Are we, in the Western Church, so immune to our Master's call to slavery, and to our relative response to abandonment of ourselves, that we would rather use the term "servant" than "slave"? Perhaps, even when we go so far as to call ourselves "slaves of Christ," we still hold dearly to our personal rights and privileges so that the term loses its meaning? We sing our Hallelujah's and call Him Lord, yet fail to recognize that the Hallelujah, a recognition that our Exemplar's risen and exalted status came after his lowly state--even to the Cross--and calls us to the same; similarly, we call Him "Lord" but fail to recognize that we abdicate any claim to our own lives, our "rights" and "privileges", when we use the term.
Or at least I do.
Some beautifully pertinent quotes from Murray J. Harris, Slave of Christ (from the New Studies in Biblical Theology):
"In twentieth-century Christianity we have replaced the expression 'total surrender' with the word 'commitment', and 'slave' with 'servant'. But there is an important difference. A servant gives service to someone, but a slave belongs to someone. We commit ourselves to do something, but when we surrender ourselves to someone, we give ourselves up."
"If the language of slavery is offensive, the offence would have been considerably greater for those who lived in societies where slavery was intrinsic than for us for whom slavery is simply an unpleasant and embarrassing memory."
"The term doulos (slave) expresses both a vertical and horizontal relationship of the Christian, who is both the willing vassal of the heavenly Master and the submissive servant of fellow-believers. The term epitomizes the Christian's dual obligation: unquestioning devotion to Christ and to his people. But the vertical relationship is prior and the horizontal secondary. Christians are devoted to one another as a direct result of being devoted to Christ. When they serve each other, they are demonstrating and expressing their slavery to the Lord Christ."
"A slave of Christ is not a right reserved for the favoured few in the church but is the privilege of all believers, unrelated to their giftedness or their particular role in the church... It has become, in a Christian context, a title of exquisite honour describing accredited representatives of the risen Christ... (I)t gained (this) positive connotation...because the divine Master they were serving was kind and generous and himself had blazed an exemplary trail of lowly service. What all the douloi (slaves) of this Kyrios (Lord) gained through being associated with him was not so much authority and power as unparalleled honour and the assurance that their service, whatever its nature, was of supreme value, simply because it was done for him."
"It is one thing for us to follow a grand custom and stand during the singing of the Hallelujah Chorus at the unforgettable climax of Part II of Handel's Messiah and so celebrate the ultimate victory of Christ. It is quite another thing for us to bow the knee before the crucified and exalted Lord of the universe and receive the metaphorical piercing of the ear as a sign and pledge of our joyful and willing slavery to him as long as we live. If we do this, then when we stand in his presence at the conclusion of our lives, and ourselves sing the song of the Lamb, we shall hear those unforgettable words from our Master's lips, 'Congratulations, good and faithful slave!'"
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So we who have the honor of calling ourselves "Slaves of Christ" must come to recognize, through God's gracious saving work, that we are called to nothing less than the Cross, to die to ourselves, to abandon notions of self-aggrandizement in favor of the--far greater!--calling to slavery.
We slaves of our Jesus, we slaves of our God, we slaves of righteousness are under a different management and ownership, and He is a far more compassionate and more capable Master than any other.
