Am I a slave of Jesus Christ?

If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved - Romans 10:9 (NASB)

Therefore I make known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus is accursed,” and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit. - 1 Corinthians 12:3 (LSB)

The idea of the Christian as a slave and Christ as Master is almost totally missing from the vocabulary of contemporary evangelical Christianity.  Not only is slave a bad word loaded with political incorrectness, but our generation loves the concepts of freedom and personal fulfillment. Modern and postmodern people crave autonomy, and as the church has become increasingly worldly, the biblical truth of our duty to Him as our absolute Lord and Master has all but disappeared from the evangelical consciousness. The church in our generation has reduced all of saving faith and Christian discipleship to a thoughtless (but more politically correct) cliché; "a personal relationship with Jesus." The ambiguity of the phrase reflects the destructive vagueness with which evangelicals have been handling (and misleading) the gospel for the past several decades. As if Christ could be someone's intimate friend without being that person's Lord. A host of contemporary aberrations would have been averted if Christians of the past few generations had retained some basic understanding of what it means to be a slave of Christ. - John MacArthur, The Gospel According to Jesus

If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also; if anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him. - John 12:26 (NASB)

Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle, having been set apart for the gospel of God - Romans 1:1 (LSB)

James, a slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ - James 1:1a (LSB)

Simeon Peter, a slave and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who have received the same kind of faith as ours, by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ: - 2 Peter 1:1 (LSB)

The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show to His slaves the things which must soon happen; and He indicated this by sending it through His angel to His slave John - Revelation 1:1 (LSB)

We need to let Scripture speak for itself, and it is time to face squarely the reality of this difficult truth. Slavery to Christ is not a minor or secondary feature of true discipleship. This is not merely symbolic or illustrative language devoid of any literal sense. It is exactly how Jesus Himself defined the "personal relationship" He must have with every true follower. And that fact is underscored throughout the New Testament. It is significant that the opening words of several New Testament epistles include their various authors' own confessions that they were but slaves of Christ. Every true disciple in the apostolic church understood this truth completely, because if all the apostles confessed that they were Jesus' slaves, those under the apostles' oversight certainly had to be slaves of Christ as well. - John MacArthur, The Gospel According to Jesus

A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a slave above his master. It is enough for the disciple that he become like his teacher, and the slave like his master. - Matthew 10:24-25a (LSB)

Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God also highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. - Philippians 2:8-11 (LSB)

Am I a slave to the Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omnipresent, Sovereign, Immutable, Creator that loves me unconditionally and gave His life for my salvation?

Be Encouraged to yield completely to your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.



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