Now just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness.” The disciple Peter offers a final word on the matter of slavery and sin: “People are slaves to whatever has mastered them.” There is a deeper division in this country: one not seen since before the Civil War. I suspect both North and South believed then — as many do now — that they were on the “right side of history.” But by God’s providence only one side was proven right with regards to the issue of slavery. Because of the North’s victory at Sharpsburg, on January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln found the will and opportunity to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring, “that all persons held as slaves within the rebellious states are, and henceforward shall be free.” If President Lincoln’s words sound familiar, they should, for by this time he had begun to think of the Civil War as God’s judgement upon the nation.…