TRUE IDENTITY
Notes
Transcript
Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord.
IDENTITY CRISIS
IDENTITY CRISIS
We all have a particular image of ourselves - beliefs about the kind of person we are. Book sales, podcasts, social media posts, and magazine articles reveal our desire for a strong sense of identity.
Human beings spend a great deal of time, energy, and resources to answer life's most important existential question, who am I.
According to those who study psychology, having a strong identity seems to have its advantages.
A clear sense of who you are makes it easier to connect with other similar people or groups. People with a strong identity often stand out and are more memorable.
It's believed that a strong identity helps one make complex decisions, face difficult circumstances, and know-how to behave in general.
When you know who you are, you know how to behave. A true identity helps to make agonizing decisions almost effortless.
As I examine Christianity's landscape, I am convinced that much of what troubles our tribe at its root is a lack of true identity.
As Christians, we do not lack books and sermons on identity. Peruse any Christianbook store, and you will find the self-help section to be its largest. With a proliferation of Christian self-help, why are Christians not doing better?
I believe there are two reasons why Christians are not doing better. The first I will mention but not address in detail. It is humanism covered over with a veneer of Scripture.
It takes worldly teachings, wraps them up in Scripture, and peddles them to those whose genuine desire is to live according to the flesh. It is Christianity's most prevalent and mainstream teaching on identity.
The second reason why Christians are not doing better comes from today's text. It does not come from a false identity but a failure to understand full teaching on identity.
Most Christians have never experienced real and robust teaching on identity. Most pastors and Bible teachers have failed their disciples when it comes to an understanding of true identity.
Their failure is not intentional or malicious. Their teaching has been adequate but accurate.
Words are important and accurate words are even more critical.
Today's text contains a word whose translation is adequate but not exact. I believe that a full understanding of this robust word is the missing ingredient in the right comprehension of our true identity.
I hope that you would experience a crystallization of your identity and all the benefits that accompany such knowledge through clarification of this word.
IDENTITY CLARIFIED
IDENTITY CLARIFIED
The word translated servant is the Greek word "doulos". In the Greek, that word means “slave,” never means anything but “slave.”
It doesn’t mean “servant,” it doesn’t mean “worker,” it doesn’t mean “hired hand,” it doesn’t mean “helper.”
There are six or seven Greek words that mean “servant” in some form. Doulos never means “servant.”
A servant is someone hired to do something. The slave is someone owned.
All through the New Testament the word “slave” is masked by the word “servant,” or some form of the word “servant.”
If you go to the New Testament, you will find the Greek word for “slave” about 150 times. The New Testament translators only translate the Greek word for slave, “slave,” when it’s referring to an actual physical slave, or when it’s referring to an inanimate object, like “slaves of sin” or “slaves of righteousness.”
Of the 22 major English translations of Scripture only one translates doulos “slave” every single time.
In the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament Gerhard Kittel says this of doulos.
Doulos means slave, the meaning is so unequivocal, no study of history is necessary. It always means slave, and yet it’s not translated slave.
Why? To answer that question, you have to go back to the first English Bible. When Calvin and Knox where translating the Geneva Bible in the sixteenth century they made a decision not to translate doulos “slave.”
Why? There’s too much stigma with the concept of being a slave. It’s too strong a downside. It’s too humiliating, too belittling.
Translators have understandably wanted to avoid any association between biblical teaching and the slave trade of the British Empire and the American Colonial era.
In order to avoid both potential confusion and negative imagery, modern translators opted to cover the word by replacing it with “servant,” “bondservant,” and eliminated the word “slave,” except when the New Testament talks about an actual, physical slave, or an inanimate object, like slaves of sin or righteousness.
Side bar: The ancient world had practically nothing in common with slavery familiar from New World practice and experience of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. To impose such an understanding would It would distort the interpretation of the Bible.
For the average reader today, the word slave does not conjure up images of Greco-Roman society but rather depicts an unjust system of oppression that was finally ended by parliamentary rule in England and by civil war in the United States.
No matter the magnitude of its negativity our sanitizing of this word has stunted our sanctification.
The Holy Spirit inspired the use of doulos. When translated accurately doulos gives life-changing depth to verses. For example
“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.
Jesus said, “No man can serve two” – What? – “masters.” Well, you could if you were a servant, right? You could serve two people, couldn’t you? You could have a day job and a night job. A lot of people work for more than one person, but you can’t be a slave to two masters because you can only be owned by one.
Servants had an element of freedom in choosing whom they work for and what they did. The idea of servanthood maintains some level of self-autonomy and personal rights.
Slaves, on the other hand, have no freedom, autonomy, or rights. In the Greco-Roman world, slaves were bound to obey the master’s will without hesitation or argument.
When you think about terms used to describe Christians in the New Testament, we’re called children of God, right?
We’re called heirs and joint heirs. We’re called members of the body of Christ. We’re – we’re even designated as branches, sheep.
Each of those metaphors helps us to understand one of the many facets of our relationship to Christ.
However, helpful those words may be the most used word, without rival, in understanding the fullness of our salvation is slave.
Now there’s a corresponding word that I want to mention as well, and that is the word “master,” right?
If I were to ask you – let me ask you a fundamental question: “What is the foundational reality that defines what it means to be a Christian? What is our great confession in three words?” Jesus is Lord.
