Before God speaks about community living, he first speaks about the person with the least power in the room. And here we find a man who is free to walk away and chooses not to.
“If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything. 3 If he comes alone, he is to go free alone; but if he has a wife when he comes, she is to go with him. 4 If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free. 5 “But if the servant declares, ‘I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free,’ 6 then his master must take him before the judges. He shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will be his servant for life.” (Exodus 21 v 2-6)
The first law for daily life concerns a servant. Are we surprised that God chooses this category first? Here is the vulnerable person who has fallen into debt and become another man’s servant.
The seventh is the year of freedom for the slaves, “without paying anything.” God will not let them build a society that forgets that they had begun as slaves in Egypt.
Then comes the hard case. Something that will test this law.
The servant’s master has given him a wife, and she and the children belong to the master. The man can walk free, but only by walking away from his family. So the servant faces a heartbreaking choice: freedom without them, or life with them in servitude.
If the servant chooses love. He is taken to the door or doorpost, and his ear is pierced with an awl. The mark of that choice stays with him for life.
It points forward to Christ, who could have gone free. “Though he was in the form of God,” he did not cling to it, but took the form of a servant (Philippians 2:6-7). He stayed because of love (just like the servant). The door where the awl fell was a picture of the wooden cross on which he was pierced for us.
That leaves a question for us. Are we serving God as people who are only waiting for the seventh year, or as people who love the Master and have chosen the door?
Missions Paul 