Who Is Christ’s Slave?

This is what it means to follow Christ. That's why Jesus said, count the cost, right?

Better think about it. Just the thought of it causes anger in many people, and you can understand why. But could being a slave ever be something to cherish, to rejoice in, even to long for? Today on Grace to You, John MacArthur looks at a critical truth in the Bible, the issue of being a slave of Christ, as John continues his series titled Lessons for a Modern-Day Disciple. As you are about to hear, the most basic relationship all believers have with Christ is that of slave and master. And now, here's John with a lesson. If you would open your Bible to John chapter 15, John chapter 15, I just want to read two verses to you, verses 14 and 15.

And from this, address an issue that is of deep concern to me. It was in the spring of last year that I got on an airplane to fly across the Atlantic to England to minister at the Banner of Truth Conference at Leicester University, north of London. I had a wonderful week with some precious, precious men there from the UK and from other parts of Europe who gathered around the great doctrines of Scripture. It was refreshing to my own soul, deeply refreshing to my own soul. One of the different things about it was I was put in a dorm room. I was locked up in that room. It was really one of the best things that ever happened to me because my life is so busy and so interrupted by so many things that I was able to focus.

I put on my Bose noise-canceling earphones, Al, and turned on classical music and studied the theme that I want to talk to you about. And what dominated my thinking, looking at the cross of Christ and His sacrifice for me and understanding what I'd been looking at all week, what dominated me was the concept that I am, and all Christians are, slaves of Jesus Christ...slaves of Jesus Christ. In John 15, 14, this is what you read, "'You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing. But I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.'"

This is one of the richest of all passages. The word of note here is slaves. "'No longer do I merely call you slaves. No longer do I only call you slaves, I now call you friends.

But you are friends who are slaves because you are my friends if you do what I command you.'" It is that about which I want to speak. If I were to ask you what is the fundamental truth, what is the foundational reality, what is the distinguishing fact of Christianity in three words, what would you say?

Think about it. What essential core confession should boldly mark your church? What essential core confession should boldly mark your ministry? What theological absolutes should govern your life and your church?

Well if you haven't arrived there, here it is. Jesus is Lord. That is the great Christian confession. If you will confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you shall be...what?...saved.

That is foundational. And no man can say Jesus is Lord but by the Holy Spirit, 1 Corinthians 12, 3. But that is not how contemporary evangelism is done. We are told Jesus wants to be our personal Savior. The ambiguity of that phrase suits the current vagueness of the gospel, a personal relationship with Jesus.

What in the world does that mean? I did a radio interview on a large major metropolitan talk show, Christian Station, with a host who happened to be a woman who did the three-hour afternoon Christian counseling talk program. And as she was interviewing me about one of my books, it was clear to me that she was pretty superficial in her understanding, even of the gospel. So off the air during a commercial break, I said to her, "'How did you become a Christian?'" She said, "'Oh, it was great.'" She said, "'One day I got Jesus' phone number and we have been connected ever since.'" That's exactly what she said. I said, "'Let me process that a little bit.

You got Jesus' phone number and you have been connected ever since.'" Just exactly, "'What does that mean?' To which she replied, "'What do you mean what does it mean?' And then she said to me, "'How would you explain how you became a Christian?'

And so I did." To which she replied, "'Oh, come on, you don't have to go through all that, do you?'" She had a personal relationship with Jesus, which meant that she personally defined it. By the way, the devil has a personal relationship with Jesus and it's not a good one. But it is very personal. And I will tell you something else, every unregenerate person on the way to hell has a very personal relationship with Jesus, and they don't define it. He does. The idea is that Jesus is waiting for you to personally define what you want from Him, and He'll fulfill all your wants, all your desires, and all the purposes that you can imagine for yourself, even make you healthy and wealthy.

He becomes your buddy who loves you and only wants to satisfy all your dreams. In fact, if you listen to the kind of psychological, sensual preaching today, you'd think Jesus thinks your sins are funny. But when you listen to Jesus, at the very core and center of all of His teaching was that He is not your buddy, He is Lord. And He didn't hold back on that, and He didn't mitigate that, and He didn't tone that down, and He said that both to those who believed in Him and those who did not. He is absolute, sovereign Master and He never hesitated to declare it to friends and enemies. All who follow Jesus truly have yielded completely to His lordship. Listen to His words back in the thirteenth chapter of John and the thirteenth verse. "'You call Me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am.'" No equivocation. You say, okay, okay, we know that, we know that, and I know you know that, and I know you know that, I know you know that.

You say, where are you going with this? The true reality of Christ's lordship has been all but obscured and eclipsed in the church, not just in the contemporary generation, but for centuries, for centuries. The reason 20 years ago I wound up writing a book on the lordship of Jesus Christ wasn't because something went wrong 20 years ago.

It had been going wrong a long, long time. And I want to help you re-grip this great truth. I want to make two points, one, Jesus is Lord, kurios, kurios used 747 times in the New Testament. That's right, 747 times in the New Testament.

Just to break that down a little smaller bite, in the book of Acts it's used 92 times. The word soter, savior is used twice. Kurios means one who has power, one who has absolute authority, one who has total right to command.

