Bond Servants of Christ Jesus, Philippians, 1:1

I don't mean to alarm anybody or have anybody shocked. I need to give a little orientation here. See this? That's water. Okay? Just in case you've forgotten. Okay. Just a reminder. What's that? Oh, well, I just figure any water is getting to be 400 folks, so I don't want them to be so surprised and shocked. Just a reminder this evening at the Lord's table and what we want to do is have you come prepared to share what the Lord has been doing in your life and in your heart and recognizing what he has done. So just be thinking about that.

Someone submitted a few questions and you know I get these questions sometimes they're person-to-person, face-to-face, orally, sometimes they're in writing, usually anonymous, that's fine, as long as we get the questions. I like that. Anyway, I had three questions and the answer is involved enough, I'll just let you know in advance. You don't need to worry about scrambling to get what I've written down because we've got a handout on the cabinet out there that you can take advantage of instead of trying to write madly.

But the first question here is imitation accomplished by watching other believers. Okay, very good question. There's two words in the New Testament that speak of copying the life of another, and they come from a couple of different directions, as you'll see in a minute. One of them is mimetists. We will get our word mimic or mimeograph in English, and the idea is to imitate the behavior of another.

And we'll see in a little bit more depth of what that means. The next is tupos. We get our word type from that. And it means to have a pattern or an example. That's the idea. So these two words come with a similar idea, but from two different directions. This is the way that those words show up in scripture.

And one of them that we particularly point out is this one in Philippians that we'll be getting to eventually. At the rate we study here at Holly Hills, that might be next century, but we'll get there, okay? Nonetheless, it's real interesting. The first set of scriptures all use this word, and all of a sudden we come to this one passage that has both, and then we have now two pauses, the next one that shows up. The idea is these first ones are talking about mimicking, imitating, okay? And the next series, talking about being an example. an example for others to imitate.

Now, certainly when Scripture is talking about imitating, this is not an acting career, okay? An actor can imitate in a superficial sense, but that's certainly not Paul's intent here, is it? He's not saying, I want you to be really good Christian actors, okay? That's not the point.

He's instead, well, we'll get to it in a minute. There's more depth to it. Paul has this particular insight into imitating, and look at what he says. It's brief, but it's critical. Be imitators of me just as I also am of Christ. He's not saying, I want to have little Pauls out there running around. He's saying, I want people to imitate me as they see in me the very life of Christ. Then they will be learning from Christ through me. See the message there?

He spells it out even more clearly where he puts the two words together in this 1 Thessalonians 1, 5-7 passage. And it comes particularly critical at verse 6, you also became imitators of us and of the Lord. And then what's his intent? Since you became imitators of us and the Lord, Paul says, now it's your turn to be an example. to the believers in Macedonia and Achaia.

See the principle there? He wants them, or he's told them, you've been imitating me. Now you turn around. It's your turn to be an example to the others. See the picture? So the two words connect here. It's a similar idea, but some different perspectives. Okay, the next question.

What role does the Word and the Holy Spirit play in this? kind of step through that. The Word of God tells us the truth of our unchangeable position in Christ. That gets spelled out. Next, though, through the Word we behold Christ, who is the ultimate example whom we're to imitate. There's putting those words example and imitate together, right? That is the ultimate direction. We want to make sure we don't fall short of that, otherwise Christianity becomes simply a matter of superficially and on the surface imitating behaviors and mannerisms of somebody that we call a leader in the church. And believe me, you don't want to be just like me. That would be horrible.

Okay? Especially my haircut. Alright, now. Now, the thing that... Okay, now. Well, I'm talking about the hairline too. Anyway. Now, through the Word we understand what the life of Christ looks like. And I think that's one thing to understand. If you look through a book like Romans or Ephesians, what we'll see is we understand our position in Christ from the first part of books like that. Then Paul steps into practical matters, even as he had to tell the church at Ephesus, stop stealing from one another.

