"... Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness." - Romans 6:19
"Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart." - Ephesians 6:5-6
A Christian is supposed to be a "slave of righteousness".
A Christian is supposed to be a "slave of Christ".
What connotations does the word "slave" naturally invoke in our minds?
Who wants to be a slave in their right mind?
Sure, the Apostle Paul was a slave to Christ. But what was his experience like being a slave of righteousness/Christ? Honestly speaking, was it a miserable experience? Or was it mildly torturous? Or was it okay-la (as Chinese people would say)? Or was it a moderately enjoyable experience? Or did he experience an overall posture/condition of joy that was the "climate" of his heart while being one?
Paul writes elsewhere about his experience in the Kingdom of God:
"For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit" - Romans 14:17
Zeroing in on the "joy" aspect of being a slave of Christ, how did Paul see and experience the enslavement of God as a joyful thing? I am starting to read Paul's Epistles with a principle of "Paul never lied in his Epistles". Paul is not like some authors/speakers who only say pretty things about the Christian life abstractly, things which are exempt from the day-to-day tests of concrete corroboration because they remain too abstract to practically test. If Paul genuinely didn't find the Kingdom of God in the Holy Spirit something of "joy", he wouldn't say it. If he truly felt that the Kingdom of God was boring, torturous to live in, unexciting, unfulfilling, disappointing, in short non-joyful, he wouldn't write that it was so. Because Paul wouldn't lie.But Paul didn't describe being a slave to Christ like that.
On the contrary, Paul writes that he has:
"learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength." - Philippians 4:12-13.
Now this is a very specific description of Paul's concrete expectations of what mature living in the Kingdom of God is like. He, through practicing the presence of God and remaining in communion with him, has learned in "every situation" how to be content based on his ongoing/unceasing communion with God through being a slave to Christ. For us modern day Christians to expect otherwise is to have non-biblical expectations of what being a slave to righteousness/Christ is like.
For Paul, being a slave of Christ was fulfilling, refreshing, lively, meaningful, and full of energy (Colossians 1:29). These characteristics were not just "moody emotional weather" that kept coming and going like the physical weather. They were like the climate of the condition of his categorically different experience of living from the Kingdom of God (as opposed to living from the Kingdom of this world) that he lived in on a daily experience.
Now, a lot of us will bluntly ask (in our hearts silently, if not out loud verbally): "how the heck is that honestly possible? I can't wrap my head around it. It seems impossible for someone to experience the settled texture of supernatural experience that Paul had that enabled him to be purely content in every single situation that he was in".
It may seem impossible. But it is possible with God (I myself do not pretend that I have fully mastered this through Christ yet. I haven't. But I have experienced significant supernaturally-enabled improvement over the past few years. I honestly think it will take decades to master in this lifetime, but with significant life-changing improvements along the way). It is possible, because more is going on than what meets the eye. The Holy Spirit is involved. And he can't be detected by those who only expect resources to come from the physical/natural realm of existence (John 14:17).
For the non-Christian who sees a modern day Paul who can remain content in every situation (i.e. Dallas Willard), he will be confused as to how the heck it is actually possible, because he does not acknowledge the day-to-day concrete reality of the Holy Spirit's availability to the slave of Christ.
And bluntly speaking, the Christian who has read and believed about the Holy Spirit intellectually but who does not know how to detect/sense the Holy Spirit in his first person consciousness and sees a modern day Paul who can remain content in every situation (i.e. once again, Dallas Willard) will also be confused, because while he has acknowledged the day-to-day concrete reality of the Holy Spirit's availability in theory, he has failed to experience it first-hand in his first-person consciousness.
But the good news is that help is available. There is hope. With the help of God, other Christians who have mature experience in sensing the rhythms of the Holy Spirit, failure, experiencing, and practice, one can learn how to not only read about Romans 14:17, but experience it as well.
Now what is this category of experience like?
"If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit." - Galatians 5:25
This passage in Galatians 5 about the fruit of the Spirit gives us a hint of what this looks like. Galatians 5:25 imply that there is a difference in "living by the Spirit" and "keeping in step with the Spirit". Doing the former does not necessarily imply that one is doing the latter. The latter seems to imply a rhythm of the Spirit's moving, to move with. Or dare I say, dance with.
A modern hip-hop analogy perhaps can help us digest a little bit of how exactly the nature of being a slave to righteousness/Christ:
-involves submission of one's will to somebody else's authority
-is a sincerely enjoyable experience
-involves moving according an external rhythm that is not the rhythm of choice of the slave
(I do recognize that there are flaws of this analogy, and, like every analogy, it breaks down in certain areas. Nevertheless, we can learn from it)
In a modern form of hip-hop dancing (more accurately called "popping"), the hip-hop dancer submits oneself to the "will" of the hip-hop "puppeteer" and his authority. He is "controlled" by what the puppeteer wants the puppet to do. He is a "slave" of the puppeteer. (let's pretend for the sake of the analogy that the puppeteer in the back choreographed the whole dance and the puppet-dancer had to submit to it)
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LikXwgTyu90
It is an enjoyable experience for the hip-hop popping puppet in the front. He is having an enjoyable experience. Although he did not choreograph the dance sequence, since it is a good sequence, he is having a joyful time.
Moreover, he is dancing to the rhythms of the hip-hop beat outside of him. He did not create the beat, but he must move according to it nevertheless. He must not only "live according to the beat" but "keep in step with it" literally.
In short, it is not a miserable experience for him. It is not only an experience that is "okay-la". But he is fulfilled while he is doing it.
(I recognize that in the clip, in the last couple seconds, the puppet rebels and scares the puppeteer off, but just pretend that didn't happen haha)
Now, let us return to our comparison of how this hip-hop puppet-popping is like being a slave to righteousness/Christ. For the slave of Christ, the "puppeteer" (God the Father), the "strings" (Jesus Christ), and the "hip-hop beat" (Holy Spirit) are all invisible to the physical eyes. The world cannot see these Trinitarian participants that the hip-hop-slave-to-Christ is "dancing with" in life. Therefore, they are surprised by what they see with their carnal eyes with regard to the effects of the whole process which is embodied in the puppet. Meanwhile, the hip-hop-slave-to-Christ is "dancing" to a whole other reality, namely the spiritual realm, that is operating behind the curtains of physical reality. If the puppeteer, strings, and the hip-hop beats were gone, then it would be a chore, burden, and dread to try to produce the effects of joyful righteousness that the 3 hidden Trinitarian participants enable one to produce. Many have tried to do so, and have become legalistic and focused on the letter of God's commandments at the cost of the spirit of God's commandments, and have made life miserable for themselves as well as others (some would call them "modern day Pharisees"). However, for the slave-of-Christs who have grown and matured in hip-hop enslavement-to-Christ, they will realize more and more from experience that the Trinitarian help that they receive (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit), although invisible to the physical realm, is not totally hidden from themselves in corroborating experience after corroborating experience.
"In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven." - Matthew 5:16
A translation in light of this hip-hop dancing analogy would be "let your spiritual dance shine before others, so that they may see your "spiritually sick" moves as a hip-hop puppet-popper, and glorify the awesome hip-hop puppeteer/choreographer, who is your Father in heaven."
