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Servants or Slaves


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I have read a commentary by John MacArthur that brings new light to how the word "servant" is used in many translations of the bible. After reading it, we should ask ourselves this question: Are we servants of the Lord Jesus, or slaves? Here is the commentary:

But what exactly is our relationship to God? What is our relationship to Christ? How are we best to understand it?
Well if you read the New Testament in its original text, you would come away stunned really by how different the original text is from any English version that you’ve ever read...whether King James, New King James, New American Standard, ESV, NIV and you can name all the rest. All of them virtually have found a way to mask something that is an absolutely critical element of truth. In fact, the word “slave” appears in the New Testament 130 times in the original text. You will find it once in the King James, once the Greek word “slave” is translated slave. You will find it translated “slave” a few other times in other texts, like the New King James text and even the New American Standard text, and it will be translated “slave” when, one, it refers to actual slavery, or two, it refers to some kind of bondage to an inanimate reality. But whenever it is personalized, the translators seem unwilling to translate it “slave.”
For example, in Matthew 6:24 Jesus said this, “No man can be a slave to two masters.” What does your Bible say? “No man can serve two masters.” The favorite word for slave is servant, favorite English word. Very often bondservant is used which tends to move in the right direction but is not exactly slave. You have a word used 130 times in the New Testament, you have other uses of that word with a preposition, sundoulos which means fellow slaves, used about a dozen times. You have the verb form used another approximately a dozen times. So you have at least 150 plus usages of just three of the words and there are others in the group with the root doul, d-o-u-l in English for doulos. There are about twenty established English translations of the New Testament, about twenty. Only one of them...only one of them always translates doulos slave, only one and it is a translation of the New Testament written by a formidable scholar in New Testament Greek who studied the original papyri, and things like that, by the name of E.J. Goodspeed. Have you ever heard of Goodspeed translation? Goodspeed is a well-known scholar. For fifteen years he was a pioneering professor of New Testament Greek at the University of Chicago. The Goodspeed translation always translates doulos as slave. And when you read it, it gives you an entire different sense of our relationship to Christ. You do have a personal relationship to Jesus Christ, you are His slave. That’s putting it as simply as I can put it.
There are six words, at least, for servant, doulos is not one of them. There is diakonos from which we get deacon, oiketes related to oikos, house, a house servant, heis, having to do with one who serves by instructing the young. Huperetes, a low-level, third level, under servant, literally an under-rower, the third level on a galley slave, someone who pulled an oar down at the bottom of a great ship; leitourgos, another kind of service, usually associated with religion; paidiske and maybe misthios that can be translated minister. There are plenty of words for servant, there’s only one word for slave, doulos and sundoulos. Yet in the history of the evangelical translation of the Greek into the English, all the translators consistently have avoided the use of the word.
Now you might suggest that therefore it’s disputed, that maybe doulos isn’t quite as clearly slave. But that’s not the case. But they avoid it nonetheless. Doulos is not at all an ambiguous term. They are trying to avoid something. It’s not about a lack of linguistic information, it might well be a lack of courage, conviction. As I said, they will use slave if it literally refers to a slave, a physical slave. Or if it refers to bondage to an inanimate object, like being a slave of sin, or a slave of righteousness.
But when it comes to being a personal relationship with God or Christ, they back away from the word slave inevitably and use some form of the word servant. This is a matter of preference in all cases to accommodate. And we ask...to accommodate what? Well I suppose to accommodate the stigmas attached to slavery.
I was...a couple of months ago I was at a pastors conference back in North Carolina and I had a Q & A session with some pastors and one very gracious pastor stood up, he was a black pastor and he said to me, “How am I to communicate to my congregation that they are slaves of Jesus Christ when slavery is such a distasteful part of our past?” And he really had put his finger on the issue. I would venture to say that slavery is part...is probably a distasteful part of everybody’s past. It’s no more distasteful to a black pastor who is three or four or five generations removed from actual slavery, than it is to me who am equally removed from slavery, but it is just as distasteful to me to buy and sell humanity in the fashion that slave traders did it. Nobody thinks very positively about slavery. But when you come to the New Testament, you can’t get around it.
Open your Bible, if you will, to Ephesians chapter 6...Ephesians chapter 6. And we’re not going to be able to unfold all of this, this is a huge subject and I’m not going to try to do too much. I kept you a little long this morning, so I’ll let you out a lot earlier tonight. But I just want you to catch a few insights into this. In the sixth chapter of Ephesians, you have an illustration where slave is used and it is used because the Apostle Paul in writing to the church at Ephesus and to all other believers who would read this, knows that he is addressing slaves. And so he addresses them in verse 5 of Ephesians 6 as he addresses their masters in verse 9. And here there is no reluctance on the translators of the New Testament to use the word slave because he’s talking to slaves. “Slaves, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh with fear and trembling in the sincerity of your heart as to Christ, not by way of eye service, not just when they’re looking as men pleasers, but as slaves of Christ doing the will of God from the heart.” There you have the introduction of the phrase “slaves of Christ...slaves of Christ.”