His idea was not to come in and lay down a bunch of Christian rules. but his idea is to tell them, this is what the life of Christ looks like, including what it doesn't look like. That's the point. Not to lay down a bunch of rules and laws, but to let us know this is what the life of Christ looks like in flesh and bones in action. That's the point.

The Holy Spirit will direct us to Christ, who is the truth. It's the Holy Spirit's job not to direct attention to the Holy Spirit, but to Christ Himself. That is the focus of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will direct us to Christ, who is the truth. And that's, I think, the key as we look at what's the role of the Word and the Holy Spirit. These points spell that out. Now, what are the means used by mature believers to direct younger believers?

And I'm going to sidestep this one, but I'm not chickening out. On the handout, there's more detail on that. But let me not sidestep it entirely. I want to go to this point. Mature believers are not going to be seeking to direct attention to themselves and to have people following, here's the exact example you're supposed to follow to live a certain way.

One of the things, this is a little side note, one of the things that they have at a lot of seminaries, they'll have courses on homiletics. You think, what on earth is that stuff? Homiletics is, here's how you deliver a sermon. Well, an awful lot of it, and they'll have course after course at some seminaries, of here's how you do it.

Interestingly, at the seminary I went to, they didn't have any. And it's because they didn't want you to get into, okay, here's how you turn your hand. You've got to turn your hand a certain way, see? And then when you get up there, make sure you stand a certain position, see? and also make sure you use a certain percentage of the stage.

Things like that. That's all surface stuff, isn't it? The point here is that instead of looking at superficial surface stuff, the mature believer is going to be directing younger believers to Christ and their understanding of their position and their heavenly citizenship. That's where the pointing is going to be.

Not, here's how to turn your hand just right. Form your mouth in this way. Make sure that your sentences don't have so many words. That's not the point. The point is, it's Christ to whom we're to be pointing and directing. That's the key. Anyway, more detail in the handout if you're interested, and we can get more of them out if we run out. Believe it or not, this is up here on purpose.

This is not an accident. And if you glance your eyes around, one of the things you'll notice is that there seems to be some appearing and disappearing little black dots. Okay? It's normal, but it... I hate to tell you, but those dots aren't there. Okay? The dots are not there. What happens is this is an optical illusion, yes, and your mind, as you shift your eyes around, tends to superimpose the black dots on the places where they are not.

And you think, well, Vern, that's great. What does that have to do with Bible study? The point is this. As we look at a passage, we want to be very careful that on the one hand, we don't impose a truth that is not in the passage. People do that. They make a passage say what it doesn't say by inserting a truth that is not there. We don't want to do that here. The reverse truth is we also don't want to miss out on truths that are there. We don't want to lose out on something that is there in the text in front of us and somehow skip over it. Make my point? Now, I have good news for you. We're not going to keep looking at this. It'll drive you batty if you look at it too long.

What we are going to look at is a particular word that shows up in the first verse there of Philippians right after Paul and Timothy, okay? Paul and Timothy are writing and they call themselves bondservants and we want to take a look at that particular word because as we'll see here in a minute, it's got some profound implications plus there's tremendous power I think in understanding what this meant when they wrote it, okay? And that's what we'll be zeroing in on here. So here's Philippians 1, 1 and 2.

Paul and Timothy right off Paul and Timothy and then comma bond servants or it may say in some of your translations servants Okay, and we'll get to that in more detail in a minute the point being I just as we go through this verse They start off using that and and by our Understanding that more clearly we get some tremendous advantage in getting full insight into What they're saying okay now? Why so much focus on bondservants? You might be thinking, Vern, you must be kidding me. You're going to spend the whole message time talking about one word? Yes. Okay? All right, here's the reason.

The most common word for bondservants, and it really means slaves, and we'll see in more detail what that's talking about in Greek, is doulos. I talked to my son Randy, and when he was going through elementary Greek, he said, the way I remember it is doulos. We used to think of doulots. Do a lot. Do lots. And so if you do lots, you must be a servant. That was his idea. It occurs 124 times in the New Testament. Now, that's a lot of times. 21 out of 27 New Testament books, plus there are other related words that we'll look at in a bit.

