Slaves to God

In 2 Peter 1:1, Peter says he is a “bondservant . . . of Jesus Christ.” Paul says the same thing in Titus 1:1. Or consider Romans 6:18-22:

¹⁸ And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. ¹⁹ I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves of uncleanness, and of lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves of righteousness for holiness.
²⁰ For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. ²¹ What fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. ²² But now having been set free from sin, and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness, and the end, everlasting life. ²³ For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

How do we reconcile these claims of being slaves of God and Christ with what Paul says in Galatians 4:7, “Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ”? Or what Jesus says in John 15:15, “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I heard from My Father I have made known to you”?

The conflict is only apparent. Any biblical metaphor should not be overstretched, and in both passages we learn where the metaphor of being slaves to God breaks down. In Galatians 4, Paul is contrasting the adoption of Christians as sons of God with their being slaves to the elemental forces. We are no longer slaves to those ungodly powers, but sons of God, and therefore heirs of God through Christ. A slave didn’t expect to receive an inheritance from his master; he expected that inheritance to go the master’s son. Now we are sons, and we have an inheritance through Christ. In John 15:15, the point is the intimacy of the relationship. We have a connection with Christ that is one of privilege and honor and close friendship. But in the verse that immediately precedes that one, he said, “You are my friends if you do whatsoever I command you.” Slaves did not have an intimate relationship with their master, and our relationship to Jesus is in no way like that. What we learn from these two passage is that no biblical metaphor can be stretched in every detail. Are we slaves to God? Yes, but not in the sense that we have no inheritance. Are we slaves to Christ? Yes, but despite that fact, we have a unprecedented intimacy and close friendship with our Master.

See especially TDNT 2:275-6 and Murray J. Harris, Slave of Christ (Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP, 2001), 139-49.