John MacArthur:
Being a slave of Christ may be the best way to define a Christian. We are, as believers, slaves 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?Few of us go so far as to re-align our thoughts with the fact that we are His slaves. Fewer of us would go even further to explore the full implications of that fact.
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? You do have a personal relationship to Jesus Christ, you are His slave. That’s putting it as simply as I can put it. ~Slaves for Christ
"But now, O you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand." (Isaiah 64:8)
"But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? "Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?'" (Romans 9:20)
"Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness." (Romans 6:16-18).
"Jesus replied, "Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin." (John 8:34)
God made us. He owns not just our heart, and our mind, but our body. Ask Isaiah.
"at that time the LORD spoke by Isaiah the son of Amoz, saying, “Go, and loose the sackcloth from your waist and take off your sandals from your feet,” and he did so, walking naked and barefoot. Then the LORD said, “As my servant Isaiah has walked naked and barefoot for three years as a sign and a portent against Egypt and Cush, (Isaiah 20:2-3).
God saw fit to use Isaiah's body AS the message He wanted to send to the people. Isaiah obeyed. We read in verse 2 the LORD said, and in verse 3 cut to three years later, Isaiah did. Did the LORD say, if you don't mind...please... I know this is embarrassing, but..." No. The Lord who is the Potter said to the clay, 'I formed you and now I want the vessel that is your body to be a sign. Naked.' Isaiah surrendered to God, and when the call came to do this thing, he obeyed. What a marvelous lesson in being a slave to righteousness. How would you like to be a walking naked billboard from God to everyone in your town?
We are slaves. Ask Job. God used his body, too. Satan charged Job in the presence of God of worshiping God only because God had put a hedge around Job. God told satan that he was allowed to test Job but not to touch his body. (Job 1:6-12). Satan took Job's property and children.
However Job remained steadfast so satan asked God for further access. This time the LORD said satan could touch his body. (Job 2:5-7). Job's body broke out in loathsome sores from head to toe. In all this Job did not sin with his lips. (Job 2:10).
God made us and will deal with us as He deems fit. Not just the mind, nor the heart, but the body. We are His slaves and He owns us. Ask Mary.
Luke 2:26-38 describes the scene where an obedient girl, a young virgin betrothed, was told that she will conceive a son by the Holy Spirit. In the day of Jesus and before, it was a mark of honor and duty for a woman to conceive a male child. The family must grow and the tribe must be maintained. It was a black mark on a woman not to have children, and worse, not to have boys, and the lack caused deep distress in the woman who was barren. (1 Samuel 1:10). Hannah, in 1 Samuel 1:2; Manoah's wife, in Judges 13:2-3; Sarai, in Genesis 11:30; and Elizabeth in Luke 1:36 all were women in disgrace because of their barrenness, but received news of their forthcoming child gladly. Not so Mary. Her situation was not a social blessing but a social disgrace, because she was not married. Yet she said,
"I am the Lord's slave," said Mary. "May it be done to me according to your word." (Holman Standard Christian Luke 1:38). Though the word is translated servant or bondservant in most of the other translations, in Greek it is doulos, slave. Mary knew that if the LORD wanted to use her body to instill a child by the Spirit, He would, and she would obey, no matter the social cost. Even 33 years later, she was still haunted by the stigma of uncertainty of proper birth, when the townspeople charged Jesus and said, "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him." Mary's son, not Joseph's son, the proper way to declare birth genealogy. Mary knew this and she said, I am His slave, let it be done to me." O, that we all could obey so gracefully! What a lesson for us.
The three examples go from the Lord's use of our body from superficial to deep. Isaiah walked naked. Job was beset with sores on his skin. Mary was used all the way to the interior of her body- her womb. We are His clay.
Once you think about how the LORD chooses to use us, it becomes clear that we do not own our body at all. Look at the verses in where He gives a blessing:
"You shall serve the Lord your God, and he will bless your bread and your water, and I will take sickness away from among you. None shall miscarry or be barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days." (Exodus 23:25-25)
Here the LORD shows that he controls the wombs of the women and the bodies of the tribe by declaring healthy child-bearing, no illnesses, and healthy living until the number of days is fulfilled.
Herod was struck with worms. (Acts 12"23
In John 9:1-3, a man had been blind since birth. He spent all his days, decades perhaps, blind, until the moment that the Potter should deem it the time to release him from blindness. Why did God use the man's body this way?
"As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him."
We are slaves, through and through. Not just our mind and heart, but our body. We do not just 'serve' Him, but He bought us with His blood. Redeemed us, with His blood. Purchased us with His blood. (Revelation 5:9, Acts 20:28, 1 Corinthians 6:20). Slaves are bought, and we are.
He owns us and can do with us as He wills. May it be to our benefit and His glory that we accept this as Isaiah, Job, and Mary- in worshipful submission.
"I am the Lord's slave," said Mary. "May it be done to me according to your word."
‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’
Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.
‘Hear, and I will speak;
I will question you, and you make it known to me.’
I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,
but now my eye sees you;
therefore I despise myself,
and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42: 3-6)
