Slaves for Christ C

Being a slave to Jesus Christ is beyond any kind of slavery that anybody ever knew because this master makes us sons and pours out all the lavish riches in his possession for our own unmitigated joy and his own glory. We wouldn't want to be a slave under that master. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Who would want to be called a slave, much less be one? The concept, even the very word, is offensive to modern ears.

It's loaded with cultural baggage. No power, no rights, no resources of his own, a slave is stripped of everything except what the master provides. And yet, slave is a dominating identity that God gives to those he saves, though the term has all but disappeared from modern Bible translations.

But there's much to gain by embracing what's been lost. John MacArthur shows you that today in a lesson that will grab your attention. It's called Slaves for Christ and it's part of a series featuring some of John's classic sermons titled Foundations Volume 2.

So here's John now with a lesson. We're going to turn to a subject in the New Testament that as I think about it is largely ignored and overlooked, and I've been made aware of that in recent months. It was not too many months ago that I was flying on one of those jumbo jets from Los Angeles to London in the process reading a book that dealt with the issue of slavery in the New Testament time and in the New Testament text. It set me thinking in all kinds of directions. I actually finished the book on the flight.

I was so wrapped in my attention to this particular theme. Being a slave of Christ may be the best way to define a Christian. We are, as believers, of Christ. You would never suspect that, however, from the language of Christianity.

In contemporary Christianity the language is anything but slave language. It is about freedom. It is about liberation. It is about health, wealth, prosperity, finding your own fulfillment, fulfilling your own dream, finding your own purpose. We often hear that God loves you unconditionally and wants you to be all you want to be. He wants to fulfill every ambition, every desire, every hope, every dream.

In fact, there are books being written about dreams as if they are gifts from God which God then having given them is bound to fulfill. 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. But what exactly is our relationship to God? What is our relationship to Christ? How are we best to understand it? Well if you read the New Testament in its original text, you would come away stunned really by how different the original text is from any English version that you've ever read whether King James, New King James, New American Standard, ESV, NIV and you can name all the rest.

All of them virtually have found a way to mask something that is an absolutely critical element of truth. In fact, the word slave appears in the New Testament one hundred and thirty times in the original text. You will find it once in the King James, once the Greek word slave is translated slave. You will find it translated slave a few other times in other texts like the New King James text and even the New American Standard text and it will be translated slave when, one, it refers to actual slavery, or two, it refers to some kind of bondage to an inanimate reality. But whenever it is personalized, the translators seem unwilling to translate it slave. For example, in Matthew 6.24, Jesus said this, "'No man can be a slave to two masters.'"

What does your Bible say? No man can serve two masters. The favorite word for slave is servant, favorite English word. Very often bond servant is used which tends to move in the right direction but is not exactly slave. There are plenty of words for servant. There's only one word for slave, doulos and sun doulos.

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. Now, having said that by way of introduction, that's all that is. What characterized a slave? And I'm going to pull it together for you here, I hope.

Let me give you five things to think about, okay? One, exclusive ownership...exclusive ownership. A servant could be hired and quit. A slave was owned. That means exclusive ownership because he was bought with a price.

Does that sound like New Testament talk? Two, complete and constant availability and obedience...complete and constant availability and obedience. Three, subject to one alien will. No man can be a slave to two masters, right?

Impossible. You could have two employers. You could have a day job and a night job. But you can't have two masters who have total control over you because they both own you and everybody knew that. That's why that statement is self-evident. No man can be a slave to two masters. So, exclusive ownership by one master, complete constant availability and obedience to that one master and simple in the sense that it's singular, let's call it singular devotion to that one master.

That's New Testament talk too, isn't it? Love the Lord your God with...what?...all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Have no other gods.

Do all that you do to please Him, to honor Christ. Fourth, the slave had complete dependence on his master for everything...for everything, absolutely everything. And fifth, all discipline and reward came from that one master. That's what it was to be a slave.

You were owned by one person. You were completely and constantly to be available and obedient to that one master. You had one consuming raison d'etre, reason to live and that was to please that master. You were dependent on that master for absolutely everything and all discipline and reward came at the discretion of that 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 and that's why the New Testament says you cannot...these are the words of Jesus...serve God and money.