In fact, if you want to be saved, Romans 10:9 and 10 says, “You confess Jesus as Lord.” Kurios is the corresponding word to doulos. Kurios is “lord and master.” Doulos is “slave.” You can no more eliminate doulos from the believer’s relationship to the Lord than you could eliminate kurios.
because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.
If He is Lord, which is to say He is Master, then I am His slave. There’s no such thing as a master with no slaves or a slave with no master. And 1 Corinthians 12:3 says,
Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says “Jesus is accursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit.
We have man-centered theology that dominates evangelicalism, in which we talk about Jesus coming along as a kind of a buddy who loves you and wants to satisfy all your desires and give you everything you want.
Such teaching cannot be found in the New Testament. What the New Testament teaches is not that you’re lord and He’s your slave; it’s that He’s Lord and you’re His slave.
When you say that Jesus is Lord you are saying that I am a slave who understands that obedience is the necessary response.
Turn to John 15:14
You are my friends if you do what I command you.
What kind of a friendship are you talking about here? I never heard of a friendship like that. Well, that kind of a friendship must assume another prior relationship, right?
If I’m in charge of you and I command you to obey me, you’re a slave. But you’re a slave who is also given the privilege of being a friend.
Look at the next verse.
No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.
“No longer do I call you slaves.” – I’m taking you beyond that – “I have called you friends.” And what’s made the difference?
The assumption is that we are slaves; He says that. What’s the difference?
The difference is, you’ve become my friends. Well, what is the distinction between just being a slave and being a slave who is a friend?
Here it is: a typical slave doesn’t know what His master’s doing. He has no reason, he’s not given a reason; he’s not given a motivation; he’s not given a big picture. A slave is simply told, “Do this, do this, do this.”
The Lord of the slave doesn’t have to give Him his agenda, his motivation, his purpose, his strategy, or his plan.
But once he becomes a friend, a slave who is a friend, he says, “All things I’ve heard from My Father, I’ve made known to you.” I let you in on the inside secrets.”
So, we’re slaves who have been given the privilege of being friends. What does that mean?
It means He is in charge. He commands, we obey. But He commands us with full disclosure of all the reasons, marvelous, glorious reasons for doing what He’s doing.
There are two critical truths to understanding the believer’s identity. One is Jesus is Lord meaning he owns us and has an absolute right to command.
It means an absolute ruler, a sovereign ruler. He is our only master. This word is extremely powerful and narrow. When our Lord offers the invitation to follow Him, He says this:
“If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself.” You’re no longer in charge; “Take up your cross and” – What? – “follow Me.”
That’s what it means to become a believer. You just became a slave of Jesus Christ.
Our life is not defined by our own wants, our own will, our own desires, our own ambitions, but by His will, His desires and His purposes.
This is the basic truth of Christianity. Jesus is Lord. When I say I’m a Christian, I am saying Jesus is the sovereign over my life.
Whatever He wants, I submit to that. That’s the first great understanding of Christian life.
Second – first, Jesus is Lord; two, Christians are slaves. It means we’re owned.
Consider with me for a moment the inner working of slavery.
How did it work? First there was a slave market. Slaves are on a block for sale.
You want to buy a slave; you go into the slave market. You pick your slave and then you pay for your slave and then you own your slave.
Your purchase not only gave you control it also meant that you would provide and protect your slave.
Furthermore, it meant you would discipline and reward your slave. That was slavery in the Greco-Roman world.
Now attached that to Scriptures teaching on salvation.
The Lord went into the slave market of sin, didn’t He? And He chose, and then He paid the redemption price, and it wasn’t silver and gold. What was it? Precious blood.
And we are not our own; we are bought with a price (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).
So we have been chosen, we have been bought, we are owned. Yet it does not end there . . .
We are provided for. “My God shall supply all your needs.” We are protected, are we not? We are disciplined. We are rewarded. “Well done, good and faithful slave.”
All those concepts within the magnificent realm of what it means to be a Christian are tied to the concept of being a slave.
IDENTITY CRYSTALLIZED
IDENTITY CRYSTALLIZED
This is a different kind of slavery. He provides everything you need; makes you an intimate friend and gives you full disclosure of everything that’s on His heart.
First Corinthians 2:16, “We have the mind of Christ.” He’s revealed it to us on the pages of Scripture.
He makes us sons, heirs, and joint-heirs with His own Son. He makes us reign with Him, citizens of His glorious kingdom.
Your Master loves you. John 13:1 says, “Having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them” eis telos. “He loved them to the max.”
This is a Master who loves with a perfect love, with a complete love, with an everlasting love.
You will never understand your relationship to Jesus Christ until you see it in this sense.
Jesus is Lord, I am His slave.
You have been bought not for demeaning but meaningful work.
You have a master who does not leverage our lives for profit. He proves His love for us by becoming a slave himself in order to leverage His life in payment for our sin.
You have a master who does not seek us to provide and meet His needs. He purchased us to meet our needs.
You have a master who does not use us to build His wealth. He uses His wealth to provide for our welfare.
Let me give you one more reason why this master is worthy of our complete slavery.
but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
He is asking you to become on earth what he was on earth. He was the Son who became a slave so that slaves of sin could be slave of Christ and sons of God.
True Identity is not found in Who am I. It is first found in whose am I.
When you understand whose you are you can understand who you are.