For the past couple of weeks we have been talking about beginning 2012 by refocusing our faith.
We started with the idea that we need to make sure that our focus is on Christ—not ourselves. By that I mean that the Christian Faith should never be focussed on what the Christian does so much as it should be focussed on what Christ has done. Christianity isn’t about a list of rules. It isn’t about doing good, being good, and feeling good. It is about growing in our relationship with Christ. Everything that happens in the Christian life in terms of growth and victory comes from focusing on Christ. He is the vine and we are the branches and we are called to remain in Him to bear fruit (John 15:4).
Last week we looked at exactly what we mean when we talk about a relationship with Christ. Like any relationship, our relationship with Christ is based on a commitment; not just a decision. A man who decides to get married, but who then lives like they have never been married, isn’t considered a good husband by anyone. In other words, marriage is more than just the decision to get married. The decision to get married is just the beginning of a new relationship and a new reality. But the decision to get married means nothing unless it is also a commitment to live in a life-changing relationship with another person. In the same way, as Christians, we are the Bride of Christ. We have to, therefore, do more than just decide to believe in Christ, or trust in His sacrifice for our sins. We have to make a life-long commitment to a life-changing relationship with Christ. In particular, a relationship with Christ is a commitment to allowing Jesus to work in us, cleaning us and purifying us and changing us so that we will be a spotless bride (Ephesians 5:25-26).
This week I want us to finish our refocusing series by focusing on one aspect of our relationship with Christ that we, quite frankly, haven’t had to consider very much because it really hasn’t been on our spiritual radar.
Let me ask you a question: What Does It Mean to Be a Christian?
For some, being “Christian” is mostly cultural and traditional. It is a title inherited. It is a tie to the past. Others define Christianity in terms of a general belief in Jesus, or a desire to be a good person. Then there are those who equate being a Christian with being morally and politically conservative. For those people, Christianity becomes a political force to stem the tide of liberal immorality.
Well, as we have seen over the past few weeks, being a Christian isn’t anything you inherit, neither is it just a desire to be good under the banner of Jesus and, it most certainly isn’t a political movement, conservative or otherwise—although we are called to be salt and light to our culture, but that is another sermon for another time. The vibrant, dynamic, life-changing, life-sacrificing image of the Christian we find in the New Testament is so much more than most people believe it to be today.
It is almost as if we need to come up with another name beside Christian to explain what we mean when we declare ourselves to be Christian because the title has lost its biblical power and clarity. That’s why I tend to talk about the Christian Faith in terms of being a follower of Christ.
Interestingly, the followers of Jesus Christ were not called “Christians” until ten to fifteen years after the church began. Before that time, they were known simply as disciples, brothers, believers, saints, and followers of the Way. In case you were wondering, followers of the way, is a reference to John 14:6 when Jesus declares: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).
The first time we find the title of Christian being connected to followers of Christ is found in Acts 11:26 when Luke records for us that, “The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.”
Given the identification that the name has with Christ, you would expect the New Testament to be salted with references to followers of Christ being Christians. But, surprisingly, the word only appears three times—twice in the book of Acts (11:26; 26:28) and once in 1 Peter (4:16).
But, there is one metaphor or title that is used more frequently than any other in the New Testament. It is a word that I am quite sure most of us will consider negative, but it is also the title that the Early Christians gave themselves. It was the title they claimed most often. The title is that of a slave.
Time and time again the earliest believers referred to themselves as the Lord’s slaves. I bet many of you find that shocking, or perhaps even scandalous. How could the earliest Christians identify themselves as slaves of Christ? It’s not a very appealing image to our twenty-first century minds is it?
In contemporary Christianity we speak about success and wholeness and balance. There is nothing very balanced about the word ‘slave’! We often hear that God loves people unconditionally and He wants to fulfill our every desire, hope, and dream. Instead of being Lord of the Church, Jesus today is characterized as more of a mentor or our personal assistant or trainer. He’s here to give us a few pointers and to make our lives easier and more satisfying.
But the New Testament understanding of the believer’s relationship to Christ is a little different: He our Master. He is our Owner. We are His possession. He is the King, the Lord, and the Son of God. We are His subjects who are called to submit to Him.
True, we are also co-heirs with Christ, and true, we are part of the family of God, and yes, we are His adopted sons and daughters, but I don’t think we should just skip past the fact that the early Christians considered themselves to be first and foremost slaves so that we can move to all the relational titles that make us feel warm and fuzzy.
