Human Trafficking and the Church
Last October, our church hosted a webinar on the Church's role in the fight against human trafficking. The focus of the webinar was on how churches can get involved and build teams and ministries to help bring human trafficking to an end. In preparation for the webinar, I also preached a four-part sermon series explaining the theological reasons that the church should care about this issue. So the webinar tackled the how and the sermon series addressed the why.
This article will essentially be a summary of the sermon series. If you would like a more in-depth look into the biblical reasons that Christians should be involved in the abolition movement, I encourage you to watch the entire sermon series.
Justice in the Old Testament
One of the clearest expressions of God's desire for justice is the Book of Amos. The entire book is a prophetic proclamation of God's judgment upon Israel for their neglect of justice and their practice of slavery and the oppression of the poor. Near the beginning of the book, in Amos 2:6-7, God explains why He is punishing Israel:
The Lord says: I will not relent from punishing Israel for three crimes, even four, because they sell a righteous person for silver and a needy person for a pair of sandals. They trample the heads of the poor on the dust of the ground and obstruct the path of the needy. - Amos 2:6-7a [CSB]
God goes on to cry out, through the prophet Amos, for justice and righteousness. In these divine words, echoed by MLK Jr. in his speech "I Have a Dream," God declares:
I hate, I despise, your feasts! I can’t stand the stench of your solemn assemblies. Even if you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; I will have no regard for your fellowship offerings of fattened cattle. Take away from me the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice flow like water, and righteousness, like an unfailing stream. - Amos 5:21-24 [CSB]
Add to this the clearly evil nature of human trafficking, and you have a solid case from the Old Testament alone that God hates slavery and desires to see it abolished. Human trafficking–especially the trafficking of children for sexual exploitation–is almost universally considered to be one of the greatest forms of evil in existence. One reason (among many) for that is because it violates all six of the Ten Commandments that govern how human beings are to relate to one another (commandments 5-10, cf. Ex. 20:12-17).
“The buying and selling of people made in the image of God is also one of the most heinous forms of pride and arrogance there is.”
Human trafficking involves dishonoring parents, murder, sexual immorality and adultery, stealing and kidnapping, lying and giving false testimony against your neighbor, and coveting your neighbor's family members. The buying and selling of people made in the image of God is also one of the most heinous forms of pride and arrogance there is. Traffickers literally "play god" with the lives of their victims.
Justice in the New Testament
In one of Jesus's first addresses of His public ministry, found in Luke 4, Jesus explains His mission and His purpose:
He came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. As usual, he entered the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him, and unrolling the scroll, he found the place where it was written: The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. He then rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. And the eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fixed on him. He began by saying to them, “Today as you listen, this Scripture has been fulfilled. - Luke 4:16-21 [CBS]
Jesus says that His purpose for being on earth was to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. This is a clear reference for the Year of Jubilee, the year commanded by God in which all debts were to be cancelled and all bondservants were to be released (cf. Leviticus 25). Jubilee, which came every 50 years, was a sign of what the Messiah would ultimately fulfill by setting people free not only from bondage to sin and sickness but also to death itself (Rom. 8:2).
“He knew that abolishing slavery without transforming people's hearts would only be a temporary, surface solution.”
It is curious, then, that Jesus did not address the institution of slavery in any direct way during His earthly ministry. The reason Jesus did not address it isn't because He condoned it (that would be an argument from silence), but because He knew that abolishing slavery without transforming people's hearts would only be a temporary, surface solution. In time, due to the greed, lust, and arrogance of human nature, the people would have soon reverted back to their wicked ways, as Israel had done hundreds of times in the Old Testament.
The true answer to human trafficking is the gospel because only the gospel deals with the root of the problem: the sinful nature. Human trafficking is ultimately a spiritual problem, not a material one, and so it requires a spiritual solution.
“The true answer to human trafficking is the gospel because only the gospel deals with the root of the problem: the sinful nature.”
Paul continued Jesus's approach to the institution of slavery. He did not speak against it directly, but he did include slavery in one of his lists of sinful and wicked behavior (1 Tim. 1:9-11) and encouraged slaves to obtain their freedom if they are able to do so (1 Cor. 7:21).
Perhaps the most important passage in the New Testament to slavery is Paul's Letter to Philemon. The letter teaches a profound theological truth, that although Onesimus may technically still be a slave, in Christ, he transcends his physical circumstances and is in fact made an equal with his earthly master Philemon. Onesimus embodies the truth of Galatians 3:28, that there is no Jew or Greek, no slave of free, no male or female, for all are made one in Christ.
Conclusion
The consistent testimony of both Testaments of Scripture is that slavery is a great evil in God's eyes because it is a violation of His laws, a denial of His image in human beings, and a perversion of the justice and righteousness that He seeks. Justice lies at the core of Jesus's purpose and of the gospel. Since Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forevermore, His mission and purpose have not changed. Christ still pursues God's justice and righteousness on the earth; only now, He does it through His Body, the Church.
People cannot understand spiritual freedom unless they experience physical freedom. It is up to the church to show the love and truth of Christ in both our proclamation and our demonstration of the Word. Scripture gives the Church a clear mandate to seek and promote God's justice in every way possible, and this rightly includes exposing and fighting against human trafficking.
If the Church is to "love nothing but God and hate nothing but sin," we have no choice but to wage war against modern-day slavery, which is one of the greatest forms of sin in the world today. To ignore it is to ignore something central to our very purpose: the continuation of Christ's mission to proclaim release to the captives and the year of the Lord's favor.