Now, I'm not just impressing you with statistics. Here's why we're taking a look at that. One is if a word and related words occur a lot, one, it must be important. That's one reason why we're taking a look at it. But there's another reason, and that is there's tremendous value in our understanding in depth this word, because as we look at this word, doulos, and the related words, it turns out that this theme shows up in the New Testament about a thousand times. Servants and related words, and other words that we'll see in a little bit here.

The point being, if we learn it for this verse, we now have tremendous leverage in being able to apply that truth to all the other roughly 1,000 places where it shows up. Make sense? Now all of a sudden we've got a principle that once we learn it, we can understand a whole lot of passages a lot better. So there's real value and leverage in it.

The next thing is, this word doulos and the related words are used in ways throughout the New Testament that help us understand two things. One, it helps us understand the nature of an unbeliever, spiritually, and their position. And secondly, it helps us understand our position and our salvation in Christ far better. So it gives us real valuable insights into something that's basic and fundamental. Okay.

Here's some New Testament words related to slaves, and there's this kind of fogged out background here. That is the slave market in Philippi Okay, one of the first words that comes out and by the way What I have here is just an example off to the side.

There are other places where it's used, but that's one example Bought in this place. He says you are not your own you have been bought with a price This this place that you see here is that is called the Agora. That's the marketplace the Agora and so To buy something in the marketplace is agorazo, derived right from that. So the word bought shows up in the New Testament.

You have been bought just as a slave was bought. Secondly, redeemed. Here's a word that looks similar, ex-agorazo. Ex means out of. You've been bought out of the marketplace. And it means you're also no longer for sale. No longer for sale. You've been bought out of the marketplace.

Here's Galatians 3.13, it says, you've been redeemed, you've been bought out of the marketplace, Christ has purchased you out of the marketplace and taken you off the market, off the slave market.

Now, here's another one. Redeemed, it's translated in English the same, but it has a different idea. This lutro is the idea of paying a ransom, and we'll get to that in a minute. paying ransom, which is more of an idea, not so much of a legal slave, but actually paying off some pirates or thugs. Now, here's another one.

A tutor or schoolmaster. In the elective we're looking at this morning, this Praetor Gogos here is a schoolmaster, or tutor as we translate it into English, but it has this idea, a slave with a specific assignment That specific assignment of that slave was to take the child and take the child to school and even hang around the school and watch and see how the slave does, excuse me, see how the child does, and if there is work to take home, no excuse, I forgot my homework or I didn't know what it was, no. The pedagogue knows exactly what has to be done. And back and forth, the interaction between school and home This pedagogos was a slave who had the specific assignment to that child to make all the interactions between school and home a complete and total reality for the child. That's a specific situation where the slave had a responsibility.

The next one is this word captive, selogogeo, and it actually has the idea of kidnap by pirates or thugs. In the area in the northeast and in the southeast part of the Mediterranean were particularly areas that had lots of pirates. As a matter of fact, Tarsus, where Paul was from, was an area where there was lots of pirates and thugs because of the particular geography there. And so this was a word, when Paul was talking about being captive in this sense, he knew it quite well, having lived through it, And here he warns the church at Colossae, don't be held captive, as if kidnapped by these pirates and thugs, as a warning against worldly philosophy. How about that?

Another word similarly translated captive, this one refers more to military capture. And he uses an analogy of taking every thought captive. Bringing it captive. So there's another word that's related in the sense of slavery. Freed. And it's interesting as you look where this word shows up. Romans 6. Three times. And every single time in Romans 6. Freed from sin. What does that mean? No longer having a slave relationship to the sin nature. That's what he's underscoring here. no longer having a slave relationship to the sin nature.

He spells it out three times. You'd think he wanted to get the idea, right? That's why he'd spell it out again. And it's interesting, he uses exactly the same phrase each and every time. And it's freed, this sense of being released from being a prisoner, from being a slave. The next one is master. We see it show up many times, hundreds of times in the New Testament, It doesn't always mean a slave master, but even in other contexts, it still has the idea of a person having authority. It still has the idea of being subject to the control of and the will of the person who is this master, this kurios.

