No Longer Slaves

Or, why I don't like the word "obey"

Photo by Alexandro David: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-jumping-1830815/

(An eight-minute read.)

I have  a confession to make: I don’t like the word “obey.”

I’ve felt this way for a long time, but my discomfort has ratcheted up lately for various reasons—many of which I won’t go into at this point.

Admittedly, one often sees what they want to see when reading Scripture; but such a thought has been confirmed all the more in my recent devotional reading of Paul’s letter to the Galatians.

It seems to me that one of the main points Paul tries to make in the letter is that there are—or should be—stages of spiritual development that Jesus-followers experience as they learn to grow in their spiritual maturity and the way they relate to God and his law.

Simply put, Paul says in Galatians 3 that when we’re young in our spiritual development, we have to be protected and guarded by the law. Unable to fend for ourselves and to make our own decisions, we find security and stability in the law, and have to have the rules spelled out for us very clearly—since we don’t have the maturity to navigate all the complexities of life.

We thus live a rule-centered life as a form of safety—the same way I had to be very strict with my kids about not running onto the street without my permission when they were younger. They didn’t have the mental capacity to figure out when they could or couldn’t safely run into the street.

Now that they’re older, however, I don’t have any rules like that. Understanding the broader principles of safety, and the importance of preserving their own lives, my kids have the mental maturity to figure out for themselves whether they should or shouldn’t run into the street in any given situation.

Thus, I don’t expect “obedience” from them any more on this account because the principles have been internalized. And, anyway, no single “rule” can adequately cover every situation—nor can all the rules in the world piled up together do so either. Life is a lot more complicated than that (and is a let loss enjoyable if, using this example, there’s just an absolute prohibition which says that my children can never, ever go onto a street. They would miss out on experiencing a lot of great stuff if they just universally and eternally never cross a street.)

This is basically what Paul lays out in Galatians 3. The law, before we mature in Christ, acts as an instrument of protection. It keeps us safe (at least to some extent).

But, Paul hastens to add, now that we’ve arrived at a place of trusting in Jesus, understanding that our safety and security come from him, we no longer view the law as providing that protection. In that sense, we are no longer “under the law” (Galatians 3:23-25).

Not that we throw all caution to the wind and live lives of complete debauchery (in fact, just the opposite).

But we now understand where our true security lies: not in our ability to perfectly keep the rules or meticulously stay in line. We understand our security lies in Jesus—and he liberates us to reach even higher heights of safe and peaceful living.

All this was in my mind last week as I shifted in my personal devotional reading to Galatians 4, where it came together for me even more.

There, in verse 1, Paul talks about how when we’re “children,” we’re essentially no different than slaves—taking orders from the law, using it as a form of protection and safety.

Except the Greek word Paul uses for “child(ren)” here is fascinating. It’s the word nepios, which is a fairly uncommon word that, in one sense, actually means something like “infant” or “young child.” Gerhard Kittle, in his classic Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, indicates the word refers to a child who lacks “understanding.”

So, again, the concept points to the stages of spiritual development—and specifically, in this instance, to the very early stages of one’s spiritual development when they lack understanding or the ability to navigate the spiritual journey using principles rather than simply taking orders.

What’s perhaps even more fascinating is the way Susan Edmunds, in her analysis of the word nepios in Homer’s writing, defined the term:

Etymologically, nēpios is the negative of the ēpios, a word which means something like “like a father” and even “connecting.” Thus, nēpios denotes social, emotional, and mental disconnection oftentimes due to the absence of a kindly, fatherly figure.

What an intriguing idea!

Basically, a nepios, according to Edmunds, is someone who is socially, emotionally, and developmentally disconnected and delayed (and I might add: spiritually delayed) because of the “absence of a kindly, fatherly figure.”

This make sense within the context of Paul’s writings because just a few verses later he talks about how we have been “adopted” into God’s family, and the Spirit has been sent into our hearts, causing us to cry out, “Abba, Father!” (v. 6).

In other words, what I see going on is that in our earliest stages of spiritual development we act as immature children who lack a “kindly, fatherly” understanding of God. God, to us, is a master to obey rather than a father to embrace.

This manifests in slave-like behavior, where we relate to the law as something we’re obligated to obey as a means of safety and protection. And we seek to perform that law out of fear, believing not only that our wellbeing depends on our perfect performance of the law, but also that our acceptance with God (and others, I might add) is at least partly based on that performance.