You can't serve God and anything else. Fourthly, as believers, we are totally dependent upon our one master for everything...protection, provision now and in the future, totally dependent on Him. 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. I can't tell you how many years I have gone through discussions with people about the lordship of Christ.

Let me tell you something real simple, kurios and doulos are two words that describe both sides of a relationship. If there is a slave, let me tell you something, there is a Lord. If there is a slave, there is a master. If there's a master, there's a slave. You don't call yourself a master if you don't have a slave and you're not a slave if you don't have a master. That's why 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.

There's no other way to view it. Kurios and doulos are the two sides of the relationship. A slave is someone whose life belongs totally to someone else, absolute ownership, absolute control, absolute subjection, absolute obedience, absolute loyalty, absolute dependence. Slavery then was a social relationship between two persons where one had nothing, willed nothing and received nothing but what the master authorized, desired and provided.

Now if you don't grasp that idea of slavery, and a lot of us we miss it because it's been hidden from our English text, it's hard for us to really understand the essence of what it is to be a Christian. You are a slave of Jesus Christ. You are owned. You have been purchased by His blood, Acts 20. You have been bought not with silver and gold, but with what? First Peter 1, 18 and 19, the precious blood of Jesus Christ.

You have been purchased, Revelation 5, 9. You have no independent rights. Slaves had no rights. Slaves owned nothing. They could not own their own property. In the eyes of the law, they were not citizens.

They could hold no public office. They were completely under the discretion and the provision and the protection and the care and the abuse in an earthly sense of their owner. The New Testament...listen...does not condemn slavery...doesn't. The New Testament doesn't condone slavery, just recognizes that it exists.

Look, the New Testament does regulate it, tells slaves how to act if they're Christians, and it tells masters how to act if they're Christians. The slaves are to serve as if they're serving Christ. Didn't I read you that in Ephesians 6, 5 and 6? And the masters are to conduct themselves with their slaves in a way that honors Christ.

And that plays out in the wonderful little book of Philemon. Colossians 3 says the same thing. Look at Colossians 3, 22. Colossians 3, slaves, and it's talking to those who actually are slaves, slaves in all things obey those who are your masters on earth.

That's the way the system works, do it. Here you have it very clearly indicated that the New Testament does not call for the abolishing of slavery. It doesn't condemn it, it doesn't condone it. Slaves in all things obey those who are your masters on earth, not with external service as those who merely please men, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. Whatever you do, do your work heartily as far as for the Lord rather than for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. Then I love this, it is the Lord Christ whom you serve.

That's not what it says. It is the Lord Christ to whom you are enslaved...enslaved. In other words, because of your slavery to Christ, you conduct your earthly slavery in a way that honors Christ. If you're a master, you conduct your care of the slaves in a Christ-honoring way. If you're a slave, you conduct your life in a Christ-honoring way. The New Testament doesn't condemn it, doesn't condone it, but it regulates it by calling for the highest kind of Christ-honoring conduct and therefore the New Testament condemns all abuses on both sides. There was a great upside to being a slave of a benevolent, gracious, generous, kind, compassionate master.

I can't think of a better life. In the church, slaves and masters blended. By the way, you couldn't tell them by their address and if they hadn't been a fugitive and gotten stamped, you wouldn't know who was a slave and who wasn't. And in the church, Galatians 3.28, in Christ there's neither bond nor free, all are one. But Christianity doesn't overthrow the social structure. Christianity was not a social reconstruction movement. By the way, if Christianity exists to abolish slavery, then Jesus and the Apostles failed miserably.

They're guilty of a massive failure. They didn't abolish slavery. Rather than abolish slavery, this is amazing, the Spirit of God took the slave metaphor because it was the best metaphor to describe our personal relationship to Christ. He bought us, He owns us. We are devoted to Him and to Him alone, to be obedient to Him at all times. We have no will but His will. He is our Lord. We confess Him as Lord.

That's exactly what He demanded. Remember the words of Luke 9 23, we've repeated them so many times, if any man will come after Me, let him deny himself. That's slave talk.

That's slave talk. Take up his cross and follow Me. It's the end of you, the end of your life. You're finished.

