Scholars are reluctant to hazard estimates about the numbers, but as many as one-third of the people in Greece and Rome were slaves. In addressing them Paul was addressing an enormous number of people. People became slaves through various avenues: birth, parental selling or abandonment, captivity in war, inability to pay debts, and voluntary attempts to better one’s condition. Race was not a factor.

No doubt for many slaves life was harsh and cruel, but their circumstances depended on their owners. They did not merely do menial work; they did nearly all the work, including oversight and management and most professions. Many were educated better than their owners. They could own property, even other slaves, and were allowed to save money to buy their freedom. No slave class existed, for slaves were present in all but the highest economic and social strata. Many gained freedom by age thirty, especially in urban areas. Even after gaining freedom, however, they were still under obligation to their former owners in times of need.

For the early church to advocate revolt would have been the death of the Christian movement. Slavery and other social issues were not their focus; the gospel and its description of life were. They did not work out the sociological implications of the gospel except where it related to reception of the message and relations within churches. But as they presented life in Christ, they put in motion a process that would eventually destroy slavery. The painful fact is that it took far too long to accomplish the job, and the attempts by Christians to defend the legitimacy of slavery in the nineteenth century are disturbing.