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About Jesus - Steve (Stephen) Sweetman Jesus
Owns Me
When
you were a slave, you pleased your lord because he owned you and your
little family. For that reason, your wife's first baby, a girl, was
taken from her to be sold to a pimp to be raised as a prostitute.
Her second baby, a sickly boy, was thrown alive into a garbage dump to be
eaten by wild animals. It's called exposure and is a commonly
acceptable practice. Her third baby, a healthy boy, will be
financially beneficial to your lord, so he keeps him. Sometimes you
wonder who really is the father of your little boy. Your wife is
your lord's property and you know what lord's do to slave wives.
Now
that you're free, you try to live as you please, but with restrictions
since you're still not a Roman citizen. You are captivated by a guy
named Paul of Tarsus who preaches freedom, and you're all about being
free. He speaks about a guy named Jesus, who after his death as a
humanized deity, rose from death, disappeared into the clouds where he now
rules the universe. He can set anyone everywhere free. No
wonder you're intrigued. One
thing confuses you. Paul speaks of Jesus followers as being slaves
of Jesus. How can one be both free and a slave? It makes no
sense. One of Paul's friends hands you a parchment with a quote from
Paul. "Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the
Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are
not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honour God
with your bodies" (1 Corinthians 6:19 - 20). "That's
utterly ridiculous", you think. The
idea of a god living in someone sounds like some new-fangled mysticism,
but what bothers you most is all of this slave talk and being owned by
Jesus who has weird rules to obey. Now being a free man, being
enslaved again to a new lord is not acceptable to you. "It's
more than mysticism. It's insanity", you think. Another
thing that really bugs you is that Jesus defines adultery as having any
kind of sex outside of marriage. Your Greco/Roman culture defines
adultery as only having sex with one who is married. Extra-marital
sex is not adultery. It's just natural, especially for men, and
you're a man who now enjoys mixed-sex bathing beside naked women in the
public baths. You also enjoy the massage spas, the prostitutes and
the other enticements at the baths. It's just life for a Greco/Roman
man. It's
difficult to imagine how Jesus was embraced by anyone in Paul's day,
especially when Christian teaching considered Christians as slaves of
Jesus, and "slave" is an appropriate word here. Our modern
Bibles soften "slave" to "servant," but
"slave" (doulos in Greek) is the precise wording of the original
New Testament text. As
Paul taught, God's Spirit lives in me. I am not my own. Jesus
owns me. Of course, Jesus is a different kind of Lord and I'm to be
a different kind of slave. Despite Jesus calling His disciples
friends on at least one occasion that we know of (John 15:15) I am still a
slave and Jesus is still my Lord. Whether in Paul's day or our day,
only the Holy Spirit can convince me or anyone of that. That's why
so many came to Jesus in Paul's day and will come to Him today. I'm
wondering if you ever consider yourself a slave, or even a servant of
Jesus, and if so, how is that confirmed in your life?
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