Yes, Jesus is our brother and our friend. Jesus is our advocate and the author and finisher of our faith, but before He is any of those things, we must first come to terms with the fact that, as Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians, “You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).
I know what you are probably thinking. You’re probably thinking something like: “Grant, stop exaggerating! Maybe there is something in the New Testament about Christians being slaves, but it can’t be as big of a deal as you make it out to be otherwise, I would have noticed.” Well, I am a little hurt by your comment but let’s move on shall we?
The reason why you haven’t picked up on the ‘slave’ theme in the New Testament is that it has been hidden from you. It would be interesting to know if it has been also hidden from you in your Tagolog translations as well. I checked with Jose this week and the ‘slave’ theme was certainly hidden in his Portuguese translation.
John MacArthur in his powerful new book ‘Slave’, from which I got the idea for this message, writes: “The Greek word for slave has been covered up by being mistranslated in almost every English version—going back to both the King James Version and the Geneva Bible that predated it. Though the word slave (doulos in Greek) appears 124 times in the original text, it is correctly translated only once in the King James. Most of our modern translations do only slightly better. It almost seems like a conspiracy.”
Instead of translating doulos as “slave,” these translations consistently substitute the word servant in its place. Ironically, the Greek language has at least half a dozen words that can mean servant but the word doulos isn’t one of them. Whenever it is used, both in the New Testament and in secular Greek literature, it always and only means slave.
Maybe you are thinking, “What’s the big deal Grant? Slave or servant—aren’t they basically the same thing? I mean realistically don’t we all have enough of a problem being servants, let alone slaves?”
Well, think about it for a moment: There is a huge difference between a slave and a servant. True both serve, but a servant has personal rights. A servant has their own life. A servant has some level of choice in how and when they serve. A servant has their own identity Slaves on the other hand, have no rights. They have no identity or life outside of their master’s claim on their life. In the Greco-Roman world, slaves were considered property. To be someone’s slave was to be their possession and they had no choice in how or when they served. They were to obey their master’s will, period!
OK, but why have modern English translations consistently mistranslated doulos when its meaning in Greek is so clearly that of a ‘slave’? There are at least two answers to this question.
First, translators wanted to avoid any association between biblical teaching and the slave trade of the British Empire and the American Colonies. Let’s face it, as soon as we say the word ‘slave’ we get a very specific image of what slavery looks like, but that image has little in common with the reality of slaves in the Greco-Roman world. Slavery in the Greco-Roman world had nothing to do with race, or skin colour, or even education or skills. In that culture slaves and citizens looked and even dressed the same. Some slaves were doctors and teachers and financial experts. Others became trusted members of household like Joseph was in Potiphar’s house for example. So slavery in New Testament times was something completely different from the kind of slavery we are more familiar with. For this reason, translators made the decision to translate doulos as servant.
Second, many early translators of the Bible into English were influenced by the Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible and in the Latin Vulgate the Latin word servus was used to translate the Greek doulos and servant is a more natural translation of servus than slave is. That’s what happens when you have a translation of a translation.
So basically, we lost this key image of Christian identity from the New Testament for what were, at least in the case of the first reason, some difficult, incorrect images that would have been communicated if doulos was correctly translated. Ultimately, the translators probably made the right decision because translation is about communicating the original thoughts and ideas of the text into another culture and slave carries with it too much baggage in our culture to covey the proper biblical image. But, having said that, we still lost a great deal in translation.
You see, you cannot understand what we have in Christ if you don’t understand what it meant to be a slave in the ancient world.
For example, in the Greco-Roman culture it was common knowledge that your quality of life as a slave was completely tied to the character of your master. If you had a relatively poor master who was unfair and hateful and who regularly took out his frustration on his slaves, your life was never going to be good. You were doomed to a life of despair. You had no hope. If you had a prosperous master who was also appreciative of your talents and skills, your life would be very good indeed. In fact, in some cases, slaves had better lives then their free counterparts simply because of the gracious character of their masters. Everyone knew that some masters would make life a living-hell for their slaves and other masters would become a source of great blessing to their slaves.
The quality of a slave’s life was in the master’s hand. This is the idea that sparked the use of ‘slave’ in describing our lives in Christ. The quality of our life in the Master’s hand is far better than any other possibility. But more than that, it was infinitely better than the alternative because in the New Testament we have only two possible masters: either we are a slave to sin, or a slave of Christ.