That's kurios. It is a synonym with another word. The other word which is a synonym is despotes, from which we get the English word despot . If we were able to come down to the finest point where these words may have a nuance of difference, we would say, as some lexicographers do, that kurios is sovereign, Lord, which speaks of the fact that He is at the pinnacle, He is at the top. And despotes speaks of absolute, Lord, which simply emphasizes that He is over everything, and there is no other, Lord. Both words, by the way, are extremely powerful words, and both words are part of the vocabulary of slavery.

Both words are essential to the world of slavery. If you will look at Jude, verse 4, you will see the use of both words there, used as synonyms. At the end of verse 4 in Jude, we read about our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ, our only despotes and kurios. To say Jesus is Lord is to say He is the sovereign ruler and the absolute ruler. That is what those words mean. It is not to identify Him as deity in particular.

It is certainly not limited to that. It is to acknowledge Him as absolute sovereign ruler, Master with absolute dominion. Let me bring it down. Using the culture to say someone is Lord or despotous means He owns slaves. You're not the Lord of no one. You're not the absolute ruler of no one. And you're not the sovereign ruler over people who have an option.

And you're not the absolute ruler over people who have an option. Any denial of that aspect of the lordship of Jesus Christ is heresy. The church, including all pastors, elders, deacons, and people, is an assembly of those who by the power of the Holy Spirit, according to 1 Corinthians 12, 3, have confessed Jesus as Lord, according to Romans 10, 9.

That's what a church is. Our life is not defined by our own will, our own wants, our own desires, our own ambitions, our own self-conceived purposes, dreams, hopes. As true Christians, our lives are defined as subjected to, submitted to, under the total power and control of our Lord. That is why Jesus could say repeatedly in His invitations to follow Him, if any man will come after Me, let him...what?...deny himself.

It's over, it's over. You give up all control. You give up your cross, that is you give up so much it could cost you even your life, and you follow Me. That's absolute lordship.

Who would really imagine that this great glorious truth, most basic to the Christian gospel, would be lost in the so-called church and we would have people getting Jesus' phone number, and getting connected to Him on their terms. These are strong words and these are bold words. Let me make the obvious connection.

There's no such thing as a kurios without a doulos. There's no such thing as a master without a slave. You're not the master of nobody. This is all part of slave language.

One word axiomatically, self-evidently implies the other. If He is Lord, He has slaves. Jesus is Lord, and those who call Him Lord necessarily are His slaves.

He makes the obvious comment in the form of a question, Luke 6.46, He says this, why do you call Me Lord and do not what I tell you? That is the basic understanding of the relationship between kurios and doulos. It was the most defining, simple, world-dominating idea. The numbers go as stretching out into the tens of millions of slaves living in the world of that time around the Mediterranean. They knew exactly what a kurios doulos relationship was.

Everybody knew. Why do you call Me Lord and do not what I say? This is incongruous, this is ridiculous. If I'm Lord, you're a slave. That's the second point, Christians are slaves, Christians are slaves.

Now you might have a hard time kind of buying into that for a minute here. The word doulos is used 130-plus times in the New Testament, 130-plus times. Actually if you add soon doulos, slaves together with, and some verb forms, it gets up to 150 times.

And we are called in 1 Corinthians, for example, 722 and 23, Christ's doulos, or douloi, plural. Here's the thing you need to understand, doulos, common word, means one thing, slave. It's all it ever means, all it's ever meant, means nothing else.

It's not ambiguous. It means a person owned. It means a person with no rights, no freedom, no standing.

A slave, listen, could not own property, could not give testimony in a court of law as a witness in a case, could not seek reparations from a civil court of law because he had no rights, no autonomy, and no freedom. Doulos means that. There are six other Greek words used in the New Testament that can be translated servant. Six other words. Doulos is not one of those words. And this is what I read in what has to be the most authoritative treatment of the word available. This is the summation of the opening paragraph. The meaning of doulos is so unequivocal and self-contained that it is superfluous to give examples or trace its history. Now for Kittle to say that is a huge concession because if they had their way, they would go on for forty pages.

Are you kidding? The meaning is so unequivocal and self-contained that it is superfluous to give examples or trace its history. And then it says this, it is distinct from servant and defines someone who does not do what he does as a matter of choice, but is subject totally to an alien will.

He is under obligation and total dependence on his, by the way, kurios, unfortunately. Though the word doulos always means this, and it appears 150 times in some form, 130 times as doulos in the New Testament, it is rarely ever translated slave. The only time typically your English Bible, whatever version you have, will translate it slave is when it's referring to an actual literal slave, or when it's referring to an inanimate object like being a slave of righteousness. When it's used to refer to a person related to Christ, they will not translate it slave, they equivocate. And you'll find the word servant and the sort of non-existent hybrid word bondservant for which there is no Greek equivalent.

Why? One scholar did a survey of twenty English translations of the New Testament. Only one of them always translated doulos as slave, only one. And it happened to be a somewhat obscure translation, E.J. Goodspeed, a 1930s Chicago University Greek cutting edge Greek scholar.

