C I R C L E O F H O P E

Does God Really Say that I’m His Slave?

Definition of “Slave” (New Testament)

(1) Be careful of your translation. Look at the following two verses from the New International translation of the Bible. What do the underlined words mean to you?

“Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God . . .” (Romans 1:1).

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“Were you a slave when you were called? Don’t let it trouble you--although if you can gain your freedom, do so.” (1 Corinthians 7:21)

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(2) What difference in meaning do you see between the two words, and how are they the same?

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(3) What are your thoughts about the fact that, in the original language in which the Bible was written, these two different words are really the same word - doulos?

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Christian: Slave or Free?

(4) If you search the New Testament using a Concordance and look at all the times the word slave or servant - “doulos” - is used, you will find that some very good New Testament Christians called themselves God’s slave: for example, Paul (Romans 1:1 “Paul, a servant [doulos] of Christ Jesus”) and Peter (2 Peter 1:1 “Simon Peter, a servant [doulos] and apostle of Jesus Christ”). Pastors are also referred to as the Lord’s slaves in 2 Timothy 2:24 (“And the Lord’s servant [doulos] must not quarrel”). But Jesus said to His disciples (John 15:15): “I no longer call you servants [doulos], because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” And Galatians 4:7 says: So you are no longer a slave [doulos], but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.” Can you make sense of the apparent contradiction?

(5) Let’s look at an Old Testament way of life that may help us understand if we’re God’s slaves or if we are free. The person this passage talks about is a special kind of slave called a bondslave or a bondservant (Exodus 21):
2 “If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything.
3 If he comes alone, he is to go free alone; but if he has a wife when he comes, she is to go with him.
4 If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free.
5 “But if the servant declares, ‘I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free,’
6 then his master must take him before the judges. He shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will be his servant for life.

How is this slave free and enslaved at the same time?

(6) What motivates this man to stay with His master forever?

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(7) How might this help explain whether a Christian is slave or free?

Spirit of Slavery

(8) Jesus told a story to illustrate a spirit of slavery. Read the story, bearing in mind that the Father represents God, and see if you can figure out who in the story has a spirit of slavery and what that spirit is (Luke 15):
11 Jesus continued: “There was a man who had two sons.
12 The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.
13 “Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living.
14 After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need.
15 So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs.
16 He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.
17 “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death!
18 I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.
19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.’
20 So he got up and went to his father. “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.
21 “The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’
22 “But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.
23 Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate.
24 For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.
25 “Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing.
26 So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on.
27 ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’
28 “The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him.
29 But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends.
30 But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’
31 “‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.
32 But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’“

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(9) Read Romans 8:15 in as many translations as you can. Two are given here to start you off. The first is from the NIV, the second is from The Zondervan Parallel New Testament in Greek and English (1975).
“For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave [doulos] again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’”
“For you received not a spirit of slavery [doulos] again for fear, but you received a spirit of adoption, by which we cry ‘Abba, Father.’”

What is this verse saying?

Christians at Risk

Why would this verse be in the Bible except that Christians are at risk of living with a spirit of slavery, of becoming like the elder brother in Jesus’ story. Let’s back up in Romans to find what it is that the book has been talking about which can result in Christians taking on a spirit of slavery that God never intended them to have.
(10) Christians who want to live good and godly lives soon encounter a problem. According to the following Scriptures, what is that problem?
(Romans 7:15) I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.
(Romans 7:19) For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do - this I keep on doing.

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(11) Can you give an example of this problem from your own life, either past or present?

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(12) How did you react to your failure to do the right thing?

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(13) In what ways can you identify with this statement from Romans 7:24: “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”

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Source of the Problem

(14) The problem of never seeming to live as good a life as you want to as a Christian starts in a good place according to Romans 7:22: “For in my inner being I delight in God’s law”. State in your own words what the starting point is.

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(15) The Christian’s reaction to understanding how God would like His people to live is usually a good one. What is that reaction, according to Romans 7:18: “For I have the desire to do what is good”?

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(16) Things only start to take a nasty turn if the Christian decides to do what in order to make godliness a reality in his or her life?
(Romans 7:9) Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died.
(Galatians 3:3) Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?

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(17) Aren’t Christians supposed to keep God’s commandments? What do the following verses tell us?
(Romans 7:4) So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God.

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(Galatians 3:1-3) You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?

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(18) What is wrong with trying hard to do all the things that God says in His Word to do?
(Romans 7:8b) For apart from law, sin is dead.

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(1 Corinthians 15:56) The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.

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(Galatians 3:10) All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.”

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(Galatians 5:4) You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.

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(19) If we’re not supposed to try hard to be good, what are we supposed to do? (There is a lot of Scripture given here for consideration. This question might make a good small group discussion exercise; or your group members might be encouraged to take it home so they can look at the Scripture at their leisure and bring back what they have learned to the next study.)
(Romans 7:6) But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.
(Romans 5:20b-21) But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

(Galatians 3:5-6) Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law, or because you believe what you heard? Consider Abraham: “He believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”

(Galatians 3:11) Clearly no one is justified before God by the law, because, “The righteous will live by faith.”

(Galatians 5:1) It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

(Galatians 5:16) So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature.

(Galatians 5:18) But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law.

(Romans 5:17) For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.

(2 Peter 1:3-4) His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

To Summarize:

(20) How are Christians enslaved and free at the same time?

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(21) How is this different from living with a spirit of slavery?

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(22) How does a Christian come to have a spirit of slavery?

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(23) How would God have us live instead?

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