It's over, you're done. You are now the slave of Jesus Christ. And it's not burdensome. Jesus said, take My yoke because My yoke is...what?...easy and My burden is light and you'll find rest. A slave could have some status, but the status the slave had was related to who his master was. That's why 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. And we have no honor for ourselves other than that honor that comes to us because of who our master is, right? And that's why the Apostles could say, I'm a slave of God. I'm a slave of Jesus Christ.

That's where the honor came from. And I submit to Him for all my needs. I'm dependent on Him as my protector and my provider and I submit to all His discipline of my failures and my disobedience that He might conform me more to His will and I submit to Him someday for that reward which He determines is suitable to give to me when I come before Him and hear well done good and faithful slave.

Let Him give me what He will. And by the way, you're going to be a slave to someone. Being a slave to Jesus Christ is beyond any kind of slavery that anybody ever knew because this master...listen to this one...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? What a joy to be a slave of Christ.

Father, we thank You tonight for helping us to see something that maybe we haven't seen so clearly in the past. We are slaves, happily so, gladly so, who have been bought out of another slavery, the slavery to sin and death and hell. We are slaves who are loved. We are slaves who are beloved by our master. We love You in return, O Lord, and desire to serve You and to please You with all our hearts in single-minded, undistracted devotion. We pledge ourselves again to that because we love You and because it honors You and praises You. Thank You for the privilege and all that You give us of which we are so unworthy. In the name of Christ, amen.

That's John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. Today's message here on Grace to You is part of John's series that we've called Foundations Volume 2. Well, John, you've convinced us that the Christian's identity as a slave is a more prominent concept in Scripture than most people realize, and in Romans 6, the Apostle Paul talks about our slavery to Christ, slavery to righteousness, and Paul says that's really the only true freedom.

So how do we balance those concepts? I mean, how can a slave be free? Well, a slave would be free in the sense that you were a slave of sin, and you now are a slave of righteousness. This is a freedom, not a freedom to do what you want, but the freedom to do what is right. That's the true freedom. Before you come to Christ, you are free, but you're free to do some degree of what is wrong.

That's not freedom. That's bondage to sin. Christ sets you free from that bondage, which just really prevents you from doing anything that truly, truly honors God.

Now you are free to do what is right. You're free to do what is righteous, freed up from the bondage of sin. So in that sense, a slave of Christ is free from sin, and the slavery we have to Christ is the most wonderful of all possible relationships because he provides us everything we need and more lavishly. We are literally endowed with every good thing that God has coming down from heaven to his children.

We have all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus. We are the richest, most satisfied, most provided for, most secure, most blessed slaves of Christ. It's that kind of slavery. So I just want to remind you that the book that I was talking about yesterday is titled Slave. It's a book you really have to read. If you're a Christian, you need to read this book and understand this concept of being a slave of Christ. It's something that the church has avoided.

That's a sad thing. In fact, very often New Testament translations translate the word slave, doulos in Greek, by some word like servant, and that doesn't tell you the true story. Why has this term slave virtually disappeared from so many translations?

Well, people see it as offensive. The truth of the matter is it's the most marvelous thing you could ever know as a believer. The title again of this book, Slave, order yours today from grace to you.

That's right. Thanks, John. And friend, this book really does get to the heart of what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ. Order a copy of John's book titled Slave When You Get in Touch Today. Slave is $10 in soft cover and shipping is free. To order, call 800-55-GRACE.

Again, that's 800-55-GRACE. Or visit our website GTY.org. The title of the book again, Slave, subtitled The Hidden Truth About Your Identity in Christ. Included in the book is a companion study guide.

It's a helpful tool for working through the book with someone you're discipling or with a small group. Again, to order, call 800-55-GRACE or visit GTY.org. And when you visit GTY.org, be sure you catch up on any articles you may have missed on the Grace To You blog, like our posts on the Lordship of Christ or the doctrine of forgiveness or the love of God. The blog is one of thousands of free resources available at our website, including more than 3,600 sermons that are free to download in MP3N transcript format. Our address again, GTY.org. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace To You staff. I'm Phil Johnson. Be back here tomorrow when John shows you a view of Revelation from 35,000 feet, what he calls a jet tour through that amazing book. It's another half hour of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time, on Grace To You.