Well, there is a first-time for everything. I’m going to disagree with Lupton here.
Lupton makes a distinction between the biblical metaphors of servant and friend. But that’s not the problem. Those distinctions are clear enough. The problem comes when he’s advocating the abandonment of one for the other. After a short history of the abuses in using the language “servants” of God, he makes the case that Jesus preferred this language because “he knew that servants would always become lords but friends would not.” Now he quotes a heart-warming passage in which Jesus calls his disciples friends and “no longer servants” to make this point more clearly. Now the problem is that the rest of Scripture uses both metaphors—in a celebratory manner. Jesus calls himself servant. Paul, the same. In fact, slave. Then he calls all who call upon Christ, servants/slaves. It is the nature of any Lord. The problem is not that we should stop thinking of ourselves as servants of the King, but that we she think more rightly about the nature of servant hood in the kingdom. For that matter, the nature of friendship, slavery, and lordship.
Lupton’s instincts for the manner of servant hood remain spot on—he gets the upside down nature of the kingdom. And it’s moving. But the problem with us not getting is not semantic. Nomenclature is not our error, but embodiment. The solution to our need for clearer biblical servant hood will never be abandonment in name or metaphor. It will be in our living out the principles of the Kingdom that has a King. A professor of mine would often say about arguments like these: Abusus usum non tollit. Not sure how tight the translation is, but I understand it to mean “abuse does not take away use.” Or better, “abuse is not corrected by disuse but by right use.”
OK so why all the semantics. Well, it’s born out of a real and right and biblical desire for a new and more beautiful way. Lupton longs for us to treat each other with dignity and respect. Lupton longs for and hopes for and works for followers of Christ to embody the beauty of the kingdom in action AND manner of action. These instincts are right, true, good, and beautiful. I applaud him for these.
But its never good to abandon biblical metaphors. Servant-hood and its language needs to be redeemed. And we need Lupton’s voice and others to draw the distinctions—not between servants and friends—but between faux-servants (mis-servants) and real servants. He has the prophetic instinct and power to do so—and we’d all listen if he did.
