Slavery

I just read a transcript of a good sermon by John MacArthur. I don't remember exactly how the subject came up...but I was up talking late to a co-worker while at the Creation Museum for an overnight program and we ended up talking theology for a while. I mentioned remembering listening to a message by MacArthur where he mentioned that only one modern mainstream translation properly translated a particular word (it was the Holman Christian Standard Bible--and I keep meaning to get one because of that and other good things I've heard about it). The word in question is slave.

Here is what MacArthur says:

But what exactly is our relationship to God? What is our relationship to Christ? How are we best to understand it?

Well if you read the New Testament in its original text, you would come away stunned really by how different the original text is from any English version that you’ve ever read...whether King James, New King James, New American Standard, ESV, NIV and you can name all the rest. All of them virtually have found a way to mask something that is an absolutely critical element of truth. In fact, the word “slave” appears in the New Testament 130 times in the original text. You will find it once in the King James, once the Greek word “slave” is translated slave. You will find it translated “slave” a few other times in other texts, like the New King James text and even the New American Standard text, and it will be translated “slave” when, one, it refers to actual slavery, or two, it refers to some kind of bondage to an inanimate reality. But whenever it is personalized, the translators seem unwilling to translate it “slave.”

I suppose the matter is quite interesting to me because of all of the books and other text that I read. I love precision in words and written text (and I personally despise "versions" of the Bible like the "Message" even if the people who use it admit it isn't a translation, but a paraphrase, they still treat it as a translation...*shudder*) and find it profitable to read modern, precise versions of the Scriptures that contain both understandable language and precise language that isn't watered down (don't get me started on the rabbit trails of improper spelling and horrible grammar). In short, all those translations of "servant" and "bondservant" that you find in nearly every translation (King James included) are simply incorrect.

There are six words, at least, for servant, doulos is not one of them. There is diakonos from which we get deacon, oiketes related to oikos, house, a house servant,heis, having to do with one who serves by instructing the young. Huperetes, a low-level, third level, under servant, literally an under-rower, the third level on a galley slave, someone who pulled an oar down at the bottom of a great ship; leitourgos, another kind of service, usually associated with religion; paidiske and maybemisthios that can be translated minister. There are plenty of words for servant, there’s only one word for slave, doulos and sundoulos. Yet in the history of the evangelical translation of the Greek into the English, all the translators consistently have avoided the use of the word.

But don't take my word for it, or just read what I've quoted here. You should really go read the whole article entitled Slaves for Christ. The point is strikingly well made that we trade a life of slavery to sin (and that is what it is, we don't just toy with sin or let it influence us--we are utterlay enslaved to it) for a life of slavery to Christ. It doesn't seem so appetizing at first glance to Americans, raised on a diet of "give me liberty or give me death," "God bless America," and "unalienable rights." But it is truly a wonderful thing:

Being a slave to Jesus Christ is beyond any kind of slavery that anybody ever knew because this master, listen to this one, makes us sons and gives us all the rights of His own sons. He adopts us into His family, calls us joint-heirs with Christ, takes us to heaven where we rule and reign from His own throne and pours out all the lavish riches in His possession forever and ever and ever for our own unmitigated joy and His own glory.

I heard this mesage preached while I was in Tennessee at my brother's church for a conference (I wasn't actually there for the conference, but I attended a couple sessions because I was already in Nashville and I wanted to hear MacArthur again).

~Matt