January 22, 2008

• JMac - Slaves for Christ

  Being a slave of Christ may be the best way to define a Christian.  In contemporary Christianity the language is about freedom.  It is about health, wealth, prosperity, finding your own fulfillment, fulfilling your own dream, finding your own purpose.  Personal fulfillment, personal liberation, personal satisfaction, all bound up in an old term in evangelical Christianity, a personal relationship.  How many times have we heard that the gospel offers people a personal relationship with Jesus Christ? What exactly does that mean?  Satan has a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and it's not a very good one.  Every living being has a personal relationship with the living God of one kind or another, leading to one end or another. You do have a personal relationship to Jesus Christ, you are His slave.

  There are plenty of Greek words in the Bible for servant, but there's only one word for slave, doulos and sundoulos.  Yet in the history of the evangelical translation of the Greek into the English, all the translators consistently have avoided the use of the word. This is a perhaps a matter of preference to accommodate the stigmas attached to slavery. Nobody thinks very positively about slavery.  But when you come to the New Testament, you can't get around it. 

  In Ephesians 6, you have an illustration where slave is used and it is used because the Apostle Paul knows that he is addressing slaves. "Slaves, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh with fear and trembling in the sincerity of your heart as to Christ, not by way of eye service, not just when they're looking as men pleasers, but as slaves of Christ doing the will of God from the heart." There you have the introduction of the phrase "slaves of Christ...slaves of Christ."

  This is not just true of actual slaves, this is true of all of us.  And the translators of the NAS are comfortable to use the word "slaves of Christ" rather than servants of Christ because that metaphoric use is built upon the literal use of slaves who are being addressed in verse 5.

  In 1 Corinthians 7, you have a similar situation where Paul is regulating people's human relationships once they've come to Christ. "He who is called in the Lord while a slave in a sense is the Lord's freeman, likewise he who was called while free is Christ's slave."  In verse 23 is very clear what constitutes slavery, "You were bought with a price."  There is no more defining expression in terms of what it means to be a slave.  It means to be owned.  When you give somebody the gospel, you are saying to them, "I would like to invite you to become a slave of Jesus Christ.  I would like to invite you to give up your independence, give up your freedom, submit yourself to an alien will, abandon all your rights, be owned by, controlled by the Lord."  This doulos, a kind of service which is not a matter of choice for the one who renders it, a kind of service which he has to perform whether he likes it or not.  It describes one subject totally to an alien will, the will of the owner and in total and utter dependence on that owner.  That's what the word means.  It is the word for slave.

  Now let's go into the Greek and Roman world of the New Testament.  For Greeks, freedom was the pinnacle of life.  Personal dignity was attached to freedom, being a doulos was the worst, it was the opposite. Slaves in the Greek/Roman world had no freedom, rights or ownership of anything.  They had no legal recourse in the courts.  They could not give testimony as a witness in a law case.  They had no citizenship.  They had no possibility of doing what they wanted to do. They were totally dependent on whoever owned them.  It doesn't mean that it didn't have some benefits.  They were provided for, cared for, protected.  In many cases, treated kindly, compassionately, loved within families.  But to the Greek and the Roman philosophically and socially, freedom was the pinnacle of life.  So free men had only scorn for slaves and slaves longed to be free.

  The Greeks were very religious, but never in the religious language of that world can there be found the use of the word doulos to describe the relationship between a worshiper and his God.  They used philos, friends.  They were friends of God, they were not slaves of their deities.  That was repugnant to them.  That was repulsive to them.  They loved freedom.

  Nobody was going to line up to become anybody's slave.  Slaves already had enough of slavery.  Free men had nothing but disdain for slavery.  And yet the New Testament holds back absolutely nothing.  We're called to be slaves.  Servants were hired to work for wages.  Servants were hired to work for wages and they could quit.  Slaves were owned and they could not quit.  If they ran away, they were found, arrested, flogged and sometimes crucified publically as a demonstration to the rest of the slaves of what could happen to them if they ran away. If we're going to talk about a personal relationship to Christ and to God, then our personal relationship is we are slaves.  And Paul here tells us it means that we only please Him.

  It came down to this, do what He says and do what pleases Him. That's what a slave did.  Really only two possibilities, where there was a direct command, you obeyed it.  Where there was not a direct command, you found a way to do what would please the master. 

  What characterized a slave?  One, exclusive ownership.  A servant could be hired and quit.  A slave was owned.  That means exclusive ownership because he was bought with a price.  Two, complete and constant availability and obedience.  Three, subject to one alien will.  No man can be a slave to two masters.  Fourth, the slave had complete dependence on his master for everything.  And fifth, all discipline and reward came from that one master.

  All of that is directly connected to what it means to be a slave of Jesus Christ.  We are owned by Him because we've been bought with a price.  We are in a position of complete and constant availability and obedience to that one master to the degree that we can say, "Not my will but Thine be done," all the time.  We are singular in our devotion and that means we have no other master to obey and no other master to serve.

  Fourthly, as believers we are totally dependent upon our one master for everything...protection, provision now and in the future. That too is what it means to be a Christian.  We only have the spiritual resources that are provided for us by our master.  And all discipline and reward comes from that master.  That's what it means to be a Christian. The New Testament never even bothers to defend the idea, as it were, of whether or not when you come to Christ He is your Lord.  That is patently obvious.  When you confess Jesus as Lord, you are at the same time confessing yourself as slave.  You are owned.  You have been purchased by His blood, Acts 20.  You have been bought, not with silver and gold, but with (1 Peter 1:18 and 19) the precious blood of Jesus Christ.  You have been purchased, Revelation 5:9.  You have no independent rights. 

  A slave could have some status, but the status the slave had was related to who his master was.  It was an honor to be part of Caesar's household even though you were a slave.  You were a slave at the highest level. Being a slave to Jesus Christ is beyond any kind of slavery that anybody ever knew because this master makes us sons and gives us all the rights of His own sons.  He adopts us into His family, calls us joint-heirs with Christ, takes us to heaven where we rule and reign from His own throne and pours out all the lavish riches in His possession forever and ever and ever for our own unmitigated joy and His own glory.  Who wouldn't want to be a slave under that master?

  • 10:19
  • 1 Comment