7/3 Under the Slave Master of the World
For those of us who turned to the Lord Jesus in our childhood, it is sometimes hard to remember what life was like before we ask Him into our Heart. For this group of Jesus Followers, it has been part of their heritage and their blessings in life.
Then there are those blessed among us who see His truth, accept Him into their lives and their whole existence is a steady growth upward. They are well nurtured in their faith, accept the challenges He puts before then and seem to sail into a renewed, daily walk with Him.
For those of us who accepted Him as the Christ and yet slipped back into our own ‘Pig Pen journey’, we have a crisper view of life before His truth changed our Heart. I, as your author, would put myself in this group. I knew His love, even went onto two fantastic hard years in Bible College and yet, when my Heart hadn’t been heard, healed or refined, I chose to walk about from Him. He never left me but it took me 10 years to get back to where I knew I wanted to be with Him….but that’s another story.
To help us see what we were like before Jesus came into our life, we need to unpack the verses in the Bible that describe what life without God is like. This is where the world without Him lives; this is what we once were.
1. We are born into the Kingdom of Darkness.
We inherited this existence from the choices make by Adam and Eve, the generations before us and often, our own choices.
Ephesians 2:1-3 “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.”
Romans 7:14 “We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin.”
2 Peter 2:19 “They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity–for a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him.”
2. What does this really mean?
There is really only one kingdom in the world but another divided section called the Kingdom of Darkness. The ruler of this Kingdom has a legal right over every human being every born, including the future generations as well. Adam and Eve gave Satan that right when they rebelled in the Garden and did their own choice. They gave their authority to Ruler of the divided kingdom.
That means every one born into this earthly existence has been blinded and deceived into thinking they are caught in the mindsets around them. Even though they may feel independent, they are still caught in the Master Slave Ruler’s domain. Believing the lies, they set their self worth on things, cultural webs of ideas or sometimes false comforts of alcohol, gambling, etc. They have their own guidelines for happiness, meaning and self-centred choices.
….and that’s where we were once also.
We saw nothing wrong in the world’s way of behaving if it felt good to us. We sought out things, people or philosophies – such as the occult, because we saw a glimmer of something beyond ourselves. We looked for hat ever could help us survive or to cope with a life that seemed beyond hope. We followed others, or looked through fantasy and found ways to deal with our hurts and the pain of life – or often, that didn’t help us find healing for such pain.
Yep! That’s what it was like to live in a world without God, without anything but band-aids for the real problems in our life – whether we realised it or not. We were basically caught in our sins and pains without knowing the Truth of God’s Kingdom of Light. We were slaves to the Slave Master and didn’t even know it.
In our next post, we’ll further examine that world that, hopefully you have all chosen to leave behind when you chose to follow Jesus. So join me as we further discover what it meant to be a Slave before we were really free.
Susanne Fengler, Blog Author
www.christianfoundations.mentorsnotebook.com
Tags: Bible on Slave to Son
Filed under: From Slave to Sonship
I have enjoyed this series so far. Keep going and I will be back to read more. I will be interested to see what stage I am up to.