1 Corinthians 7:22,23

“For he that was called in the Lord being a slave, is the Lord's freedman; likewise he that was called being free is Christ's slave. 23. Ye were bought with a price: become not the slaves of men!”

According to most commentators, 1 Corinthians 7:22 is intended to justify the counsel to prefer servitude. Edwards: “A reason why the Christian slave should continue a slave rather than accept liberty.” The reasoning in itself would be admissible: “The slave being spiritually free, and the free believer morally a slave, the contrast is neutralized; why make a change of state?”

But this verse may quite as well justify the counsel of 1 Corinthians 7:21, as we have understood it; not in the sense that the first proposition of 1 Corinthians 7:22 would justify the first counsel of 1 Corinthians 7:21, and the second proposition the second. For in this case the second proposition would not answer the purpose, for the Christian slave called to liberty is not in the position of the free Christian who becomes the slave of Christ. It must be borne in mind that the second part of 1 Corinthians 7:21 was a restriction arising in connection with the first, a sort of parenthesis; after which Paul returns to the general idea. We must therefore disentangle the thought common to the two propositions of 1 Corinthians 7:22, and apply it to the passage as a whole: If in Christ slaves become free, and the free slaves, then neither slavery nor liberty is to be dreaded for the believer! Slavery will not take away from him his inward liberty, for he is Christ's freedman; and liberty will not plunge him into licence, for he has become Christ's slave. The consequence is, that the Christian slave may either remain a slave, or become free, without harm. For, in the latter case, he enters the class of the free who become the Lord's slaves.

The expression ἐν κυρίῳ κληθείς does not signify: called to communion with the Lord, but: called by a call addressed in the Lord.

The gen. κυρίου here is at once that of cause and of possession. The sentence of emancipation was pronounced by the Lord; by it He delivered this spiritual slave from the power and condemnation of sin; thenceforth this freedman belongs to Him as His servant.