Bible says no one can serve two masters. You will either be a servant to the sinful nature or righteousness that is found in Christ. Either you can be a people-pleaser or a God-pleaser. Either gratify the sinful nature and live in guilt or walk in the freedom that Christ died for you to have.

Jesus draws this important principle as He speaks to the multitudes in Matthew 6:24:

“No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.”

Paul says the same thing to the church in Rome that you are slaves to the one whom you obey.

Romans 6: 16

“Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey-whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?”

Jesus said in John 14:15, “If you love Me, keep my commandments.” That’s how we prove our love for Christ. Jesus is expressing the reality of joyful obedience.

Joyful Obedience is a Free Choice

Can there be joy in obedience? That depends on if obedience is a free choice or the result of threats.

God does not instruct us because we are bad, but because He is good.

Psalms 25:8

“Good and upright is the Lord, therefore he instructs sinners in His ways.”

Obedience of a man who is made new in his spirit due to his faith in the finished work of Christ on the Cross, is free. We are not to obey God joyfully, as if joy is our duty in obedience and we are to generate within ourselves a pleasant feeling about it in order to do it with a good attitude so that we can please God. Those who try to please God with the works of fear or competition, who see their righteousness as a currency to buy God’s favor are utterly deceived. But those who have been awakened by faith into Christ find obedience a joy! We now obey God, not to get something from Him but for our own good and out of love for Him. That is called worship- a free offering of life to God. We get to enact what we are already declared to be. Such obedience is an overflow, an outpouring of the new man at work within us, the new life bursting with love for the world.

In light of what Christ has done for us joyful obedience to Christ is just the logical response from a freed man who has experienced the newness in spirit on account of what Christ has done for him.

Joyful Obedience of Christ Jesus

1 John 5:3,4

“This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world.”

All worship entails this love because worship that does not come from love is manipulation. Jesus demonstrates this free love when He goes to the Cross, in obedience to the Father’s will. But He is not coerced. No one- including the Father-takes His life from Him, He lays it down of His own accord. We too, as those baptized and born again in Christ, share in the new obedience. It is new because it does not come from fear or competition but love. The love of God in Christ has worked to shape our desires so that we love God and neighbors not because of what we get, but because of Christ.

To those who are set free and are obedient from the heart, the law of God instructs us on how to live out that love. And that’s what lovers want, instruction in how to love their beloved.

You will always love someone. Who will that be?

Choose your Master

Every unbeliever, whether they know it or not, yields themselves to their old sin nature. Even the good things that they do as well as the evil things are under the influence of the old sin nature. They are SLAVES to SIN, which means that everything they do, whether good or bad is not acceptable to God.

As believers, we have been freed from this slavery to sin, which results in death, for at the moment we are saved, we become a servant of righteousness. We are no longer a slave of sin but a servant of Christ.

Just as we once presented our members (our bodies) as slaves to impurity and lawlessness, which simply leads to more lawlessness, so now as believers we are to present our members as slaves to righteousness ,which leads to sanctification- a lifelong process of being conformed into the likeness of Christ Jesus our Lord.

The literal meaning of holiness is “set aside”. Progressive sanctification is the movement of being set aside unto God. Christians are to “present” or set themselves before God as separated unto Him. This is a life set apart for God.

Christians are to be passionate in their Christian living. In fact they are to live lives with a greater passion to yield themselves to God than the passion with which they yielded themselves to selfish gratification as non-Christians.

No Christian stands still in his walk with the Lord. Either he moves forward or backward. If a believer does not continue to apply principles of God’s Word to experience, he will go into reversionism in Christian living. He will develop a momentum of sinning. The longer he stays out of fellowship, the steeper the decline in his spiritual life.

It is important to progress in Christian life with a life set apart unto God through Christ. If we do not have a clear sense that our life is God’s life, then we live for self-gratification.

Let us walk in the freedom we have, being sanctified, refined, and honed each passing day as we grow in maturity, yielding our lives to the Holy Spirit, to the praise and glory of the Lord.

Whose servant will you be?