6. Harris, Slave of Christ, 18.
Today's Gospel: Good News or Bad?
There are at least six Greek words for "servant," and doulos is not one of them. For example, diakonos (from which our word deacon is derived) means "servant." Oiketes speaks of a domestic servant. Pais denotes a young boy who runs errands. Huperetes (usually translated "minister") literally signifies a low-level servant who pulls an oar on the lower deck of a large ship. Leitourgos, also meaning "minister," designates someone who performs some kind of religious ser vice. Therapon, used of Moses in Hebrews 3:5 ("faithful in all His house as a servant"), refers to a dignified kind of high-level ser vice. And there are several more specific Greek words that describe ser vice in terms far loftier and more respectable than doulos.
Doulos speaks of slavery, pure and simple. It is not at all a hazy or uncertain term. It describes someone lacking personal freedom and personal rights whose very existence is defined by his ser vice to another. It is the sort of slavery in which "human autonomy is set aside and an alien will takes precedence of one's own."5 This is total, unqualified submission to the control and the directives of a higher authority — slavery, not merely ser vice at one's own discretion.
For example, in Matthew 6:24, Jesus said, "No one can be a slave to two masters" (literal translation). That translation is much stronger (and actually makes better sense) than what you will find in most versions: "No one can serve two masters." An employee with two jobs could indeed serve two masters. But slavery — not merely ser vice — is what the word doulos and all its derivatives speak of.
As Harris points out, "there is an important difference. A servant gives ser vice to someone, but a slave belongs to someone."6 It is not merely a nuance. Scripture repeatedly and emphatically places Chris tians in the latter category: "Do you not know that . . . you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price" (1 Cor. 6:19 – 20). We have a Master who purchased us (2 Peter 2:1). To be specific, we were purchased for God with the precious blood of Christ (Rev. 5:9). This is the very essence of what it means to be a Chris tian: "For not one of us lives for himself, and not one dies for himself; for if we live, we live for the Lord, or if we die, we die for the Lord; therefore whether we live or die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that He might be Lord both of the dead and of the living" (Rom. 14:7 – 9).
Why Such a Revolting Concept?
In one sense, we can understand why Bible translators have tended to soften the implications of doulos. The word slavery conjures up so much negative
5. Ibid. 6. Harris, Slave of Christ, 18.
What Does Jesus Mean When He Says, "Follow Me"?
imagery and so many strong passions for us that we instinctively shy away from it. I spoke on this subject at a pastors' conference in North Carolina not long ago, and during the Q&A session afterward, a soft-spoken black pastor stood up and gently, graciously posed this question: "How am I supposed to communicate to my congregation that they are slaves of Jesus Christ when slavery is such a distasteful part of our past?"
He was, of course, simply giving voice to the same dilemma every preacher and every faithful Chris tian faces when it comes to proclaiming the unadulterated gospel to unbelievers in our culture. We are proclaiming a message that is inherently offensive to human wisdom (1 Cor. 1:22 – 31; 2 Cor. 4:5). Slavery is distasteful to every sane person. A black person whose ancestors were slaves as recently as three or four generations ago may be more conscious of his or her contempt for slavery than someone whose ancestors were neither slaves nor slave owners. But being a slave is not an appealing (or dignified) prospect for anyone, regardless of his or her background. The idea that Jesus demanded absolute slavelike obedience to His lordship is a particularly difficult concept for people from contemporary Western cultures to grasp. But that is no reason to ignore or softpedal what Scripture clearly teaches about our duty to submit to Christ as Lord.
What we must not forget is that slavery was by no means a glamorous institution in first-century culture, either. It was a fixture in Roman societies — perfectly legal, pervasive, and rarely challenged. Not all slaves were mistreated, but many were, and Roman-style slavery was notorious for its inability to curtail the terrible abuses that did occur. Slaves themselves, of course, had absolutely no control over whether they were well treated or oppressed. So even though slavery was widely regarded as a necessary component of the social and economic structure, the idea of being a slave was universally loathsome. No one wanted to be anyone's doulos.
