’All service ranks the same with God: 
  There is no last nor first.’

What does it matter what you and I are set to do?  Nothing.  And, so, why need we struggle and wear our hearts out to get into conspicuous places, or to do work that shall bring some revenue of praise said glory to ourselves?  ‘Play well thy part; there all the honour lies,’ the world can say.  Serve Christ in anything, and all His servants are alike in His sight.

The slave-owner had absolute power of life and death over his dependants.  He could split up families; he could sell away dear ones; he could part husband and wife, parent and child.  The slave was his, and he could do what he liked with his own, according to the cruel logic of ancient law.  And Jesus Christ, the Lord of the household, the Lord of providence, can say to this one, ‘Go!’ and he goes into the mists and the shadows of death.  And He can say to those who are most closely united, ’Loose your hands!  I have need of one of you yonder.  I have need of the other one here.’  And if we are wise, if we are His servants in any real deep sense, we shall not kick against the appointments of His supreme, autocratic, and yet most loving Providence, but be content to leave the arbitrament of life and death, of love united or of love parted, in His hands, and say, ’Whether we live we are the Lord’s, or whether we die we are the Lord’s; living or dying we are His.’

The slave-owner owned all that the slave owned.  He gave him a little cottage, with some humble sticks of furniture in it; and a bit of ground on which to grow his vegetables for his family.  But he to whom the owner of the vegetables and the stools belonged owned them too.  And if we are Christ’s servants, our banker’s book is Christ’s, and our purse is Christ’s, and our investments are Christ’s; and our mills, and our warehouses, and our shops and our businesses are His.  We are not His slaves, if we arrogate to ourselves the right of doing what we like with His possessions.

And, then, still further, there comes into our Apostle’s picture here yet another point of resemblance between slaves and the disciples of Jesus.  For the hideous abominations of the slave-market are transferred to the Christian relation, and defecated and cleansed of all their abominations and cruelty thereby.  For what immediately follows my text is, ‘Ye are bought with a price.’  Jesus Christ has won us for Himself.  There is only one price that can buy a heart, and that is a heart.  There is only one way of getting a man to be mine, and that is by giving myself to be his.  So we come to the very vital, palpitating centre of all Christianity when we say, ’He gave Himself for us, that He might acquire to Himself a people for His possession.’  Thus His purchase of His slave, when we remember that it is the buying of a man in his inmost personality, changes all that might seem harsh in the requirement of absolute submission into the most gracious and