Earlier this week somebody asked what the sermon was about. I said, "I'm preaching about slavery." That was a good way to stop a conversation.

Slavery. In Romans 6, Paul talks about slavery. It was an established institution of his time. There is no evidence that he tried to reform it. One of his letters was written to a slave owner named Philemon. During one of his vacations in jail, Paul met a runaway slave named Onesimus. They got to talking, and Onesimus became a Christian. When his sentence was up, Paul put a letter in his hand, and sent him back to his owner, who was also a Christian. And Paul says, "Now you get him back, as more than a slave - he's a brother." It was a nice thing to say, but the young man was still a slave.

You might remember that Paul likes to give advice in his …