A slave and a servant to God

This morning as I was walking at the cemetery, the white pick-up truck pulled over and the driver, Tony, showed me his new, glossy, black-and-white jacketed book by John MacArthur, Slave. Tony told me there are people out there who have been perpetrating the fraud that we Christians are merely "servants" to God, when actually we are "slaves," according to the Greek word "doulos." I took Tony's word for it, being in the middle of a 500-acre park, with no access to a Greek lexicon.

But as I walked off a good 15 minutes later, and Tony drove off to pick up broken Sycamore tree branches from all the wind we've been having lately, the thought occurred to me that whatever the right translation of "doulos" is, I'll bet Christ would be happy enough just to have us live as real servants! That would be a far sight better than what a lot of us have been doing with ourselves all day. I pictured us as a bunch of school kids having fisticuffs in the mud puddle over this word issue, some shouting, "Slaves!" others shouting back, "Servants!"-and nobody really putting into practice either of the words.

Also I'm thinking: If Billy were to live as a sold-out "servant" to Christ, and Bob were to live as a "slave" to Christ, would you really be able to tell much difference? Both would be acknowledging that we are not our own, but bought with a price. Right? Unless you want to tell me that a slave is more owned somehow than a servant. Well, I guess that would depend what country and what time in history you're talking about. But I don't think the fellow who favors the "servant" translation is necessarily doing it because he is looking for an escape hatch or a loophole in the contract. I don't think anybody out there who is really serious about the Lord is going to favor "servant" because that way he can envision his service to God as a part-time job, or a temp job.

Let's just be a "servant" and a "slave" to God, under whatever terminology you prefer, knowing that slavery to God is the only true freedom (Romans 6:6, 14, 18-22), and servitude to the world, flesh, and devil are a living death (Romans 8:6).

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