Slave by Choice - Day 314 Month 11-9 Week 43-6
Slave by Choice
Today's Reading (Bible in 1 year)
Ezra 1-2, Job 32:6-22, Micah 3, 1 Peter 2
What is freedom? The answer to that question can mean different things to different people. For a prisoner, freedom is being released from prison and being able to live in the outside world. I believe I live in a free country, but it doesn’t mean I am free to do anything I want. There are still laws that govern how we live and function in this “free” society. Freedom simply does not mean an absence of boundaries, it’s freedom within the boundaries.
Peter is talking to Jesus followers, and what he says applies to us all. As a Jesus follower, we are to act as free people, but not use that freedom as a covering for evil. Instead, we are to use it as bondslaves of God (servants who willingly place themselves under His authority).
He uses Jesus as the perfect example. In 1 Peter 2:21-25 he explains: “…since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example … committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth; and while being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously; …He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed…”
Obviously Jesus set a very high bar. He willingly submitted to His Father's will, even when it meant suffering. Though we have freedom through Jesus, in gratitude, we strive to live up to this high bar.
I think I’ve shared this story before but one day as a young teenager I was sitting at the kitchen table. I may have been doing homework (an unusual thing for me to do), but for some reason I was sitting across the table and my father was on the phone at the other end. It was a day when the telephone was wired in and we had one phone in the house. It was around the corner from the kitchen so you could stand in the kitchen and hold the phone. My dad had one foot up on his chair, the other foot on the ground and he was telling the person on the other end of the phone, “We are Christians in this home. We don’t drink, we don’t smoke and we don’t dance.” As I heard my father say these things, I silently said to myself, “What a boring family.” You see, though I was young, I kind of understood the freedom of Jesus and never could understand why my father spelled it out so rule driven.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to see that my father may have been trying to live out his understanding of what it meant to serve Jesus. Though I have never smoked, I do drink alcohol a little and I dance (very poorly because my family didn’t dance). I do recognize that freedom doesn't mean I can simply do whatever I want.
What is important is to recognize that as a Jesus follower, I am a bondslave by choice to Jesus. If Jesus wants me to abstain, I will. If Jesus wants me to stop dancing, I will (hopefully He says the same to Syl because she’d go to a dance every night if she could).
But I think being a bondslave to Jesus goes beyond the things I choose to do or not do. It also affects how I treat others. Sometimes I come across people that I don’t necessarily like. I may not agree with them, or even enjoy being around them, but being a bondslave to Jesus tells me to love that person anyway. I will fail sometimes, but I will always strive to love my neighbour as myself.
I hope this makes sense to you. If you are not a Jesus follower but would like to understand better, I’d love to chat more. Feel free to email me. My email address is below.
Have a great day!
Steve
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