For example, as we read in our opening Scripture today, “For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.” (Romans 6:6)
And a bit further down in Romans 6 Paul says: “I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness.” (Romans 6:19)
And in Galatians Paul warns the Christians: “Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods. 9 But now that you know God--or rather are known by God--how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable principles? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again?” (Galatians 4:8-9)
So in the New Testament we have this clear either or teaching. Either we are a slave to sin, or we become a slave to righteousness. How do we become a slave of righteousness? Paul says: “You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).
The image that Paul gives us in this passage is that of a slave market. At the slave market slaves were displayed to the potential masters and those who felt that the particular slave was a good investment, would bid. So we have the image of being purchased by God. We are therefore His property and we are called to be slaves of righteousness, because that is our Master’s will. We will come back to what it means to be a ‘slave of righteousness’ in a moment, but first, let’s look at how exactly we are purchased?
Well in 1 Timothy Paul tells us, “There is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave himself as a ransom for all men.” (1 Timothy 2:5-6)
The word ‘ransom’ in this passage gives us the image of someone paying the price to release either a prisoner of war, or to liberate a slave from their master. Jesus paid for our liberation from our cruel master by dying in our place. We were purchased, we were bought with a price and that price was the sacrifice of Christ.
So let’s try and put this all together. We are either slaves to sin or slaves to Christ. What does that mean? Well in this context, it is a matter of control. If we are not in Christ, we continue to be in sin and it continues to be our master. It continues to control us. It continues to call the shots. It continues to dictate the quality and character of our lives. And there is no master crueler than sin. It is a master that makes our lives darker and weaker. Sin becomes a master that always requires more of us, with less and less return.
Just like Pharaoh with the Israelites in Egypt, sin takes away our freedom and our resources and expects a greater amount of obedience from us. And just like Pharaoh, sin promises choice and freedom. It says, “Sure I’ll let you go off and do what you want to do.” But at the last moment it changes its mind and it increases our bondage instead of giving us freedom. Then life just becomes darker and much more hopeless, but somehow we still believe the lie that Pharaoh is going to let us go off to worship our God—it just never happens.
John MacArthur writes: “Sin is a cruel tyrant. It is the most devastating and degenerating power ever to afflict the human race . . . . It corrupts the entire person—infecting the soul, polluting the mind, defiling the conscience, contaminating the affections, and poisoning the will. It is the life-destroying, soul-condemning cancer that festers and grows in every unredeemed human heart like an incurable gangrene.”
But then Christ came along and He saw us in the slave market, and it wasn’t that our potential value as a slave was apparent: we were too battered and bruised and feeble of mind and body to have any real worth, but God, out of His own love, purchased us by sacrificing His perfect Son as a ransom to free us from the cruel master of sin. Now we have a new master. Now Christ controls us, so we became slaves to righteousness.
Now to be called a “slave to righteousness” you might get the idea that Jesus is saying: “I bought you. I own you. You’re mine, so you better be righteous or else!” But Jesus isn’t that kind of master. Again, the image between a slave of sin and a slave of righteousness is about control. In Christ, we now have a new master, who has taken control, and as we submit to that control, we produce fruit in keeping with righteousness. So this isn’t a call to performance in this passage so much as it is recognition that in Christ, God is going to produce in us a new work of righteousness. Jesus is now the controlling factor in our lives. We are called to submit to the will of our new master, but He will control the outcome of our submission. He will bring forth righteousness. He will make the bride spotless.
And just as our old master pretended to give us freedom, Christ promises freedom as well, but Christ’s freedom is a freedom to be a slave to righteousness. It is a freedom to obey. It is a freedom to love God and be transformed by the Spirit of Christ at work in our lives.
Maybe you still aren’t sold on this whole image of being a slave. After all, even if Christ is the perfect master—who wants to be a slave? Well, maybe the fact that this slave thing goes all the way to the top might help change your mind.