All right, now, this is just an interesting piece of history here. Here's a sale document for two slaves. And it's written in Greek in the first century, the same century the New Testament was written in. So this would be a contemporary document. And they would, just like you would sell something, some legal piece of property, they would have a document that says, OK, I write this, that I sold this on such and such a date to such and such a person. Here I sign it. Here it is. Now you own them. It's been legally transacted. Here's another one.

Here is a Roman slave dog tag. It says, if found, please return to. And it actually, the slave actually, and one of the things you notice, this is a metal collar, and it actually had names written and instructions across there, not just the tag. So I don't know what it would be like to wear a metal collar for too many years, but apparently some slave did.

Here's another one. This one here, it says, I have escaped. Hold me. If you return me to my master, and they gave a name there, you shall receive a solidus, which was a gold coin. Amazing. And one of the things you also see there is even a string loop. The string apparently had disintegrated, but the loop stuck around. These slaves would actually have these tags. And look how large that is. Talking about something that's almost three inches across, hung around the slave's neck. Anybody volunteer for that? Okay. Just thought I'd ask.

Here's another one here. This is a property disposition. It was written about three years before the Book of Philippians. And it's a property disposition coming out of a will, and there is real estate and also the description of a 12-year-old slave involved. Isn't that interesting? This is kind of a part of the culture of the time, as well inculcated into their thinking.

Now, the Roman Empire, and I think the thing we have to look at is when Paul is writing these letters, or when you look at the Gospels and see them talking about slaves, This is in general what you'll find about slaves in the Roman Empire. I need to make one note here, and that there were particular laws about how slaves were handled among the Jews that were in places different. And by laws, I mean Old Testament law. The Jews were, for example, told that when you take a person as your slave, you shall not treat them as a slave.

That was one of the laws that they were given. How about that? You can take them as a slave, but you can't treat them that way. How about that? Now, in practice, however, the Jews did not always follow their law. So much of what we'll cover here was where the Jews would in fact accommodate the Roman and Greek practices. Okay, let's take a look at them.

The first one is a slave was entirely subject to the will of their owners. And this is, I think, the first definition that you're going to see in the New Testament. where it talks about, for example, Paul and Timothy being bondservants. Their intent, their voluntary intent here, is that they will be entirely subject to their owner, Jesus Christ. And that's a definition of a slave that you'll see woven through the pages of the New Testament. Another one is just to point out some cases the slaves were abused and some cases they were very well cared for. As a matter of fact, we'll see in a little bit, there were cases where slaves were better off than those who were free.

There were also varying educational levels and occupations. The slaves who were the worst off were the ones working in mines, and the second worst off were the ones working on farms. But a lot of urban slaves frequently were fairly well off, and many of them were hired because of their educational abilities. If they had the ability to teach languages or science or philosophy or history, that would be a valued thing, the ability to translate. Those would be things that would be valued, and a slave might be bought for that purpose. So we mustn't think these slaves were all just ignorant. Some of them were very scholarly, and some of them were even hired and kept on board, not just because they were scholarly, but to be maintained as scholarly.

They were at times given great responsibility. We see one example of that in reference in Matthew 24. It's interesting. History records that one of the slaves of the Caesars was given such authority that even the Roman senators envied his power. So some of them, they weren't all lowly in status. Some of them were up there in authority and power and influence. It was an interesting thing.

They were on property on the one hand, but on the other hand, there were also some legal protections. When push came to shove, their rights were not very great, though. Frequently, the rights that they had were given more because of their value or the grace of the owner than the legal status. One interesting little piece of legal tidbit here If a master was murdered, all the master's slaves were killed. That was policy. That was law. Okay? Interesting. Anybody volunteer to be a slave? Okay?

