Verse by Verse

Who owns you? Now there's nothing comfortable about the subject of slavery. Especially here, in the United States, slavery is an all too recent part of our history. We're only a handful of generations removed from a time when it was legal to own another human being and treat them as something far less than human, as a possession that could be used, abused, sold, or discarded at an owner's whim. So when the Bible talks about slavery, that's where my mind tends to go, To a period of American history that threaded certain prejudices so deeply into our national fabric.

We're still trying to pull them back out a century and a half later. But when God talks to Israel about slavery, he's talking about a different institution. And when Paul talks to the New Testament churches about slavery, he's talking about a third, also different institution. Slaves in 1st century Rome did not have the same experience as slaves in ancient Israel or slaves in 18th century America. All 3 have to do with the condition of belonging to someone else.

But if we take our idea of what it might have been like to be a slave in America 2 centuries ago, and use that to imagine what it might have been like to be a slave in Rome 2 millennia ago, we're going to end up with the wrong picture. Even then, this idea of belonging to somebody else, of being owned by somebody else can be a hard thing to swallow. It doesn't sound good. It sounds wrong. It sounds like something we should rebel against.

So let me ask it again. Who owns you? Over and over again, the apostle Paul refers to himself as a doulos of Jesus Christ. That's a Greek word often translated as servant, bond servant, or slave. It can mean someone who willingly sells themselves into the service of another, but regardless of how you become a doulos, it comes with a significant loss of personal freedom.

Lonida describes doulos as pertaining to a state of being completely controlled by someone or something, subservient to, controlled by. A doulos does what his master commands him to do. He obeys those instructions, and when they conflict with what he wants, the master's will overrides his own will. This is how Paul saw and described himself. And it's how he described the way Christians should be too.

That brings us to our verse today. Paul wrote to the Christians in the Roman city of Corinth and told them in 1st Corinthians 722. For he who is called in the Lord while a slave, a doulos, is the Lord's freed man. Likewise, he who is called while he is free is Christ's slave, doulos. You were bought at a price.

Do not become slaves of men. Who owns you? Jesus Christ calls us his friends, but he also calls himself our lord and master. These are not meaningless titles. Accepting the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the price he paid to purchase us, means accepting a new master.

And I say a new master because even though most of us probably think of ourselves as free and independent human beings, Paul says in Romans 6 verse 16, do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one's slaves, from the word doulos, whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness. It's possible that up to half the city of Corinth's population were slaves. And so Paul is writing to Christian slaves and saying, yes, you may be physically in the service of someone else, but the future God has for you involves being set free from that servitude to another human being. And then, he turns around to the Corinthians who aren't slaves and he says, but you remember that following in the footsteps of Jesus Christ means becoming a servant to him. Jesus tells us that his yoke is easy and his burden is light, but he doesn't say they're non existent.

He doesn't free us from slavery to sin and then go tell us to do whatever we want with our lives. To become a Christian is to tell God, I will do what you want me to do. And I will let go of my will when it gets in the way of doing your will. What you want will always supersede what I want. This is our choice.

We can serve sin, or we can serve righteousness. But we will present ourselves as slaves to something. We will become the doulos to something bigger than ourselves. The only question is whether we'll choose a master whose aim is to destroy us or a master who wants to offer us a beautiful future beyond our comprehension. Who owns you?

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