“This reality points to the need for Christians to learn the biblical way of avoiding ‘problem texts.’ This is the way of a priori submission. Christians must recognize that they are under the authority of God and they may not develop their ideas of what is ‘right and ‘fair’ apart from the Word of God. And when the Bible is our only standard of right and wrong, problem texts disappear. This entire issue of slavery is a wonderful issue upon which to practice. Our humanistic and democratic culture regards slavery in itself as a monstrous evil, malum in se, and it acts as though this were self-evidently true. The Bible permits Christians in slave-owning cultures to own slaves, provided they are treated well. You are a Christian. Whom do you believe?
Of course, in posing this question, I am certainly not wishing for a return to slavery. I am profoundly grateful that chattel slavery no longer exists in our nation. Let there be no mistake here — the logic of the Christian gospel is contradictory to the institution of slavery generally, and as the gospel of salvation progresses through history, one of the necessary results is the gradual eradication of all slavery. Jesus Christ really is the ultimate Jubilee. But this is not accomplished through revolutionary means, through the bloodletting of social cataclysm. Rather, it is accomplished the way yeast transforms a loaf of bread. The change is reformational and never revolutionary. And this is why the New Testament presupposes that members of Christian churches in good standing can be either slaves or slaveholders, and both categories are taught that in Christ there is neither slave not free (Gal. 3:28). What those slaves and slaveholders are commanded to do is serve God faithfully in the station where He has placed them. This command had obvious ramifications in the slaveholding society into which Christ came — but it had just as obvious ramifications for Christians in the slaveholding society of the antebellum South” (Black and Tan, pp. 46-47).