The business of this family is love

Pastor-Teacher
John Farley
Sunday,
December 20, 2009

The business of this family is love

The most free you can be as a human being is to live as a slave of Christ Jesus.

Point 5. The relationship between slavery and freedom in the New Testament.

eleuqeria - eleutheria

In the New Testament, eleutheria is used almost without exception to mean spiritual freedom.

Our word eleutheria and its cognates are used to refer to spiritual freedom.

Kittel contrasts what the Greek philosophers thought about freedom with what the New Testament teaches about true freedom.

To the Greek philosophers, especially the Stoics, freedom took the form of independent self-determination.

To find freedom, we must explore our nature, said the Stoics.

But there is a problem here - we deceive ourselves!

“We find freedom as we neutralize passions and surrender to the ineluctable power of circumstances.”

Ask yourself a question: does the natural man have the power to do all this?

The retreat into inwardness does not in fact bring freedom.
It requires humility to grasp this and admit this about ourselves.

David also had that kind of humility that enabled him to see the problem accurately.

Our existence is “inwardly defective,” so that to take oneself in hand is simply to grasp a defective existence.
- Kittel

JER 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? -KJV

Faced with a lost existence, we can come to ourselves only by subjecting our own will to the will of another.

PSA 119:45 And I will walk at liberty, For I seek Your precepts

We achieve self-control by letting ourselves be controlled.

Unlike the Greeks, the New Testament identifies freedom in the believer’s acknowledged dependence on God and a voluntary surrender to His will!

True freedom is achieved when take your rightful place in obedience to the authority of the Lord, becoming who God designed you to be.

Point 6. Conclusion

We are either going to be a slave to that which is hostile to God, or we are going to be a slave of Christ Jesus.

Titus 2:9 Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them,
-NIV

Christ’s slaves, however, serve voluntarily.
The thing that motivates them is not fear of punishment, but the desire to please their master.

The yoke of the Lord Jesus Christ is not a yoke of abuse. It is not the yoke of the heavy burdens like the ones the Pharisees put on people.

No, it is the yoke of following Christ - in His way, His truth, and His life.

In essence, a yoke is an established connection between two entities.

When we were in slavery to sin, that yoke was a yoke of fear.

The Lord’s yoke is a yoke of learning.
The Lord’s yoke is a yoke of sharing a life together.
It is the bond of love.

What burdens there are, we are to bear for one another.

We become captivated by His love, and desire to be just like Him.

Just as Christ’s service to His Father involved suffering, so to our service to Christ and His Body will also involve suffering.

We are His children.
Yet we are indistinguishable in our living from slaves as long as we are in our spiritual childishness.

When we take up the yoke of Christ, we are no longer slaves but friends.

When we take up the family yoke, we are no longer slaves but sons.
The son knows his father’s business.

The business of this Family is love.

We learn the Master’s business.

The believer who doesn’t submit to the yoke of Christ remains in the condition of a slave.
The believer who does submit to the yoke of Christ - continuing in His word - gets called a friend by Christ.

Slaves of Christ carry out their voluntary service not only to Him but also in imitation of Him!

He is our leader when it comes to patiently enduring suffering for the glory of God and the benefit of others.

MAR 1:11 and a voice came out of the heavens: “You are My beloved Son, in You I am well-pleased.”

Jesus choose to be a doulos, and He will honored forever as the kyrios!

On that day, all - all angels, all humans, fallen & elect, believer and unbeliever - all will acknowledge that He is and always was our true Master, Shepherd, and Lord!