If Christians are liberated—freed people—how then can they be slaves of Christ?
If I stood on a chalk line, and the leader said, “All of you who want to be slaves, step across the chalk,” my big toe wouldn’t budge an inch. I am against slavery—particularly my own. However, I’m also a Christian. I have confessed Jesus Christ as Lord (Php. 2:11).
According to Webster, the word lord is defined as a ruler or master. The dictionary even lists “God” and “Jesus Christ” as examples for the word. The Hebrew adonai and the Greek kurios, words for “lord,” were terms of reverence toward Jesus.1 The earliest Christian confession was “‘Jesus is Lord’” (Rm.10:9). Christ rightly deserves to be lord of our lives.
Amazingly, obedience to Christ doesn’t limit our freedom but rather enhances it. Christ sets us free for a purpose, as well as for our profit. Christ does not coerce service. We are freed to serve!
Spiritual Ditches
In my previous book, Living Between the Ditches: When God Makes No Sense, I explained that believers walk a narrow road toward God’s house (Mt. 7:13-14). I see this figurative road flanked on either side by spiritual ditches. As we travel through life, we often find ourselves in one of these ravines that retard our progress. Only when we climb out of these ditches do we get back on the road to becoming like Christ.
To stay on the narrow road and out of ditches, we must embrace the balance and control of God’s nature. Jesus Christ, who lived among us as the God-man, is the only Person who has ever traveled the road without wandering off it (1 Pt. 2:22). As we allow our natures to mirror His nature, we are transformed. We learn to live between the ditches.
The ditches in this book represent the extreme ends of the paradox: Christ sets us free; we are slaves of Christ. Understanding these ditches and how we may end up in either one helps us avoid them. In one—the ditch of legalism—we find believers who serve a rigid image of Christ. Acting in Christ’s name but not always in His Spirit, they act as judges and jurors in a world that needs the love and compassion of One who would lay down His life for sinners. Their world is one of service to self-righteousness instead of service that flows from self-denial.
In the opposite ditch are believers who think they have found a way to live without the restrictions of an ancient book of rules that has supposedly outlived its usefulness. This counterfeit freedom—the ditch of liberty in Christ—creates stumbling blocks for others. Without the guideposts necessary to map life’s journey, these ditch-dwellers often lose their way in the darkness (Ps. 119:105).
In both ditches sit people who have embraced Christ but choose not to yield their wills to the Lord’s control. They resist Christ’s efforts to mold them into His character. Most of us would not call either ditch home base; however, we may lean in one direction or the other or perhaps weave back and forth along the road.
In this book we will explore how true freedom in Christ enables us to travel the narrow way without veering into the ditches; we can live unburdened by the weight of self, sin, and the law. But the path is costly because—as the saying goes—freedom is never free.
I’ve invited a fictional friend—Parker Hamilton—to accompany us as we study the biblical way of finding freedom in slavery to Christ. Parker knows what it’s like to live in a physical and a spiritual prison. We’ll retrace his story as we unravel the mystery of our paradox, learning alongside Parker what it truly means to be set free.