© 2012 by Tom Boynton (editing by Kathy Boynton)

Is slave buying bad? Although our country’s history has been blighted by wicked trafficking in human souls, most Americans, today, would agree that slavery is a pernicious evil. People of all races have been both perpetrators and victims. When evil men and women buy and sell each other, the results are painful and disastrous.

Yet, even in the most evil times of slavery, a slave would sometimes rejoice when purchased by a new master. This rejoicing was most exuberant when the old master was evil and abusive, but the new master was kind and gentle. Some slaves even came to love their new masters who had purchased or redeemed them out of pain and misery.

The kindest slave buyer of all is the Lord Jesus Christ. All of us enter this world enslaved to the Devil. Though we think we are free and answerable to no one, God’s word says, “Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness (Romans 6:16)? The word “servants,” here, is the Greek word “doulos” meaning “slave.” This same word is used by Paul in his letter to the Romans where he introduces himself as, “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God” (Romans 1:1). Paul was exuberant over the fact that, as a former slave of Satan, he was now a blood-bought slave of Jesus Christ. Christ had redeemed him from sin and eternal damnation. In his letter to the Corinthian Christians, he reminds them that they, too, are purchased slaves. He says, “…know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).”

Dear reader: Have you, through faith, become a blood-bought slave of Christ, or are you still a slave of the Devil?

 

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