In that regard, Jesus' portrayal of discipleship as slavery had no more appeal to the popular tastes or felt needs of His time than it does today. In fact, because most people in Jesus' time were so familiar with real-life slavery, they surely had a much more vivid mental picture than we do of what Jesus was demanding when He called for absolute self-denial and surrender to His lordship. He was certainly not trying to appeal to a longing for self-esteem or make discipleship look enticing to the people of Galilee and Judea when He spoke about the cost of following Him. They understood far better than we do what a menial position He was calling them to. In fact, many people in the early church were slaves. That is why there are so many passages in the Epistles giving instructions about how slaves were to behave in order to reflect the character and holiness of Christ (Eph. 6:5 – 8; Col. 3:22; 1 Tim. 6:1 – 2; Titus 2:9 – 10; 1 Peter 2:18 – 21).
Today's Gospel: Good News or Bad?
The Problem with a Feel-Good Gospel
The idea of the Chris tian as a slave and Christ as Master is almost totally missing from the vocabulary of contemporary evangelical Chris tian ity. Not only is slave a bad word loaded with political incorrectness, but our generation also loves the concepts of freedom and personal fulfillment. Modern and postmodern people crave autonomy, and as the church has become increasingly worldly, the biblical truth of our duty to Him as our absolute Lord and Master has all but disappeared from the evangelical consciousness. The church in our generation has reduced all of saving faith and Chris tian discipleship to a thoughtless (but more politically correct) cliché: "a personal relationship with Jesus." The ambiguity of the phrase reflects the destructive vagueness with which evangelicals have been handling (and mishandling) the gospel for the past several decades. As if Christ could be someone's intimate friend without being that person's Lord.
That is, after all, the whole gist of the no-lordship message: you can have Jesus as Savior and Friend here and now and decide later whether you really want to submit to His authority or not. It is hard to imagine a more disastrous twisting of what it means to be a Chris tian. Remember that among the original twelve disciples, only one wanted to be seen as Jesus' "friend" without ever really bowing to His authority as Lord and Master — and that was Judas. A lot of people (and Satan as well) had some kind of "personal relationship" with Jesus during His earthly ministry without submitting to Him as Lord. But as we shall shortly observe, His only true friends were those who did what He said (John 15:14).
The lordship controversy would have been much less significant — and the no-lordship doctrine surely would have faced an insurmountable obstacle — if those who first began to flirt with the concept had grasped the implications of the word doulos and its necessary connection with the word kurios. In fact, a host of contemporary evangelical aberrations would have been averted if Chris tians of the past few generations had retained some basic understanding of what it means to be a slave of Christ.
Consider what this truth would mean for the prosperity gospel, the idea that Chris tians have the power to create health, wealth, and material success with their own words; or the market-driven philosophy of church growth, which promises the fulfillment of felt needs and the achievement of personal satisfaction as incentives for responding to Christ; or the elusive quest for a brand of faith that guarantees "Your Best Life Now"; or the postmodern concept of truth as something we each get to define for ourselves. All of these ideas are at odds with the biblical principle that Chris tians are slaves who are totally subject to the will of another — namely, Christ, who is their absolute Master.
What Does Jesus Mean When He Says, "Follow Me"?
We need to let Scripture speak for itself, and it is time to face squarely the reality of this difficult truth. Slavery to Christ is not a minor or secondary feature of true discipleship. This is not merely symbolic or illustrative language devoid of any literal sense. It is exactly how Jesus Himself defined the "personal relationship" He must have with every true follower (John 12:26; 15:20). And that fact is underscored throughout the New Testament. It is significant that the opening words of several New Testament epistles include their various authors' own confessions that they were but slaves of Christ (Rom. 1:1; Phil. 1:1; Titus 1:1; James 1:1; 2 Peter 1:1; Jude 1; Rev. 1:1). Every true disciple in the apostolic church understood this truth completely, because if all the apostles confessed that they were Jesus' slaves, those under the apostles' oversight certainly had to be slaves of Christ as well.
