Heir

Heir is the third identity of the spiritual journey as described as the [3] Seeker-Servant-Heir framework. It represents the person who has fully merged their identity with Jesus and joined him in mission in all areas of life. Understanding this identity is useful for one’s own spiritual journey, but is also helpful in the Disciple-Making process where it follows the Seeker and Servant identity.

Even though the Servant is obviously a committed believer, they have not yet reached the final identity in response to God: the Heir. Notice in the above parable that the master is absent while the servants are working. This is the great difference between the Servant and the Heir. The Servant sees his work as something separate, but related to the work of God. It is his job, but it was commissioned by his Master. A Heir owns the work of God on a deeper level. He is sure his work is really participation in God’s work.

Some time ago, I received an email from a friend. She was a little perplexed by God. “Why isn’t he using me more?” she wondered. It seemed like she judged her approval from God by how much he was using her in service to others with measurable results. I wrote back something like this: “lately, I’ve been trying to find a place with God where I can know his affirmation apart from other people or ministry. I think I’m drifting from a place of me serving in response to God to a place of me joining him in participation. In that place, the distinction between him working and me working is so blurred, I can’t tell where I end or where he begins.”

A few days later she wrote back that she had found the connection to God I had described. She moved from perplexed to peaceful and immediately noticed new doors open to serving others — doors to where God was asking her to join his work, not do something all on her own. We both had heard the call of God to “come and be with me.” It is a call of becoming a living vessel of the Spirit of God — of being Jesus to the world.

Near the end of Jesus’ life, in the anxious hours before his arrest, he told his disciples, “I no longer call you servants, because a master doesn’t confide in his servants. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me” [John 15:15, NLT]. The disciples had been trained during their service to Jesus. Now it was time that they directly participated in the Father’s work in the same way that Christ did. Later that same night, as Jesus was praying he said, “My prayer for all of them is that they will be one, just as you and I are one, Father – that just as you are in me and I am in you, so they will be in us, and the world will believe you sent me” [John 17:21, NLT].

In describing this intimate participatory relationship with God, the Apostle Paul goes as far as to say that the Spirit of God within us confirms that we are God’s children and that we are “heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ” [Romans 8:16-18]. He explains elsewhere that at first we are no different from household slaves, even though we are children of God. But that as faith matures, we outgrow the law of ‘do this’ and ‘don’t do that’ to shed our servant-like identity and live fully as heirs [Galatians 3:21-4:7]. While in God’s reality this change is given to us when we commit in faith to Christ, in our reality, it is something we have to grow into — as we mature it becomes more and more a part of our
experience.

As Paul says, the Servant role is tied to the law. There is always a command and a penalty for disobedience. While a believer should no longer live as though they were righteous by keeping a law, there is “law” in what Jesus taught his disciples [Matthew 5:17-20]. He commanded them and often mentioned what the penalty would be from those who ignored him. However, as “perfect love” grows in the relationship of the disciple and Master, the fear of punishment melts away [1 John 4:17].

Obedience is such a part of their nature it is more like a deep participation. But it’s only through consistency — doing it over and over — that it becomes something you are. Repetitive obedience is the foundation for the Heir identity laid by the Servant identity. Without it, there is no transition into participation with God in his works. Instead, we will struggle with obedience, doing our own works and being disciplined by the Father until we learn to join him in his nature.

Meta

This framework was originally Seeker-Servant-Son in older versions before it was updated with more inclusive terminology. Much of the text related to these different identities was taken from Revolutionary, Book 1, a discipleship series that follows the life of Christ in twelve steps.