I am against slavery, of course. But, oh, how lovely it would be to have somebody at my beck and call. If only I had a maid, my home would always be tidy. If only I had a gardener, my grass would always be neat. Somebody would bring me breakfast in bed every morning. Somebody needs to open the door for the cat right now, in fact. She is meowing plaintively by the back door, even as I draft this blog post.
If only……
Somebody needs to serve the cat. That somebody would be me.
I don’t know why the cat wants to go out. It’s cold out there. I scurry back to bed and turn the electric blanket on.
Limbs as slaves
According to a portion of Romans 6 which I am listening to as I sit on … okay, IN … the bed this morning, I do have a slave. Several, in fact. In a fairly literal translation I’ve never used before, I hear this line:
“… present your limbs as slaves to righteousness to achieve holiness.” (Romans 6:19 – follow the link in the footnote if you want to see where that translation came from – it’s not a standard version.)
My limbs can be slaves? I ponder this concept. My limbs are part of me. How can I present them as slaves? Surely Paul, the original writer, was being rather ‘Greek’ in the way he separated body and soul in this passage.
But then, the Roman recipients of this letter lived in a society heavily impacted by Greek thinking. And slaves were commonplace there. Some of the people Paul wrote to were slaves themselves. In fact, Paul prefaced this explanation with the caveat, “I am speaking in human terms, because of the weakness of your frail humanity.”
I am just as weak, and am glad for the human terms. Too often, Paul’s explanation are so abstract, I find them hard to follow. This, though, I can manage. I wonder whether, if he were writing in our day and age, he would use an analogy involving ‘Hey Siri’ or ‘Okay Google’.
Ridiculous uses for limbs
My lower limbs are being offered for a different purpose as I draft this blog post. The cat didn’t last long outside. It’s cold and drizzling. She is now on the bed with me, curled up against my leg. How can I move my legs? How ridiculous a thought it is to present my limbs as slaves to a cat.
Sometimes I do things even more ridiculous with these limbs of mine. I use my hands to choose chocolate instead of carrots. (Though a little bit of chocolate now and then is okay.) Or I stretch my legs out on the footstool rather than on the cross-trainer. (Again, there is a time and place for relaxing, but generally I need more exercise.) In the words of Paul, when I make these poor choices, I present my limbs ‘as slaves to impurity and lawlessness to achieve iniquity.’
Ugh. That sounds awful. Surely such little things don’t count as ‘impurity and lawlessness’? Surely they don’t lead to ‘iniquity’?
Paul goes on in the next chapter to write at length about his struggle with doing what he doesn’t want to do but not what he does want to do. Being the great missionary and teacher that he was by the time he wrote this letter, I can’t imagine that he did anything too awful on a daily basis. He was likely talking about first century ‘little stuff’ in the same way that my daily battles are over 21st century ‘little stuff’. Sobering……
Hope and despair
Thankfully, at the end of that long saga, Paul concludes with a note of hope even in despair.
“What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.” (Romans 7:24-25 NIV)
Me too. I’m a wretched woman, though I don’t like to admit it. But I am a woman who is saved through Jesus.
A translation tangent
Rather than get out of my nice warm bed when the online devotional finishes, I dig a little deeper into the original words translated ‘limbs’ in the version quoted above. Biblehub.com tells me that the Greek that Paul used was ‘μέλη (melē) ὑμῶν (hymōn)’. It literally mean ‘parts of you’, ‘you’ being singular and not plural. So you and I, we are to present our parts – your parts and my parts – as slaves to righteousness.
I think about the day ahead. When I find my eye drawn to social media at a time when it should be on a work-related task, I will say to it, “Eye, I present you as a slave to righteousness.’ When it is time for morning tea, I shall take my arm, use it to open the fridge door, and, presenting it as a slave to righteousness, I shall make a good choice. When I am ready for a mental break, I shall offer my legs as slaves to righteousness and do some exercise instead of flopping on the couch. And so on through the day. That’s the plan, anyhow.
The first problem, however, is to get my legs off the bed. The cat is so very comfortable here, as am I. I don’t want to present my limbs as slaves to anything. I just want to stay right here.
And so the daily battle begins.
Footnote: https://pray-as-you-go.org/player/prayer/2019-10-24