It's a tough thing to imagine in our culture, but in that culture, that was the way they dealt with it, because they figured two things. One, that law would motivate the slaves, first of all, not to murder the master. Secondly, That would motivate the slaves to protect the master. So that's why the law was in place. They were sometimes given the option to be freed. It might be by payment, either because they had earned the money or somebody else paid it, or by a generous owner.

And you notice in 1 Corinthians 7, 21 and 22, Paul even tells the people at Corinth who are slaves, he tells them, if you have the option to be freed, go ahead and take it. Yeah, that's okay, he says. That's fine. Go for it. The next one, they were able at the slave owner's option to have money and property, they could even, this is interesting, even own other slaves. How about that?

A slave that has a slave. Some of them had a number of slaves, depending on how they happened to arrange things and carry things about. Now, here's another interesting thing. In the Roman Empire, governments owned slaves. Now you might be thinking if you work for the government, aha, now I have it figured out, right? Okay. But the arrangement went like this.

One, we know that Caesar's household had a number of slaves. As a matter of fact, a great portion of the household there indeed consisted of slaves, different levels of authority, but slaves nonetheless. And they were also in other government capacities as well. They were owned by districts and cities and towns, and they conducted official business for the city and town. Isn't that interesting? That would be a way that they would basically have government workers. They would say, hey, this is a good government worker. He knows how to read and seems to be able to sort things out. Let's go and buy him. So the city or the town, for example, as we're studying now, even Philippi would have slaves owned by the city of Philippi. How about that?

And, real interesting, Theophilus, you see his name two times. Dr. Luke writes to him at the beginning of Luke in Acts, and it may be, this is not confirmed, but it's a reasonable assumption here, he may have been a government slave official that was in charge of reviewing Paul's legal case. Isn't that a fascinating idea?

So here's Theophilus, who may well have been a slave. In the Roman Empire, And by the way, what we have in the background, you're falling down. This is the theater at Philippi where plays and theatrical performances would be put before the people. One of the things we find as we read through the theatrical comedies of the time, both Greek and Roman, is the slaves were the brunt of many jokes.

And why not? They couldn't do much about it, right? And here's the way the jokes came across. They portray them as giving lip service to the masters, speaking ill of them, and stealing behind their backs, and being lazy. That was the way the slave was portrayed in the theatrical comedies. And the most common response in order for the master to try to get the slave to knuckle under was, I'm going to send you to work on the farm! And that was the threat. Because the farm was, oh no, I don't want to work there. And so that would be, and it's funny, you may look at that and say, what's so funny about that? To the Greek and Roman mind, that was hilarious. I don't know why. Okay.

Now, but real interesting, you read through Ephesians six, five through nine, take a look at it sometime. You'll see exactly those things written in Paul's letter to the church at Ephesus. And what does he write? He says, slaves, don't be talking behind their back and giving them lip service. Do it. Okay. Don't be lazy. And masters, stop making threats. How about that? Exactly as we see in the culture of the time, even reflected in the theatrical comedies. Don't make your Christian faith a sarcastic comedy, is his point.

One thing to point out, this is a Roman relief which just shows slaves pouring wine. Frequently, we think of slaves more in kind of the tradition of the early United States. where the slaves were, in great part, had a very lowly, kind of almost uniform low position. In the Roman and Greek mind, the idea of a slave was more to enhance your lifestyle. So you didn't necessarily want to go abuse them. That really wasn't the normal mindset.

For most of them, among the wealthy, it was How can I make things nicer for me? So I'll have them pour my wine and serve my meals and things like that. But it wasn't necessarily how do I milk the slave for every last drop that the slave is worth. The idea there is how do I make things nicer for me? Now, how did one become a slave? It turns out there are several answers. One, a person could be born of slaves, automatically owned by the owner of one's parents. If your parents were slaves, you're going to be a slave.

That would be one way. Think about this. This is carried on in scripture. What is the position of every person as they are in Adam? They are a slave to sin, are they not? And why? We are sons and daughters of Adam and inherit The same ownership. Slavery to sin. See that? So this principle is carried over into Scripture. And this is why Paul would talk about, here is Adam. And as we are in Adam, we remain stuck from one generation to the next in that same slavery until we're bought out. Here's another one.

