Choosing the right master

"Jesus is Lord", we say, but do we really mean it? What would it mean to serve Jesus as Lord? How can we serve someone as Lord and not give up our freedom? It sounds paradoxical, but recently I've begun to understand better what it means to say that Jesus is the one whose "service is perfect freedom".

In the end we all serve someone. For some of us it's another human being. It might be someone who literally demands our service, by force or manipulation. But it might also be that we've unwittingly or voluntarily made someone our master. That person could be a parent, a lover, a pastor, a teacher, a 'guru' of some kind. It may even be an imaginary figure based on someone real but idealised. The person may be part of our present lives, or they may be from our past, even someone who has died. Whoever it is, we live to serve them.

Why would anyone do this? In my experience, the person we serve provides us with something we can't do without (or feel we can't do without.) That might be affirmation, or love, or acceptance, or security or whatever. The difficulty with human masters is that they are human. They have weaknesses and faults. They are inevitably inconsistent. They can't provide us with what we need (particularly if they are imaginary, distant or dead).

Alternatively we can serve ourselves. Perhaps most of us do. We try to meet our own ends and goals. We might not do it in an obviously selfish, self-seeking way. But even when we think we're serving others and living godly lives, we can be doing it in order to get the feedback and satisfaction and approval that we need.

What has struck me recently is what a miserable master our self can be. Sometimes, my 'self' is all that I'd want her to be. But not consistently. Often my self is an overbearing, demanding perfectionist. Nothing meets her exacting standards. At other times my self is someone so unpleasant, mean and self-pitying, that if I were to meet another person like that, I'd certainly not want to serve them.

When you think about it, the only person truly worth serving is Jesus. No other person is so utterly and awe-inspiringly good. No-one else loves us as consistently and unflinchingly as he does. Because he is omniscient, he has perfect knowledge of what is best for us (despite what the serpent told Eve.) Unlike my perfectionist self, he is a gentle master who works alongside us, bearing the yoke with us. Only he deserves our full allegiance because of who he is. All other masters, including our selves, are flawed but he is perfect and unchangeable.

This post is one of a series on what it means to be free in Christ:

Free in Christ - introduction

Choosing the right master

God's freedom and ours

Jesus and freedom

Going beyond personal freedom

Freed from the fear of death

Fools for Christ

Reputations