant. is the Lord's freedman: Lu 1:74,75 Joh 8:32-36 Ro 6:18-22 Ga 5:1,13 Eph 6:5,6 Col 3:22-24 Phm 1:16 1Pe 2:16 is Christ's: 1Co 9:19 Ps 116:16 Ro 1:1 Ga 1:10 Col 4:12 1Pe 2:16 2Pe 1:1 Jude 1:1 1 Corinthians 7 Resources - Multiple Sermons and Commentaries For (gar) term of explanation. Paul goes on to example that while they may have been slaves to men, they were set free in Christ and belonged to Him (1 Cor 7:23).