As a matter of fact, the fundamental aspects of slavery are the very features of our redemption that Scripture puts the most stress on. We are chosen (Eph. 1:4 – 5; 1 Peter 1:1; 2:9); bought (1 Cor. 6:20; 7:23); owned by our Master (Rom. 14:7 – 9; 1 Cor. 6:19; Titus 2:14); subject to the Master's will and control over us (Acts 5:29; Rom. 6:16 – 19; Phil. 2:5 – 8); and totally dependent on the Master for everything in our lives (2 Cor. 9:8 – 11; Phil. 4:19). We will ultimately be called to account (Rom. 14:12); evaluated (2 Cor. 5:10); and either chastened or rewarded by Him (Heb. 12:5 – 11; 1 Cor. 3:14). Those are all essential components of slavery.
What Would Jesus Say?
Jesus Himself introduced the slave metaphor in the New Testament. He frequently drew a direct connection between slavery and discipleship. In Matthew 10:24 – 25, for example, he said, "A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a slave above his master. It is enough for the disciple that he become like his teacher, and the slave like his master." In the parables He told, he often used slavery as the symbol of discipleship. The words of Matthew 25:21 are what every true disciple should hope to hear at the end of life: "Well done, good and faithful slave; you were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master."
Jesus always described true discipleship in such terms, and He did so with no effort to adjust the message to make it sound appealing to worldly minded sinners. Both His preaching and His private discourses were notable for their unvarnished directness. Nothing He said about the cost of discipleship was ever toned down, dumbed down, lightened up, glossed over, mitigated, understated, or pillowed in soft words.
He was not the least bit encouraging toward people who wanted to follow Him around just for the food and the miracles. In fact, He did everything
Today's Gospel: Good News or Bad?
possible to discourage people like that (John 6). He called only broken people who were sick of their sin, who understood their hopeless condition, and who were therefore willing to forsake everything else to be His disciples (Luke 5:32; 14:33). He never muted His description of what it would cost to follow Him. And (contrary to what some church leaders advocate today) He didn't reserve the hard words for people who were already believers. He said the same things whether He was speaking to unconverted crowds (Luke 14:25 – 35) or to individual would-be followers who claimed they were ready to follow Him anywhere (Luke 9:57 – 58). Sometimes He sounded almost as if He were trying to turn away as many inquirers as possible — and indeed, He did turn away multitudes of merely curious and halfhearted admirers (John 6:66 – 67).
He demanded that people deny themselves completely. He required their implicit obedience. He instructed them to be ready to die for Him. He called for them to relinquish all their normal priorities — including family, friends, personal plans, ambitions, and everything else in this world. Their whole lives were explicitly and irrevocably placed under His authority. His lordship was total and nonnegotiable. Those were His terms, and would-be disciples who tried to dictate different terms were always turned away (Luke 9:59 – 62).
Not Mere Slaves, but Slaves Who Are Friends
Perhaps the key passage on Jesus' demand for implicit obedience is one we have already alluded to briefly — John 15:14 – 15: "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."
Notice, first of all, the fundamental principle this passage begins with: obedience. He is the Lord who commands them, and they are expected to obey. He was their Master, and they were His subordinates, duty-bound to do whatever He said. His authority over them was absolute, and their obedience was to be unequivocal — or else they were no friends of His.
It is vital to understand that Jesus was not suggesting that obedience makes someone His friend — as if His favor could be earned through ser vice. He was saying, however, that obedience is a singular proof that someone is His friend. Implicit obedience to His commandments is the necessary, expected, and natural fruit of genuine love for Him. It is also therefore the telltale mark of authentic saving faith. Again, a necessary inference is that someone who does not do what Jesus says is not a friend of His at all. He was describing as clearly as possible a master-slave relationship.