It was legal in the Roman Empire for a father to physically abandon children up until the time that they were accepted. So what would happen is if a father decided, no, I don't want this kid. They'd take the kid and they'd leave him down by the river or down by the ocean or out in the woods somewhere, take him out, and the intent was that they would die of exposure. And that was perfectly legal. Now, if someone found that child, it was also perfectly legal for them to say, aha, I found a child, ideal slave. They could take that child and turn that child into a slave.

Isn't that something? Now, there were two conditions under which the father could not abandon the child. One is if he had drawn up legal documents and filed them which says, this child has been accepted. And so that's why it is so profound in the New Testament when you read passages talking about we have been accepted in the Beloved. What does that mean?

Legally can no longer be rejected. How about that? That's good news. That's really good news. The other thing that we read in the New Testament, and that goes along with this, those that were adopted were in that adoption also accepted. So when we read it, talking about in Scripture the adoption of sons, it means you could no longer...

I mean, there's not even a chance of being abandoned. How about that? So, adoption isn't some sort of a second-tier position at all. It is, you are absolutely accepted, cannot in any way be rejected. It's illegal. Isn't that neat? It's a good thing. So anyway, this is another truth that comes out there.

One could be captured in military conquest or by pirates or thugs. This was common in the area where Paul lived, both in the water passageway that went from the northeastern Mediterranean up towards Tarsus, and it was also common in the mountains right next to Tarsus. There was a very tight canyon there called the Cilician Gates. And in that area, thugs were also very common. So Paul was speaking using words that were very clear in his mind, both on water and on land. You had pirates and thugs. And one could be captured and they would take you, whether you're a free person or already owned as a slave, and they would take you and sell you.

That would be another way that it would happen. One could volunteer to be a slave. Now you might say, why on earth would you do that? Well, there's a reason. You might volunteer to be a slave because your conditions would be better. Your future could be better. A person who was free might be really struggling to make ends meet. A person might say, hey, you know, I give up some things, but the trade-off is better. So you could do that. Or you could sell yourself into slavery, perhaps because of indebtedness.

I need the money. These days we might say, I've got to give blood or something. himself into slavery or a father could sell his family members into slavery. This is a drawing depicting what appears to be an evidence in an archaeological find of biblical times. And here it shows a father selling his daughter to a more wealthy person in the community.

Now, how many were slaves in the New Testament times? Galen, a medical doctor in Pergamum, remember we studied about Pergamum when we were going through Revelation? estimate about a third of the population of Pergamum consisted of slaves. Now, scholars have said that some of the bigger cities, Ephesus, Rome, Athens, and perhaps a few others, probably roughly half of those urban populations consisted of slaves. In addition to that, though, we know in a lot of these rural areas that slave ownership was a lot lower. In some cases, maybe as little as 2% of the population. So throughout the Roman Empire, on the whole, probably something like 20% is a reasonable estimate. Now here's something that's interesting.

A half million new slaves were needed every year to replace those who were no longer slaves. They were no longer slaves because They died, or became incapacitated because of injury or disease, or they were freed by their owners. Maybe they were purchased, self-purchased, or the owner may say, in fact, you're free. I set you free. As a matter of fact, in some cases, they actually made a law during the time of Caesar Augustus, you can't free more than 100 slaves in your will at one time.

Can't do it. Here is Philippi that we looked at before, and here is the Agora, the marketplace, where they would bring the slaves in and say, how much do I get for this one? Right in the middle of town. That is also the place where Paul and Silas were arrested and beaten.

Here's a Greek papyrus from biblical times documenting the legal release of slaves to freedom. And this is why in Acts 13, he'll use that word, talk about being freed. You're now freed. And they would thoroughly understand what freed meant. They'd say, oh, we know exactly what that is. It was a legal document that said you have been set free. You are no longer a slave.

