Whose slave are you?

Pastor/Teacher
John Farley
Sunday,
November 29, 2009

Whose slave are you?

Paul’s new name was a sign of his personal sense of destiny.

Being given a new name in Bible times meant a change in nature or relationship.

The Divine wrestler asked Jacob his name because He wanted to emphasize the meaning of his name being changed from Jacob the contender and swindler to Israel, a prince with God.

At the moment that Jacob yielded to God’s will, he became a new man who could receive the blessings from God and assume his place in God’s plan.

He is destined to become a servant of God, a man governed by God’s will, instead of a dishonorable supplanter.

So we have seen real change in the life of Jacob. We have seen him go from the swindler and supplanter to a prince with God.

We have seen real change in the life of Abram. By God’s power and grace he became the father of many nations.

We have seen real change in the life of Saul. He went from a persecutor of the church to the apostle of Christ to the Gentiles.

The second packed phrase here is
“a slave of Christ Jesus”

PauloV douloV Cristou Ihsou

Paul the slave, the slave of Christ Jesus

Doulos = “slave”

When introducing himself to these Roman Christians, the first and most important thing Paul wants them to know is that he is a slave of Christ Jesus.

Slaves were the exclusive property of their masters, and they had no control over their lives.

This notion of a slave is very important in the Christian way of life.

The slave concept
is rather fundamental
to the whole idea of the Gospel, the good news.

Redemption refers to the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ paid the price for the sins of the world by His substitutionary spiritual death on the cross.

Hundreds of thousands of slaves poured into Rome as captives from Rome’s wars.
To handle the sheer volume, huge slave markets were established.

The Bible tells us that we are born into an inescapable slavery - spiritual bondage.

As members of the human race, we exist in a slave market of sin.

But the gracious plan of God for mankind calls for a Savior, a redeemer - the Lord Jesus Christ - to purchase our freedom from the slave market of sin.

The house represents eternal life. To reside forever in that house we must become children of God.

We are born in slavery to sin.

Only one Person born into this world was born free - born outside the slave market of sin. His name is Jesus Christ.

Learning God’s word under the mentorship of God the Holy Spirit increasingly liberates the believer from the control of the sin nature. They consistently expand our spiritual freedom to serve the Lord.

We are born slaves to sin. Christ died to set us free from our slavery to sin and to the Law.

What words do you want to hear?

“Well done, good and faithful servant.”

Those words are found in three places: MAT 25:21, MAT 25:23, and LUK 19:17.

All three times, guess what the Greek word is for “servant”?


You got it! Doulos.

So we celebrate the fact that we are rescued from the slave market...

...Yet we are striving to hear the words “well done good and faithful slave” - which means we want to be a slave!

It is estimated that over 25% of the population of Ancient Rome was enslaved.

In the city of Rome alone, under the Roman Empire,
there were about 400,000 slaves.

During the nearly 1,000 years from the emergence of the Roman Empire to its eventual decline, at least 100 million people were captured or sold as slaves throughout the Mediterranean and its hinterlands.

If 25% of the population in Ancient Rome were slaves,
then it is likely that
at least 1 in 4 of the people
that Paul wrote to
were slaves.

Freedom is in our DNA.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights;
And that among these are life, LIBERTY, and the pursuit of happiness.

In other words,
though they just finished saying they had a right to certain fundamental things,
they were willing to surrender these very things
for a greater purpose.

Those free citizens
of city-states such as Athens found the very idea
of being a slave repulsive.

The word for “bond-servant” in your English NAS translation of ROM 1:1 is doulos.

The Greek word for slave, doulos, would have aroused negative feelings -
feelings of dehumanized and unwilling servitude.

“For the Greek in the classical tradition it was well-nigh impossible to use a word of the doulos group without some feeling of abhorrence.”

We still have not come to terms with that “peculiar institution” as it was called, the practice of slavery in the American South.

On February 25, 2007 the state of Virginia resolved to ’profoundly regret’ and apologize for its role in the institution of slavery.

Slavery is a taboo subject
in the United States.

You cannot ignore the fact that slavery and slave imagery are found in the New Testament.

Unbelievers are slaves
to sin.

John 8:34
Jesus answered them,
"Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin
is the slave of sin.

Are believers slaves, or not?

A person is either
a slave to sin or
a slave to Christ!

Salvation, therefore, is
an exchange of yokes!

1 Thess 1:9
For they themselves report about us what kind of a reception we had with you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve [douleuo = to be a slave to!] a living and true God,