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The apostle seems to intimate from these words, that some persons converted to Christianity in the primitive times, apprehended that thereupon they must leave their worldly callings and employments, as if they were snares to them, or unnecessary diversions from better things.
No, says the apostle, Let every one in his calling, wherein he is called, therein abide with God; that is, look in what honest, civil calling they were found when they became Christians, let them keep to that calling still. For God doth not call us from our worldly employments and business, but calls us to be holy in them ; nor doth our serving God any whit acquit or discharge us from serving one another.
But particularly it was the opinion of some servants converted to Christianity, that their spiritual freedom by Christ exempted them from all civil service to their masters. The apostle therefore tells them they are indeed freed by Christ, from sinful slavery, but not from civil servitude and subjection; from Jewish bondage, but not from Christian obedience.
Learn hence, That Christianity doth not free men from any civil obligations which before they lay under. Our advantages by Christ are spiritual, and not secular; no man's outward condition is changed by his becoming a Christian; though he be now the Lord's freeman, yet he is a servant still, if he was so before; nay, their Christianity did not exempt them from their secular relation to their heathen and infidel masters. A service to man doth not exempt us from, nor is inconsistent with, the service of God; so our spiritual calling doth not make void our civil; Therefore let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called.