But as God has distributed to each one, as the Lord has called each one, so let him walk. And so I ordain in all the churches. Was anyone called while being circumcised? Let him not become uncircumcised. Was anyone called while uncircumcised? Let him not be circumcised. Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing, but keeping the commandments of God is what matters. Let each one remain in the same calling in which he was called. Were you called while a slave? Do not be concerned about it; but if you can be made free, rather use it. 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. You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of men. Brethren, let each one remain with God in that state in which he was called.
1 Corinthians 7:17-24
The apostle Paul has been discussing questions relating to marriage, sexual intimacy, singleness, and divorce in 1 Corinthians 7, and he has already stated in v.7 the principle that each one has been given a gift from the Lord. When it comes to singleness and marriage, he recognizes that not everyone can remain single while exercising self-control, and therefore it is preferable for many Christians to marry. But in this next paragraph, Paul extends the application of this principle to include whatever circumstance a believer finds himself in when he is called to the Christian faith.
Whether one is circumcised, that is, if a person is a Jew or a Gentile upon salvation, is irrelevant. What matters is not your ethnic or religious background, but whether you are now obedient to the Lord Jesus Christ. Whether one is a slave or free is also unimportant to Paul. (I know this runs contrary to much modern thought on the subject of slavery, but the fact remains that Paul never denounced the institution of slavery, even in a context such as this where one might expect him to do so.) Freedom from slavery is not to be the primary consideration for the Christian slave, although there is nothing wrong with becoming free if one has the chance, and Paul certainly considers a state of freedom to be preferable to that of bondage. Again, what matters is not one’s temporal situation, but his relationship to Christ. So the slave who gets saved is to consider himself free in Christ, though he remains a slave to men. And the free man who becomes a Christian is to consider himself a slave of Christ, though he remains free from bondage to men.
The point of all this is that God himself has designated a place for everyone in life, and rather than chafe against the will of God that is evident in our circumstances, we ought to embrace our situation as God’s calling. There is good reason, according to Paul, for every believer to be satisfied in the life-situation in which God has placed him, and to seek to live out his faith in obedience regardless of his external circumstances. If you are single or married, live for Christ. If you are a Jew or a Gentile, live for Christ. If you are a slave, a freedman, or even a master, live for Christ. Whatever your role in this world, you belong to the Lord Jesus and your primary preoccupation ought to be to serve and glorify him.
And this helps us understand what Paul meant in v.23 when he wrote, “You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of men.” The first clause is a direct quote from one chapter earlier where Paul had said, “Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s” (1 Cor. 6:19-20). There, the apostle was reminding the Corinthian Christians that Christ had purchased them, body and spirit, so that they were obligated to avoid sexual sin. Here in chapter 7 he reminds them that they have been bought by the Lord, so they should not enslave themselves to men by embracing worldly thinking about one’s role in society. The world will tell them (and us) that they should be dissatisfied with their present circumstances and make changing them their life’s goal, even to the point of disobeying Christ. To put it another way, they will be tempted to think of the gospel as a message of societal revolution rather than a message of personal transformation. This is why he repeats for the third time his underlying principle in v.24, that rather than agitating for social change, believers ought to remain in the condition in which they were saved and live out the implications of the gospel by being obedient to Christ. You ought to practice radical non-conformity, not by engaging in social causes and seeking to foment revolution, but by living for Christ and giving credible testimony to the power of the gospel.