Paul in Philippians tells us that “Jesus Christ, who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be used for His own advantage. 7 Instead He emptied Himself by assuming the form of a slave, taking on the likeness of men. And when He had come as a man in His external form, 8 He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death— even to death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:6-8, HCSB)
Notice the parallel in verse 6 and verse 7: “Jesus Christ, who, existed in the form of God . . . [Jesus] assuming the form of slave. Jesus was equal with God. He existed in the form of God. Jesus was in His essence God. Jesus was God. In the same way, Jesus assumed the nature, the essence, the reality of a slave. How did He do it? He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. Our master became our master by becoming a slave to the purposes of the Father. He humbling himself and became obedient to the point of death, so that we could be rescued from sin and death.
Given our example of Christ, is it any wonder that becoming a ‘slave of Christ’ was a badge of honour to the early Christians?
For example Paul introduces himself to the Romans by writing, “Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle and singled out for God’s good news.” (Romans 1:1, HCSB)
And Peter begins his second letter by stating: “Simeon Peter, a slave and an apostle of Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 1:1, HCSB.)
And even James, Jesus brother (try and wrap your head around that one) begins his letter: “James, a slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.” (James 1:1, HCSB).
To be a slave of Christ, or a slave of God, was an honour.
Now here is something, I really find interesting. The word doulos, or slave, is even used in the book of Revelation. At both the beginning and the end of the book, we are told that this revelation was given by God “to show His slaves what must quickly take place” (Rev. 1:1, HCSB).
And when all is said and done this is what Revelation says about the relationship between God and His people: “and there will no longer be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and His slaves will serve Him. 4 They will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads.” (Revelation 22:3-4, HCSB)
We will forever be His slaves. One day we will serve Him whole-heartedly in perfect obedience—just as Jesus served the Father whole-hearted in perfect obedience. Notice also that His name will be on our foreheads. This is another image from the institution of slavery. We will have “property of Christ” stamped on our foreheads.
Now, again, maybe you don’t like that image. Let me see if I can sweeten it up for you. If you have ever gone to camp, particularly when you were small, what did you mother used to do to your underwear? She would write your name on your underwear. Why did she do that? She did it to protect your underwear, right? Because everyone knows how many underwear thieves there are a camp. Actually, more likely than not, she knew how careless you were with your clothes and she wanted to make sure you stuff didn’t get lost. So the name is all about identity and protection. To be a slave of Christ is to bear his name. We are His property, which means that we are protected. No one is going to mess with God’s property.
You see there is a thief that came to rob and destroy more than your underwear. He came to steal and destroy you, but Christ purchased you by becoming a slave Himself and dying in your place. You are now His and you have His name placed prominently on your forehead, in a place where no one will miss it, and no one is going to mess with God’s property!
Ultimately the Early Christians chose for themselves the title ‘slave of Christ’. Why? Because it reminded them that they were rescued from the worst master of all—sin. The Early Christians chose for themselves the title of ‘slave of Christ’ because it identified them as Christ’s property. And like any slave in that culture, a slave could prosper far beyond his means if he had the perfect Master. Early Christians were proud to be slaves of Christ because it was an honour to be a slave to a Master like Christ. Early Christians chose the title “slave of Christ’ because they knew that as Christ’s property they were well-protected and well-cared for. Their lives weren’t dependent on luck or hard-work, or performance. Their lives were dependent on the care and protection of their master and that care and protection was guaranteed.
There is something very upside down about being a slave of Christ. Just as the first will be last becoming a slave is the means that we find our greatest valued as people.
We live in a world of supposed freedoms. What has it got us? You would think that the more freedom we have the more we would value each other as human beings, but freedom as the world provides it, brings real slavery. We have people treated like property. Corporations downsize without though of how individuals will be affected. Women become things to sell products and make money with their sexuality. Pornography turns everyone into objects. We are consumers—not people. The freedom of our world turns humans into property, but when we become the property of Christ, our true value as people is finally recognized and celebrated. You see, Christ didn’t purchase us because of what we can do for Him. He purchased us because of what He can do for us. In making us His own possession, He was placing on us the greatest value anyone ever has—it was the value of His very life. In God’s kingdom becoming a slave means that we are actually becoming human. As God’s possession we are valued for who we are—not what we provide.
You are a slave of Christ. This is what it means to received Jesus as Lord. You have accepted His offer of purchase. You are now His. And I firmly believe that the more you refocus your attitude to come in line with being Christ’s slave, the greater joy and purpose and freedom you will find in Christ. You are Christ’s dearly loved possession. You are under His care and protection. Celebrate that amazing reality by constantly reminding yourself that you have no identity outside of Christ.