This is not salvation by works, but rather how a true child of God should live his/her life. If you are serving self or sin then you are a servant of sin, and the servant abideth not in the house for ever: but the Son abideth ever. I hope this read will increase your walk with the Lord and to be the slave He has called you to be.

God Bless!
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You do have a personal relationship to Jesus Christ, you are His slave. That’s putting it as simply as I can put it.


What I get out of that is that is that john McArthur seems to think a little bit to highly of his comprehension of greek. Many words in many languages have more than one meaning depending on the context in which they are used. Christians are not God's slaves and there is a very good reason it isn't translated in that way. A servant takes the position of service voluntarily, it is his choice, a slave has no choice in the matter. On top of that Christ says this:

John 15:15 Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.

Christ himself doesn't even call us servants, we can call ourselves that, but if we are in the will of God Christ calls us his friends. Anyone that thinks God is a slave owner does not understand the nature of the fall, the purpose of redemption, or the character and heart of God. Edited by Seth-Doty
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Is this some new fad thing to preach about now? A few days ago I heard some preacher talking about this and attempting to make a really big deal out of it. He was certain that Christians can't live for the Lord rightly unless they understand and accept they are slaves and act like slaves of Christ.

Scripture tells us that when we are born again in Christ we gain Jesus as a friend and brother and we are "adopted as children of God, who is now our Father.

We are, as Seth pointed out, to WILLINGLY submit ourselves to Christ as Lord and obey Him in all things but this is to come out of a heart of love, not because we have been made a slave. We are yoked to God with the Holy Ghost which seals us and indwells us; not by a chain of slavery.

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John 15:15 Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you

I would suggest to stay away from John MacArthur.

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Is this some new fad thing to preach about now?


Possibly, I have heard this pushed over the last several years, mostly by people with Calvinistic tendencies. I suppose that isn't surprising since if one did not believe in free will it would pretty much mean everyone lost or "elect" is automatically a slave anyway.
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(1 Corinthians 7:21-23 KJV) - "Art thou called being a servant? care not for it: but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather. {22} For he that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord's freeman: likewise also he that is called, being free, is Christ's servant. {23} Ye are bought with a price; be not ye the servants of men."

Are servants, "bought with a price"? Do servants have rights? According to Scripture, we have no "rights." For, we are in slavery - yes, slavery - to a perfect Master. And, that is the most free man there is. We are no longer slaves of sin, but slaves of righteousness; hence, slaves of God.

Look back in early A.D. time period. How many "servants" were there, really? Is that historically accurate?

Besides all this, look at the word...

1401. doulos, doo'-los; from G1210; a slave (lit. or fig., invol. or vol.; frequently therefore in a qualified sense of subjection or subverviency):--bond (-man), servant.

People are scared of the word slave, it would seem, as many translations avoid rendering the word correctly. This is not surprising, as they are also scared of ekklesia and baptizo; that is, translating them properly.

You don't have any rights! You are bought with the precious blood of Christ, and you are His completely and wholly. Nothing is your own.
God bless,
Joel ><>.
2 Chronicles 7:14.

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I agree, we are to give up our "rights", we were bought at a price, but we are more than slaves, even more than servants, we are children of the living God. Granted we are to fully submit ourselves to the Lordship of Christ in our lives, willingly laying down our desires and taking on the tasks God has prepared for us to do.

The translation of the word to servant rather than slave is a valid translation. Many words have multiple variants and if one wanted to, and some have done so, one could go through the Bible and change the variation of numerous words and totally skew the Bible.

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Slaves? I don't think so. Unprofitable servants - yes.

