Category Archives: Bible Study

Slaves of God

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When Orthodox Christians receive Holy Communion, the priest addresses them, “The slave of God [name] receives the precious and holy Body and Blood of Christ,” although in English the word “slave” is often replaced by the word “servant” or “handmaiden.”


Were you a slave when you became a Christian? Don’t worry about it…. For the slave who is called by the Lord is a freed person of the Lord’s; similarly, the freed person who becomes a Christian is a slave of Christ. You have been bought and paid for; do not become slaves of human beings. Brothers and sisters, let each remain with God in that situation in which he or she was converted. (1 Cor. 7:21-24)

St. Paul is eager to maintain a stable society. He does not want the Christians of Corinth to become known as anarchists and revolutionaries. He wants them to remain as they were when they were converted: married or single, slave or free. It doesn’t matter if the spouse of the convert is also a convert or not. Don’t upset the relationship unless the non-believer insists on getting a divorce. Slaves shouldn’t run away, using their new religion as an excuse. (Theodoret of Cyr said the same thing.)

St. Paul doesn’t want the Christians to deny their ethnic identities: Jewish (i.e. circumcised) or non-Jews (the uncircumcised). Were you circumcised as a child? Don’t boast about it now. Were you uncircumcised when you converted? Don’t get circumcised now, he tells the men in the parish.

Confronting the perennial issue of a community marked by distinctions of social status, St. Paul makes a paradoxical statement on Christian freedom: the slave is really free and the free person is really a slave. The free person who is a slave of Christ reflects the fact that anyone called “lord” in the first century AD had slaves but the title “Christ” evokes the Crucifixion, a form of execution reserved for the most abject slaves.

Slavery in Greece and Rome was very different from slavery in the Americas. In Greece and Rome, it was expected that a slave could earn or buy their freedom after 20 years. Such former slaves were known as “freed persons” and were expected to owe their former masters certain social obligations for another 3-20 years, depending on their agreement. (In first century Corinth, nearly 2/3 of the residents were probably either slaves or “freed persons.” )

It is important in this passage to understand “calling” is two things at once. “Calling” is not a personal vocation but is rather the life situation in which a person finds themselves. “Calling” is also the committed life of a Christian believer. Christians were bought and paid for by the blood of Christ. “The powers of the evil one are trying to render this price useless to us,” said St. Basil the Great. “They try to lead us back into slavery even after we are free.”

Read more about the fascinating social situation of slavery in first-century Corinth in Sacra Pagina: First Corinthians by Raymond F. Collins.

One Flesh=Made Holy….

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Left: St. Mary of Egypt received Holy Communion when she was baptized as an adult in Jerusalem and then again from the priest-monk Zosimas in the desert after 47 years of ascetic practice as a hermit. Right: priest pours water into the chalice at the Offertory of the Eucharist.

For the unbelieving husband is made holy through his wife and the unbelieving wife is made holy through her husband. (1 Cor. 7:14)

St. Paul has already discussed how a man and woman become one flesh when they have a sexual relationship, no matter how brief that relationship might be. Now he points out that because a husband and wife become one flesh, the unbelieving spouse shares in the holiness of the believing spouse.

Among the Eastern Christians, the spouse of the priest shares in her husband’s priestly ministry, to some extent. She is given a special title of respect, usually the feminine form of whatever title her husband has: presbyter/presbytera, papa(batushka)/mama (matushka), preot (priest)/preoteasa. She and the priest are one flesh and share a common relationship to the parish.

In the reception of Holy Communion, each Christian becomes one flesh with Christ and with other believers who partake. This is why the use of one loaf and one cup are so important in the celebration of the Eucharist. We all receive the same Holy Gifts and share a common life as a result.

Because we share a common life, we contribute to each other’s salvation and sanctification. The holiness of one member supports and sustains the holiness of the others; the sin of one member pulls down the others as well. “Save yourself and you will save 1,000 people around you,” said St. Seraphim of Sarov. The salvation of one radiates out to touch everyone in the vicinity–and beyond!–just a ripples from a stone thrown into a pond radiate out across the surface of the water.

“Husband and wife are one in the same way that wine and water are one when they are mixed together,” wrote the 2nd century Bible scholar Origen. The wine and water mixed in the chalice are frequently seen as an allusion to the union of divinity and humanity in Christ, as well as the union of human spouses or members of the same congregation. It is in the Paschal cup of blessing that we find our communion with God and each other.

Conjugal Debts

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The Church, the Bride of Christ, is born from his side when the blood and water pour forth from the lance-wound in his side, just as Eve was born from the side of Adam. As bride and groom, the Church and Christ can be said to owe each other a “conjugal debt” that is “paid” in the Eucharist. “Do you understand, then, how Christ has united his bride to himself and what food he gives us all to eat? By one and the same food we are both brought into being and nourished. As a woman nourishes her child with her own blood and milk, so does Christ unceasingly nourish with his own blood those to whom he himself has given life.” (St. John Chrysostom)

Let a man give to his wife what he owes her; similarly, a wife to her husband. A wife does not have authority over her body, her husband does; likewise, a husband does not have authority over his own body, his wife does. Do not deprive one another …. (1 Cor. 7:4-5)

Evidently the Corinthians had written a series of questions to St. Paul, some of them about marriage. In response, St. Paul writes a short treatise On Marriage in chapter 7 of First Corinthians. It was common for philosophers and later Christian theologians to write essays about the good and bad qualities of marriage; St. Augustine wrote an especially famous essay On the Good [Aspects] of Marriage.

Jewish tracts about marriage and pagan philosophers writing about marriage agree about the power of sexuality. St. Paul concurs with these ideas. The sexual relationship is at the heart of the marital relationship and the sexual availability each spouse owes the other came to be known as the “conjugal debt.” St. Paul writes that the spouses could agree to deny each other for short periods, so as to be better able to focus on prayer, but should never stay away from each other for long.

What is a “short” period? What is a “long” time? Jewish practice expected a married couple to abstain for one or two weeks each month because of the wife’s menstrual cycle. Soldiers and priests were expected to abstain during their times of active service–partly because they weren’t at home. Scholars of the Torah could abstain for a month but not longer; this meant they could not go away to distant libraries for months at a time. Ordinary workmen were not allowed to abstain for more than a week; this meant they had to come home every week if they had a job that required them to live away from home.

Early Christians expected that married couples who were fasting would also abstain from sexual activity; some manuscripts of First Corinthians read that couples should only abstain in order to engage in “prayer and fasting.” There were two fasting days each week and anyone receiving Holy Communion was expected to fast the night before as well. Converts preparing for baptism were expected to fast for three days. (This pre-baptismal fast is what became Holy Week and then Lent.)

St. Paul was not married. It was unusual for a Jewish man to not be married so a few people think he might have been a widower without children. Whether he had been married as a younger man or not, he urged the Corinthians to remain as they were when they converted: married or single or widowed. Stability of life–itself an important monastic virtue in the 6th century–was important to St. Paul. Such stability involved a stable homelife which included a stable reliance on the “payment” of the “conjugal debt.”