Slave vs Servant

Ephesians 6:5-6 NET

Slaves, obey your human masters with fear and trembling, in the sincerity of your heart as to Christ, not like those who do their work only when someone is watching – as people-pleasers – but as slaves of Christ doing the will of God from the heart.

What is the difference in being called a slave and being called a servant? The difference is that we are slaves to Christ and we are to be servants to others. We are not slaves to people nor should we be slaves to this world, but to Christ!

When a slave serves his master's friends, he is not their slave but their servant. Our master is Jesus and we are to serve our fellow Christians as well as the lost!

1 Corinthians 7:22-23 NET

For the one who was called in the Lord as a slave is the Lord’s freedman. In the same way, the one who was called as a free person is Christ’s slave. You were bought with a price. Do not become slaves of men.

Romans 6:14-23 NET

For sin will have no mastery over you, because you are not under law but under grace.
What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Absolutely not! Do you not know that if you present yourselves as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or obedience resulting in righteousness? But thanks be to God that though you were slaves to sin, you obeyed from the heart that pattern of teaching you were entrusted to, and having been freed from sin, you became enslaved to righteousness. (I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh.) For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free with regard to righteousness.
So what benefit did you then reap from those things that you are now ashamed of? For the end of those things is death. But now, freed from sin and enslaved to God, you have your benefit leading to sanctification, and the end is eternal life. For the payoff of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Luke 16:13 NET

No servant can serve two masters, for 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 God and money (possessions; worldly things).”

We all know that having things, money, possessions, etc., is not evil nor is it wrong, but when we are slaves to this world and the things in it, then we begin to love things more than God and He is a jealous (zealous) God! We are to serve Him, not the things of this world. We can possess things and not allow things to possess us!

Exodus 20:5 NET

You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God, responding to the transgression of fathers by dealing with children to the third and fourth generations of those who reject me

Jealous is defined in the NET as being "the same word often translated "zeal" or "zealous." The word describes a passionate intensity to protect or defend something that is jeopardized." I love the next part. "God's zeal or jealousy is to protect his people or his institutions or his honor. Yahweh's honor is bound up with the life of his people.

So we are to honor God by being enslaved to Christ, serving God and others.