This leads to all sorts of emotional, intellectual, and spiritual disconnection. And relational disconnection as well—from God, from others, and from ourselves.

We thus live life in a wooden and mechanical way, possessing hearts of “stone,” as Ezekiel puts it, rather than hearts of “flesh,” trying to meticulously live by the “letter” of the law, rather than the Spirit—and, demonstrating great social disconnection, judging all others who don’t live up to that standard as well (which is largely what the whole book of Galatians is all about).

But then we start to grow up. We start understanding that God is not an unkindly master who commands obedience but rather a father who simply wants what’s best for us—to the point that he even gave his son, Jesus, to reveal his heart and “redeem” us, not just from slavery to sin and its consequences, but also from being slaves to the law, as Paul also explains (v.  5).

What’s more, we actually start to see that God wants us to be his “heirs” (v. 7), which is a staggering thought.

And not just heirs, but, according to Paul in Romans 8, joint-heirs with Christ!

In other words, we were designed to be recipients of God’s inheritance, along with Christ, which not only comes with amazing benefits but also tremendous responsibility.

As Kyu Seop Kim puts it in his explanation of inheritance practices according to Roman law, citing one example, a joint-inheritance, “provided the legal framework for members of the family jointly to run the family farm and to share the resources in Roman law.”

Think about this!

Essentially, what Paul is saying is that God fully intended to give us “the farm,” so to speak. He’s giving us—because of and along with Christ—the keys to the city.

That doesn’t sound like someone who is looking for “obedience.” That doesn’t sound like someone who is looking for us to just take orders from him—or Christ.

It sounds like God’s intention all along was that we would grow up and learn how to make decisions for ourselves after apprenticing under him, taking his principles of love and applying them to the varying circumstances of life.

It’s why, elsewhere, according to John, Christ incredibly tells us that he wants us to “sit” with him on his “throne” (Revelation 3:21), denoting some level of rulership.

We were designed to be co-heirs with Christ, vice-regents with whom he shares responsibility, decision-making, and partnership.

Again, it doesn’t sound like the original design was for us was to be “obedient,” but for us to be in partnership with God—which implies mutuality and give-and-take.

Some will say—and some have already said—that such a vision doesn’t mean the words “obey” or “obedience” are bad though. I simply need to transition from thinking of “obedience” as something that is done “slavishly” to something that is done out of love. It’s an obedience based on love rather than on fear or obligation.

But I still don’t think that captures the full picture of God’s intention. Obedience, to me, necessarily denotes an inability to say “no” and an obligation to say “yes.” It is, by definition, a one-way street that stems from a hierarchical relational arrangement, where God gives us our “marching orders” and we’re obligated to do them, no questions asked.

But I’m not so sure about this.

While it is true that there are plenty of examples in Scripture of people who said “no” to God and suffered the consequences as a result, there are also other examples—like Abraham and Moses, both of whom were “friends” of God—who pushed back against God’s commands and even advised him to take another route, and God actually honored them, rather than shaming and punishing them.

In other words, God not only respects our agency, but he wants us to fully utilize it, as he seeks to bring us into his counsel and empowers us to exercise real power and decision-making authority.

He is, indeed, a power-sharing God—which is what he’s intended to do with us all along.

To be clear, I think we should all be quite suspicious of our own wisdom, power, and ability, not being too quick to make more of ourselves than is warranted (it seems that the root problem with the so-called “fall of Lucifer” was that Lucifer had a prideful and arrogant estimation of his own abilities and didn’t want to humble himself under God’s reign).

But we should at least be aware of the larger vision God has for us so we don’t remain in a perpetual state of immature infancy and/or slavery, believing God’s highest ideal for us is “obedience.”

Indeed, as Paul says in Galatians 5, we need to recognize that we’re “no longer slaves” but “sons.” And if we’re sons, then we’re “heirs” (v. 7).

Heirs that don’t live lives of obedience, but of mutual partnership.

Hallelujah!

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Shawn is a pastor in Maine, whose life, ministry, and writing focus on incarnational expressions of faith. The author of four books and a columnist for Adventist Review, he is also a DPhil student at the University of Oxford (what they call a PhD), focusing on nineteenth-century American Christianity. You can follow him on Instagram and Twitter, and listen to his podcast Mission Lab.