Don’t you know that
when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the
one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to
obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you
used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of
teaching that has now claimed your allegiance.
The concept of a “joyful slave” seems like an oxymoron, as
the two words seem in contradiction to one another. A slave is someone that
lacks freedom. A slave is someone that is submissive to their Master and must completely
follow the direction that is handed down by that Master. Since the idea of
slavery was first introduced to the world, the term “slave” has always had a
demeaning, depressive, and negative connotation. Being a slave is not something
that one typically volunteers for and one would hardly consider being joyful
while being a slave. Yet through our baptism and our genuine faith in Christ,
we stand with our hand raised, smile on our face, welcoming the opportunity to
be called and serve as a slave. We welcome the chance to be slaves to
righteousness. We welcome the opportunity to be slaves to doing what is good,
right, and upstanding. We are slaves to serving the Lord with our time,
talents, words, actions, and thoughts. And we eagerly and joyfully embrace this
slavery…for there is truly no other place we would rather be. Now, the path of
slavery that we embrace is not one with a heavy-handed master that lord’s over
us in cruelty, waiting for the opportunity to catch us slipping and smack us
back into place. That’s the world’s definition of the relationship between a
slave and master. No, we serve a Master (God) that has led with deep love, true
concern, and complete forgiveness for his people. When God sent Christ, he
declared his deep love for us and his genuine desire to restore the
relationship with each of us that had become so miserably broken. Through our
slavery to righteousness, we have complete freedom…freedom from the burden and
heavy weight of sin. Freedom from the fear of the hammer that awaits a sinner
at the end of their lives…freedom from justified condemnation and eternal
damnation that comes for a slave to sin. It seems we can be one or the other….we
can be a slave to the Lord, or we can be a slave to the world. I pray that we
all joyfully embrace the opportunity to be a slave to the Lord…for the reward
each day and the reward at the end of our lives is so immeasurably better than what
awaits one ruled by sin. May we today joyfully embrace our roles as slaves,
slaves to the living God, and embrace the refreshing freedom that comes with
being a slave! To God alone be the glory!
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