Be Enslaved

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. You cannot serve both God and money.

But he answered his father, ‘Look, all these years I have served you and never disobeyed a commandment of yours. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends.

No servant 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. You cannot serve both God and money.”

“We are Abraham’s descendants,” they answered. “We have never been slaves to anyone. How can You say we will be set free?”

‘But I will punish the nation that enslaves them,’ God said, ‘and afterward they will come forth and worship Me in this place.’

I served the Lord with great humility and with tears, especially in the trials that came upon me through the plots of the Jews.

We know that our old self was crucified with Him so that the body of sin might be rendered powerless, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.

But now, having died to what bound us, we have been released from the law, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.

Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I serve the law of God, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

not by works but by Him who calls, she was told, “The older will serve the younger.”

Do not let your zeal subside; keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.

For whoever serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and approved by men.

For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. By smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive.

Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods.

But now that you know God, or rather are known by God, how is it that you are turning back to those weak and worthless principles? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again?

Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present-day Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children.

For you, brothers, were called to freedom; but do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh. Rather, serve one another in love.

Serve with good will, as to the Lord and not to men,

But you know Timothy’s proven worth, that as a child with his father he has served with me to advance the gospel.

because you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as your reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.

For they themselves report what kind of welcome you gave us, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God

Those who have believing masters should not show disrespect because they are brothers, but should serve them all the more, since those receiving their good service are beloved believers. Teach and encourage these principles.

For at one time we too were foolish, disobedient, misled, and enslaved to all sorts of desires and pleasures—living in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another.