The shortest and most simple answer to the question of how the Bible transforms the pejorative term “slave” into a term of dignity and privilege (“servant”) is found in one word: adoption. Slavery was a cultural norm across the centuries of the Bible’s inspiration, commonplace in its many forms, separating people by this social structure. Some entered slavery by conquest, others by unpaid debt or other reasons. The Old Testament explains clearly that slavery was never intended keep a person in that low position indefinitely, and this is where the transformation of the concept begins. Each person purchased for a price should be freed after seven years of service; however, if the slave does not want to leave out of love for his master, that slave is taken to the doorpost of the house where he is nailed through the ear to the house as a sign that he is now quite literally part of the house (Exodus 21:5-6)—not “in” the house but “of” it. A ring through the ear showed the world that he was no longer for sale, but part of a family, adopted. His duties may not change, but his relationship to the house does.
Fast-forward to the New Testament where slavery is used to demonstrate that every person regardless of social status is in bondage to the power of sin and can be freed by the redemption that is in the Lord Christ Jesus. One moves by repentance, out of love, by choice from servitude to sin to serving/worshipping the risen Savior because He first loved us. One is adopted as a child of God, brought into the family and household of God, serving now out of willful obedience. “So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.” (Galatians 4:7). “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.” (Ephesians 2:19)
