Skip to main content

Stuart: Bad servitude or Good servitude

By


(1) Theology of Exodus: Salvation, Freedom from Bondage
“I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment” (Exod 6:6). So-called liberation theology often misunderstands Exodus.[1] The book is not about liberation in general or about political and religious freedom in particular, but about deliverance from bad servitude to good servitude. The Israelites served (ʾābad) Pharaoh but were called by God to serve (again, ʾābad) him instead.[2]

It was not a question of needing freedom from being under the control of a national leader; it was a question of a good, divine national (and universal) leader rescuing his chosen people from a bad, human national leader. The threat of bondage to a hostile great power is one of the curses of the Old Testament. Once the Israelites arrived at Sinai, they were reminded of the horrors of servitude to those who would oppress them if they failed to keep Yahweh’s covenant.[3] The generation that followed the exodus likewise faced the prospect that disobedience to the rules graciously and protectively revealed in the divine covenant would lead to oppression under enemies who would conquer and enslave the chosen nation.[4]

In the New Covenant, bondage to the greatest power, sin, and its consequence, death, constitutes the “last enemy.”[5] But this is not merely a New Covenant concept. Sin is whatever offends God, and sin is an enslaver. But this slavery can be escaped—not by skill or cunning but by changing masters from sin to God.[6] This comes about not by human initiative but by God’s gift, to which humans can only respond.[7] In Exodus, likewise, freedom from bondage is accomplished only by God. The Israelites are portrayed as having no chance whatever to save themselves. God must make the demands (“Let my people go!”); the people on their own, with or without Moses, would never have dared even asked. Moreover, God makes those demands through his chosen representative Moses so that the people cannot take credit for having thought up the idea themselves. Not only so, but when the people were reconfronted with the possibility of being opposed by the Egyptians, they became afraid. Indeed, later in the wilderness, when the going became hard, some of them actually rationalized their way to thinking that they were better off in Egypt than free from it.[8] 

People need both a Savior and a Lord. They cannot do without either. Exodus reveals God as for Israel and for all who will join Israel, as many did upon seeing his mighty acts unleashed against the Egyptian oppressors. [9]
[10]





[1] Liberation theology often misunderstands many other things as well, including the basics of objective biblical interpretation, but it especially fails exegetically when it tries to suggest that the book of Exodus—exemplaristically—provides a template of sorts for justifying violence in the name of political deliverance.

[2] See comments on 4:23ff. Since ʾābad can mean both “serve” and “worship,” it is always challenging for the translator to render the nuance(s) appropriately in any given context. I would love to have been able to write “serve/worship” instead of one or the other at many, many points in my Exodus translation draft for the hcsb.

[3] E.g., Lev 26:16–17, 32, 34, 36–38, 41.

[4] E.g., Deut 28:25, 31, 38, 48, 68.

[5] 1 Cor 15:26

[6] So Paul’s comprehensive teaching in Rom 6:11, 13, 17, 20–22; 7:25.

[7] E.g., Rom 5:6; 8:3.
[8] Num 11.

[9] Exod 12:38. For Moses, Elijah, and Jesus to describe Jesus’ work on the cross as his exodus (τὴν ἔξοδον αὐτοῦ, Luke 9:31, unfortunately translated as “departure” in the niv) is yet one more way in the nt that Jesus is identified as God. Yahweh accomplished the exodus in the ot; Jesus, the exodus in the nt.[9]

[10] Stuart, D. K. (2006). Exodus (Vol. 2, p. 36). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

John Stott on the "old man" and the "body ruled by sin" in Rom 6 v 6

By
  There are, in fact, two quite distinct ways in which the New Testament speaks of crucifixion in relation to holiness. The first is our death to sin through identification with Christ; the second is our death to self through imitation of Christ.  On the one hand, we have been crucified with Christ. But on the other we have crucified (decisively repudiated) our sinful nature with all its desires, so that every day we renew this attitude by taking up our cross and following Christ to crucifixion.  The first is a legal death, a death to the penalty of sin; the second is a moral death, a death to the power of sin.  The first belongs to the past, and is unique and unrepeatable; the second belongs to the present, and is repeatable, even continuous. I died to sin (in Christ) once; I die to self (like Christ) daily. It is with the first of these two deaths that Romans 6 is chiefly concerned, although the first is with a view to the second, and the second cannot take place w...
Post a Comment
Read more

Berkoff: "The law was not substituted for the promise; neither was faith supplanted by works. "

By
  The giving of the law did not effect a fundamental change in the religion of Israel, but merely introduced a change in its external form.  The law was not substituted for the promise; neither was faith supplanted by works.  Many of the Israelites, indeed, looked upon the law in a purely legalistic spirit and sought to base their claim to salvation on a scrupulous fulfillment of it as a body of external precepts.  But in the case of those who understood its real nature, who felt the inwardness and spirituality of the law, it served to deepen the sense of sin and to sharpen the conviction that salvation could be expected only from the grace of God . L. Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans publishing co., 1938), 498–499.
Post a Comment
Read more

F.F. Bruce: ...know their father's will...

By
The NT does not contain a detailed code of rules for the Christian. Codes of rules, as Paul explains elsewhere, are suited to the period of immaturity when the children of God are still under guardians; but children who have come to years of responsibility know their father’s will without having to be provided with a long list of “Do’s” and “Don’t’s.” What the NT does provide is those basic principles of Christian living which may be applied to varying situations of life as they arise. So, after answering the Corinthian Christians’ question about the eating of food that has been offered to idols, Paul sums up his advice in the words: “whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31). Phrases current in worship, like “to the glory of God” or (as here) “in the name of the Lord Jesus,” were given a practical relevance by being applied to the concerns of ordinary life. Bruce, F. F. (1984). The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the...
Post a Comment
Read more