Becoming a Slave

Matthew 20:27 - "And whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave."

Slave. There's a difference between being great and being first; the difference between being a servant and being a slave. The words and concepts are as different in Greek as they are in English. If we want to be great, we must serve others. We must be their servant. A servant has rights, gets paid, can go home at night, can go wherever they please, is employed, and is given the dignity of being considered a person.

A slave gets none of these things: no rights, no pay, no home, no freedom, no dignity of being considered a person, they are owned. They are truly last. Yet, the biggest difference between these two statuses is the type and severity of punishment. A servant had rights and if an employer abused them, they could theoretically get another position. A slave had no such option, either in America or Rome or wherever slavery existed. That is what it means to be  a slave. They were owned, not employed. They could not just go looking for another owner. They had no rights and no recourse.

This is a measure of how wrong James, John, and their mother were. Were they prepared to give up what little they had, including the dignity of personhood? Taking on a living death? Some churches continue to ask/demand this from their women (not their men). This is what Paul means when he said Christ left the form of God to take on the form of a slave. A complete denial of all that is considered human. Following Jesus means going down the ladder toward slavery, rather than up.
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