Rom 8:15 For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.
16 The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:
17 And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with [him], that we may be also glorified together.

McArthur may be a calvinist, but I don't trust his teaching.

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:thumb:




What I get out of that is that is that john McArthur seems to think a little bit to highly of his comprehension of greek. Many words in many languages have more than one meaning depending on the context in which they are used. Christians are not God's slaves and there is a very good reason it isn't translated in that way. A servant takes the position of service voluntarily, it is his choice, a slave has no choice in the matter. On top of that Christ says this:

John 15:15 Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.

Christ himself doesn't even call us servants, we can call ourselves that, but if we are in the will of God Christ calls us his friends. Anyone that thinks God is a slave owner does not understand the nature of the fall, the purpose of redemption, or the character and heart of God.
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Is this some new fad thing to preach about now? A few days ago I heard some preacher talking about this and attempting to make a really big deal out of it. He was certain that Christians can't live for the Lord rightly unless they understand and accept they are slaves and act like slaves of Christ.

Scripture tells us that when we are born again in Christ we gain Jesus as a friend and brother and we are "adopted as children of God, who is now our Father.

We are, as Seth pointed out, to WILLINGLY submit ourselves to Christ as Lord and obey Him in all things but this is to come out of a heart of love, not because we have been made a slave. We are yoked to God with the Holy Ghost which seals us and indwells us; not by a chain of slavery.

:thumb:
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Well, the King James Bible says "servant" here, not "slave".
Exodus 21:5 And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free:

Why in the world would a "slave" even think of saying "I love my master"?
Anyone who works at a job or even owns a business, is a servant. The employee's 'master' is his boss and the entrepreneur's is his customers. I'm an entrepreneur myself. When a customer comes into my establishment and hires me to perform work for them. I am now bound by agreement and economics to serve that individual for my pay..
Even 'slaves' are paid. I mean, even if you "own" someone, you still must provide food, clothing and shelter to that person, or you wouldn't own them for very long.. So then all servants, including those we would call 'slaves', are actually paid servants.

The difference is in the master. A cruel master oppresses his servants. Even in employee/employer arrangements, some employers will hold back as much pay as they can possibly get away with. That's the reason Government had to step in years ago and inact things like minimum wage and child labor laws. What I'm trying to say is, our concept of a "slave" is someone who is owned by another, oppressed, and treated like dirt. Well, my God is not a slave master. He is a benevolent master. And the pay is far more than generous. So why would the man in Exodus 21:5 say "I love my Master?" It was because his master had first showed love and kindness to him and had treated him very well. God wants willing servants...not slaves.

Edited by heartstrings
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I am thankful to have the time to respond to this thread so I will say all that I have to say. From the outset, I want to comment on what this member had stated regarding "Unprofitable servants".


Slaves? I don't think so. Unprofitable servants - yes.


For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Matthew 25:29,30)

That said, I want to thank everyone for their responses as it is much appreciated. I quoted MacArthur to draw some responses from others. MacArthur is often misunderstood and wrong conclusions are usually drawn from misinterpreting his commentaries. What I quoted was a truncated portion which is why I can see why it elicited the responses on this thread.

Judging from the responses on this thread, there seems to be a misunderstanding of the word slave and how it is understood. The word /doulos/ does mean slave. That said, there is the questions of 1) what we mean by the word "slave" and what the Greeks meant, and 2) what difference that makes for our understanding of scripture. American slavery was unique in many ways in its racial aspects in particular, and while it has never been a desirable thing to be a slave, I think it is fair to say that the word and the idea in our contemporary American understanding of it means something far more egregious in its status and offensive in its nature than was true in antiquity. Paul says at 1st Corinthians "Were you a slave when you were called? Don't let it trouble you—although if you can gain your freedom, do so" (NIV). Note that the KJV has "servant" here, and I doubt if many over the years in reading this verse were under any illusions that the verse is talking about compulsory servitude.

