Peter’s Progress

I remember images of long queues, of patient waiting and then celebration on April 27, 1994.
There was celebration that Apartheid had ended, a peaceful transition to democracy, a vision of a rainbow nation being birthed. Freedom.
But there is something about human nature that does not naturally embrace freedom. Ask any recovering addict. The temptation is to replace one addiction with another. This also happens in politics. Freedom from one political ideology leads to the rise of another system equally powerless to bring about the transformation we hope for.
In the book of Exodus God hands down the well-known Ten Commandments and then adds a few more provisos. He says to the Jewish people who are relishing their new found freedom from Egypt – “Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt”. God is concerned that what has happened before can happen again. Worse still, God is concerned that those who have suffered injustice can end up perpetrating injustice. And history is littered with this un-learnt lesson among all nations and all eras.
What if, instead of avoiding the notion of being enslaved, we embrace the idea? We choose to become enslaved to something good and great and noble.
The apostle Paul is blown away by this concept. He writes to the church in Rome, “…having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness…” and again, “But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.” To the church in Corinth he makes this exchange even clearer, “For the one who was a slave when called to faith in the Lord is the Lord’s freed person; similarly, the one who was free when called is Christ’s slave.”
It’s an entirely different way of looking at the gospel of God. Granted, the language of slavery is not popular for motivational sermons like individual choice, blessing and personal destiny is. Being Christ’s slave brings old fashioned ideas such as obedience and duty back into the language of the church. “You are my friends if you obey my commands,” says Jesus. “Love one another” commands Jesus. This isn’t a nicety, only if I’m in the right space and feel like it. This is the weightiness of being enslaved to the message of grace. Of being Christ’s slave!