Dulles Family Life Church

I love the way the New Living Translation renders I Peter 2:16.  ‘You are not slaves; you are free.  But your freedom is not an excuse to do evil.  You are free to live as God’s slaves.”  Now, I don’t think our flesh particularly likes that concept, and if that’s the case with any of us, we’re going to miss the beauty of what Peter is saying here.  However, if we’ll meditate on just what it means “to be free to live as God’s slaves,” and what such a life might look like, we’ll enter into a level of living we didn’t know possible.
    First off, this verse sounds like a total contradiction.  Free to live as slaves.  How could any slave be free.  In the worldly context, they can’t.  They serve at the whim of their master, and those whims more often than not will lead to much pain for the slave.  This is true whether the master be flesh and blood, or something much less tangible, be it a desire that controls us, fear that crushes us, anger, bitterness, and unforgiveness that chains us, and a seeeming unending array of other “things.”  We may be free to pursue or indulge these things, but always, they hold us captive in a prison cell that grows darker by the day.  It’s the way of all earth masters rooted in spiritual darkness.  We are free to pursue them, but in doing so, our freedom is lost in our captivity to them.  Not so with the Father.  The world offers freedom that leads to total enslavement.  The Father offers, in Christ, slavery that leads to total freedom, and total life.  How can this be?
   Could you dare to allow that statement, “You are free to live as God’s slaves” simmer in your mind, heart, and spirit?  Would you, would I, allow the Holy Spirit to open all three to the wonder of what that really means?  The New American Standard uses the word “bondslaves.”  This means the person has sold themselves over to ownership of their Master.  This is what happened when the Father purchased us from the hold of the devil with the blood of Christ.  We’ve left the tyranny of the master of darkness and death for the freedom of the Master of light and life.  Yet, so many seem to remain trapped in their old slavery, their graveclothes, when something so much more awaits them. 
   We are now living in a culture of fear, anxiety, anger, and hatred, and so many who are His seem to be caught up in it.  It’s the spirit of the day, yet it is not to be the spirit of those who are His.  If we are free to live as His slaves, then we are free to live as slaves to hope, to peace, to joy, to eternal life.  An eternal life that doesn’t start when we die, but right now, when we begin to truly live in Him.  We embrace His Mastery over us, the dark dungeons we’ve been trapped in, now flame with His light, and we can rise and follow Him out of them.  Our slavery to Him, makes us free of all in this world that is not Him.  We are free, finally, to live.
   With this wonderful news and life before us, why do so many of us miss it?  I think a great part of it is that so many think that coming to Him is a matter of making a number of minor life adjustments.  We’re willing to make outward, cosmetic changes, but inside, we cling to what really matters to us.  We expect the major adjustments to be made by Him to us.  Yet, He doesn’t call us to these “minor adjustments,” but to a total death to self.  It’s the only pathway to freedom and life.

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