Our group looked at Romans 1-2 and struggled with Paul's use of "slavery" to indicate his relationship to Christ. It's really hard to think of oneself as a slave being anything but negative. We know the cultural boundaries--that Roman slavery was nothing compared to the evil of its 16th Century Spanish, 16th through 19th Century English and American, or present-day African, Oriental, and Middle Eastern cousins. Still hard to get hold of.

Easier to understand was the list of sinful states and activities that Paul gives in the balance of chapter one. Harder to grasp than slavery is the idea in chapter 2 that we all do the same things. We really have no ability or right to judge, do we?

That becomes the point of our freedom. We cannot judge, and we do not need to judge. We behave in a way to bring honor to the God we claim to serve. We turn back when we get down the wrong path. We offer grace, acceptance, and love to everyone--our points of failure are no less ugly than theirs.