As to my second point, the quotation used of John 15:15 is right on the mark. The fact that Jesus calls us His friends cannot be overlooked. Paul calls himself a "slave of Christ", and I think it is appropriate to point out that this does suggest his total commitment to the will of God and the service of Jesus Christ. But we know that there is an element of free will involved in this. Paul was not compelled to "work harder than all of [the other apostles]" (1Cor.15:10), not, at any rate, to the point of having no choice in the matter, but he did so anyway of his own volition. So while he counted himself a slave, his labor was a function of his free will response to the Lord in love. Jesus is our Lord and our God, and we owe Him absolutely everything. He created us, He became a man for us, He went to the cross for us, He faced the continual burning in Calvary's darkness and died for our sins, He led us to salvation, and He will resurrect us and reward us when the time comes. We certainly /ought/ to give Him all our obedience -- to an even greater degree than any slave would do under the most severe compulsion -- and we ought to do so with a song in our heart. We fall short in many ways, of course, but if we look at these things aright, in time we will come to put what Jesus' wants us to do before everything else (at least more often and more consistently as we grow). All that, however, has to come from inside of us, from the love for Jesus that grows (or should grow) every day. Slaves are beaten when they don't respond; we have been given a marvelous opportunity by being left here on earth after salvation; whether or not we make proper use of it is a matter of our choosing.

If we misunderstand the biblical meaning of the word slave, then we draw false conclusions. Such as: "if I am a slave, then if I do not obey, am I lost?", or "if I am a slave, well, I guess I /have/ to do whatever it is I'm reluctant to do". The problem with the first false conclusion is that it wrongly suggests we are somehow in danger of losing our salvation, that the standard is different from what it really is, namely, faith in Christ (not slavish obedience to whatever we find difficult to do. In fact, of course, He loves us so much He died for us, and we are saved not by works but by grace through faith. That is also how we advance.

In my reading of the New Testament, there are all manner of dire warnings to keep us from sin for our own good, but when it comes to spiritual advance, the positive is almost always emphasized. In MacArthur's example, "serve two masters", the whole point is to teach us /not/ to serve/be enslaved to money (rather than to describe the manner in which we ought to serve our Lord). We ought to want to serve Him in a absolutely obedient way which would be no different from if we were enslaved, but this "slavery" is obviously voluntary -- to judge from nothing else than that so few Christians come anywhere near that sort of standard. I hope this clarifies what was misunderstood in the initial post.

God Bless!
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Well, God made me His child when He adopted me. Now, my son is not my slave, but he certainly does the work I ask him to....and there have been times he's felt like a servant ( :icon_mrgreen: ), called himself a slave. But he's always been my child. As I am God's. My relationship with Jesus Christ, and God the Father, goes WAAAAYYYY beyond being a slave...

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I'm not scared of the word slave, nor of the word servant, I'm just dedicated to what God and Jesus has told us.

John 15 Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you

Servant or slave ='s I have no choice, as for me and my house we chose, {thanks to God's grace}, to worship and serve God the Father and the Son, and God the Father and the Son chooses to call those who come to Him through Jesus friends.

Jos 24:15 And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.

And as Jesus stated if we were His servant, "servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you."

Of course it can be a play with words, and or as with the boss man that no one likes. That boss man goes around dictating to his worker what to do, yet the good boss man has a way with words, and when he is telling his workers what to do he does not come off as a dictator, a man of authority, but as a friend, asking you to do the job he puts before you. I suppose most people have worked for both types of bosses.

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Judging from the responses on this thread, there seems to be a misunderstanding of the word slave and how it is understood. The word /doulos/ does mean slave. That said, there is the questions of 1) what we mean by the word "slave" and what the Greeks meant, and 2) what difference that makes for our understanding of scripture. American slavery was unique in many ways in its racial aspects in particular, and while it has never been a desirable thing to be a slave, I think it is fair to say that the word and the idea in our contemporary American understanding of it means something far more egregious in its status and offensive in its nature than was true in antiquity. ...

If we misunderstand the biblical meaning of the word slave, then we draw false conclusions. Such as: "if I am a slave, then if I do not obey, am I lost?", or "if I am a slave, well, I guess I /have/ to do whatever it is I'm reluctant to do". The problem with the first false conclusion is that it wrongly suggests we are somehow in danger of losing our salvation, that the standard is different from what it really is, namely, faith in Christ (not slavish obedience to whatever we find difficult to do. In fact, of course, He loves us so much He died for us, and we are saved not by works but by grace through faith. That is also how we advance.


That admission I think illustrates why it is not translated "slave". If one has to go through an elaborate explanation to define why the greeks didn't really mean exactly what we mean by the english word "slave" then perhaps there was a good reason it is translated doulos "servant" instead of slave in most cases. Servant carries the meaning much better in english.
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