None of the others did. Since then, I have found out that J. Adams has a little translation of the New Testament, you may find or have one in your study somewhere, that is faithful to the word doulos. And I also understand, although I haven't checked out every source, that the New Holman Christian Standard Bible attempts to be faithful to the translation of the word doulos. It's unequivocal in its meaning.

All scholars agree. I recently talked with the publisher of another new translation. We sat down and I said, what did you do with doulos? To which he dropped his head and looked up and said, servant. I said, why?

We had many discussions, we had many discussions, we had many discussions. It's offensive. I said, a lot of things in the Bible are offensive.

Why? What has happened is, from the very get-go, English Bible translation has shielded us from the impact of this Word and it has contributed to this necessity to battle for the issue of lordship, because it sucked out the other component, slave. Slavery, the word doulos, plain and simple, indicates that you are owned. No freedom under the total control of an alien will, absolute unqualified submission to the commands of a higher authority.

Once you get that, then you understand, for example, why Jesus said this, Matthew 6, 24. Here's the Greek, no man can be a slave to two masters. If you translate it, servant, doesn't have any impact. No man can serve two masters, are you kidding? How many bosses do you have?

If you're talking about serving someone, if you're a waiter, you'll serve however many tables are there and how many people are sitting at the table. What doesn't make any sense? But if you translate it right, no man can be a slave to two masters, then it makes sense, because you can't be absolutely, totally owned by two people, only by one. Here's the difference.

If it works for someone, a slave is owned by someone. That's a whole different deal. If you're evangelizing someone and you say to them, I come to you in the name of Jesus Christ to tell you that He is commanding you to bow your knee to Him, confess Him as Lord, deny yourself and become His slave. That's biblical evangelism. This is what it means to follow Christ. That's why Jesus said, count the cost, right?

You have to hate your father, hate your mother, hate your sister, hate your brother, and your own life. Take up your cross, better think about it. You better think about it like a man going to build a tower.

You better think about it like a man going to go to war. You better make sure you can make the required sacrifice because self-denial is very difficult because self-love is very dominant. But once you understand this concept, the whole New Testament opens up like a flower. Then all of a sudden when you read, you're not your own, you're bought with a price, boom. You understand it. Your body is not your own. Your mind is not your own.

It's Christ's. Listen to the words of Peter, false prophets, false teachers, with destructive heresies denying the master who bought them. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur.

Thanks for being with us. Today's lesson on how every Christian is a slave of Christ is from John's series, Lessons for a Modern-Day Disciple. Now friend, here's some background on what you just heard. John preached that message in 2008. And John, the word that figured so prominently in your message, the Greek word doulos, which means slave, that term was offensive in 2008, and it was offensive centuries ago when the earliest English-language Bibles were published, and probably it's never been a more offensive word and concept than it is here in the United States in 2023. But as you showed us in the lesson, when you lose that concept of being a slave, you actually lose something critical about what it means to be a Christian. Yeah, and through the years, as people translated the Bible into English, they avoided using the word slave.

It had such a stigma as it does today, but it's always had that kind of stigma, so they would substitute servant or bondservant, but doulos is slave. And when you understand the concept of the believer as a slave, you really do understand our relationship with our Savior. When we say Jesus is Lord, we're at the same time saying we're his slaves. That's the language of slavery.

So let me mention a book to you that I want you to read. Its title is Slave, the hidden truth about your identity in Christ. Many Christians struggle in spiritual battles because they haven't come to grips with God's sovereign rule, the lordship of Christ. To say we are slaves of Jesus is not a burden, it's not an insult, it's what God calls us, and it's full of profound meaning and implications. Being a slave is part and parcel of following the Lord.

It's being a Christian. In this book called Slave, you see the depths of that one forgotten word and explain the life-changing difference it makes. You'll find in this book an exploration of the doctrines of grace, challenging teaching that is often neglected, maligned, or mischaracterized, but that directly relates to God's sovereign rule and to the believer's identity as a slave. The title again in full, Slave, the hidden truth about your identity in Christ. You can order one today from Grace to You, affordably priced as always.

That's right, friend. This book will give you a clear picture of how life-changing and, in many ways, how freeing it is to submit to Christ. I urge you to order John's book titled Slave when you contact us today. Place your order at gty.org or call us toll-free at 800-55-GRACE. The Slave book costs $10 and shipping is free.

This resource comes with a study guide in the back to help you put into practice what you've learned. It's also available in Spanish, again to order the English or Spanish versions of the book titled Slave, go to gty.org or call 800-55-GRACE. And thanks for remembering that your support plays a vital role in taking verse-by-verse teaching like today's look at lessons for a modern-day disciple to people in your community and communities like yours around the globe. To partner with us in this gospel ministry, mail your tax-deductible donation to Grace to You, Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412. You can also express your support when you call 800-55-GRACE or go online at gty.org. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace to You staff, I'm Phil Johnson encouraging you to be here tomorrow when John shows you the implications of Jesus being both Savior and Lord. He will continue his series, Lessons for a Modern-Day Disciple, with another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.