There is a tension many believers carry quietly into celebrations of Juneteenth. On one hand, the heart swells with gratitude for freedom proclaimed and lives changed. On the other, a familiar anxiety creeps in—what do we do with the Bible’s passages on slavery? Do we set Scripture aside for the cookout, hoping no one asks? Or is there something deeper, something more explosive, waiting for us in those very pages?
The answer, it turns out, is not an embarrassed silence but a thunderous proclamation. Read the source article by Cyril Chavis Jr. at The Gospel Coalition, which frames this tension beautifully and invites us to see the Bible’s posture toward slavery through the lens of the new creation. That framework deserves to be explored in full, because it is ultimately a story about Jesus Christ—his lordship, his cross, his resurrection, and the world he is remaking.
The Human Condition: Bondage Runs Deeper Than Chains
Before we can appreciate what God is doing about slavery, we must reckon with what Scripture says about the human condition that makes all forms of bondage possible. The Bible does not treat slavery as an isolated social problem. It treats it as one expression of a world gone wrong—a world under the dominion of sin, death, and oppressive power. The apostle Paul names it plainly: we live in