Now, it's going to show up as a theme in Philippians in a few places. Paul and Timothy, as we're seeing this morning, are calling themselves bondservants. Christ is called a bondservant, and that's a passage I had Mike read this morning. Same word. Christ is, in the very next verse, is obedient to the point of death.

And this obedience is not just obedience just because that's a nice idea. Yeah, it was exactly what you'd expect of a bondservant, of a slave, right? Exactly. Doing without grumbling or disputing. And remember what we said was the typical thing that they joked about with slaves because it was So commonplace is to be practically the rule, grumbling and disputing about, you know, I'm not supposed to do that, it's not mine to do, not now, I'll do it later, I don't like that, no. And so this is in reference to the background there.

Timothy is called a servant, same word again in chapter 2 and verse 22. Caesar's household is referenced later on in the book of Philippians, chapter 4, Probably most of the household that Paul is making reference to had a slave status. They may have some been elevated, some lowly, some in the middle, but the bottom line is most of the household would have been slaves. Plus, this word Lord, it doesn't always mean exactly a slave master, but it certainly had that understanding in the minds of the people who listened. They knew what a lord was the same word is translated master elsewhere as we've seen in some earlier passages this morning.

Here's where Paul writes to the church at Colossae and gets the idea across. He says to them masters that that plural of Kourios. Grant to your slaves justice and fairness knowing that you too had a master a Kourios in heaven. He's getting them to have an understanding. You have a master in heaven, therefore in your earthly master-slave relationship, behave as that master does. Add to that, here's another one, it may be a little surprising, maybe not.

First verse, as we're going to see in a little bit in Philippians 1.1, talks about greetings to the overseers and deacons. Those were terms that were often used and applied to slaves. So, if you are an overseer or a deacon in this church, you know exactly where you stand, right? Okay. The other place where this comes up, here's Galatians 3, 26 through 28. Paul makes it very clear that here's these earthly distinctions, Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female.

He says, you are all one in Jesus Christ. What's his point? His point was not to say, you slaves, you're now free. His point was not to say there's no distinction between male and female on an earthly sense. His point was your position, because remember it ends up here, in Christ, your position in Christ is irrespective of all those earthly distinctions. Are you a slave, he's telling them? Your position in Christ is the same as your master who believes as well. Isn't that something? One may be the master, one may be the slave, but your position in Christ is identical.

Key principles that come out of this are a position in Christ does not depend on earthly status or distinction. There is a real tendency for human beings to get that distorted, isn't there? And that's why Scripture goes to the extent that it does to make that clear. It does not matter. that you have this status or that. Your position in Christ is not dependent upon that. Can you imagine what tremendous news that was to somebody who was a lowly slave? I am seated with Christ was tremendous news in the heavenlies. Phenomenal news.

And even for the Master, a recognition of, you know, this position I have with the slave to whom I feel like I constantly have to threaten. That position is now irrespective of that position that I have as a master. And right along with that, the characteristics of this prominent system of slavery in the New Testament world is used throughout the New Testament to teach us again and again and again about our position that we have in Christ. Isn't that an interesting contrast? Firstly, telling them the distinctions that you have on an earthly level don't matter, but I'm going to use that understanding of master and slave to teach you about the position you have. Fascinating, isn't it? The Lord used it in Scripture again and again and again to teach us about this marvelous position that we have in Christ, eternally and untouchable.

When He tells them, you have been ex-agorazo, redeemed, out of the marketplace. You're not on the market anymore. You're not to be sold. When He tells them that the ransom has been paid, it's done. He's done it. And it's amazing, when you look at these words, it's what the Lord has done that comes through.

Let's pray. Lord, we do give You thanks and praise that as we As we look at this one single word and all the ramifications it has, what a marvelous thing that you have done to free us from this slavery to the sin nature. And you said, Lord, that our complete and total ownership is in you. Who we are is in you. But far beyond the lowly slave, Lord, we are blessed unfathomably. Blessed amazingly. blessed in no proportion to what we deserve. And we just thank you for that marvelous grace and give you thanks in Jesus' name. Amen.