‘Epaphras our dear fellowservant’ – we could translate this ‘our dear fellow slave’. It’s been made a little more respectable in our version. The servants of God are slaves of Jesus Christ and this is a glorious definition. Why slaves? What is a slave? Well, a slave is somebody who does his master’s bidding non-stop, always at his beck and call. These servants of God in ancient times were happy to be called ‘slaves’. I have been saved by grace and I am a slave of Jesus Christ. I do his bidding, just like an earthly slave in the times of the Roman Empire, would serve the master who owned him. And that’s what we should all do. I am a happy bond-slave of Jesus Christ. I do everything that he wants me to do – that should be our attitude. A slave is somebody who has no will of his own. He does not say, ‘Today, I am going to this place, I am going to that place tomorrow; I think I’ll do this, I’ll plan this, I’ll have this career, that career.’ A slave has no will of his own. He is owned by another and he does his master’s bidding and that is what Paul was like and that’s what these preachers were like in New Testament times and should be like today, too. We should all be like it. ‘I have no will of my own, except to do what is right by the Lord and what he wants me to do and where he wants me to go and where he wants me to study. If I can only pray for his guidance and his help and the kind of thing he wishes me to do for him.’ That is a slave. A slave had no property, nothing that he could call his own. He was put in a room or a place with others and he was in his master’s house. That is the attitude of Paul and Epaphras and others. ‘Ah, I don’t count anything that I may have as mine, it is all at the disposal of Christ.’ That’s us too. Are you buying a big car for yourself? No, be reasonable, just go for what is necessary and commit it to the Lord and use it for him.