Bond-servant/Bondslave... that term can conjure up some horrific connotations. It even sounds bad coming off the tongue. Think about it. Who would want to become someone's slave over a debt? That's what a bond-servant is. A slave to the lender until the debt is paid. And yet it is fairly understandable why post salvation we might all be bond-servants to Christ. After all, He did pay our debt of sin, and we do owe him for His obedience. Yet this servitude under compulsion is not what Paul, Peter, Jude, James, or any other character of the Bible was talking about when they called themselves a bond-servant of Christ.
The type of bondslave that embraces his servitude is the one like is found in Exodus 21:1-6. If a Hebrew owed another Hebrew, he would be enslaved for 6 years. On the seventh year he would be allowed to go free. (v.5&6) "But if the slave plainly says, 'I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out as a free man,' the his master shall bring him to God, the he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost. And his master shall pierce his ear with an awl; and he shall serve him permanently." This bondslave is one of his/her own free will. This bondslave subjects his freedom to the master out of love.
In the revelation of the Kingdom of God, in harmony with the Holy Spirit it not only easy to say, 'I love my master... I will not go free,' but it is nearly impossible to not willingly become a bondslave of Christ. A slave to love as T Austin-Sparks wrote when he said, "There is nothing which makes slaves of us more than love, and it is an ecstatic and sublime slavery which never wants release, and only dreads that a breach might at some time come."
In bond-servitude it is never about us, but about what He can be through us. It is about Him using us as His hands, His feet, His instrument. In bond-servitude it is not about what I can "accomplish" or my successes. On the contrary it is about me being less and him being more. On the subject Oswald Chambers writes, "Jesus did not say - "he that believeth in Me shall realize the blessing of the fulness of God," but - "he that believeth in Me out of him shall escape everything he receives." Our Lord's teaching is always anti-self-realization. His purpose is not the development of a man; His purpose is to make a man exactly like Himself, and the characteristic of the Son of God is self-expenditure. If we believe in Jesus, it is not what we gain, but what He pours through us that counts. It is not that God makes us beautifully rounded grapes, but that He squeezes the sweetness out of us. Spiritually, we cannot measure our life by success, but only by what God pours through us, and we cannot measure that at all."
Christ was the first bond-servant of God and He poured Himself out for the Father on our behalf. This is the level of emulation, of Christ reflection we can expect to be constantly drawn to.
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