Are you aching to serve others? Does employing your life to advance the interests of someone else get you out of bed in the morning? Do you love applying your energy to another’s agenda?
Me neither.
Honestly, my motivations for getting up in the morning usually center far more on myself and what I want to accomplish on any given day. This posture is actually celebrated in our current culture. Watch any advertisement today. What sells stuff has little to do with enabling us to serve others and promotes the unarguable agenda of one person : The magnificent ME!.
It’s very appealing, cooperating nicely with the sinful desires of my own heart. How do I break away from the passionate pursuit of my own interests? If you want to grow and change in every season, it’s an important question. Consider these two babysteps.
Babystep #1 – Beholding the Savior
One of the most counterintuitive applications of the gospel is how it radically reorients our lives for service. The gospel does not eradicate self-interest. It merely elevates and expands our interests to see and help others. We begin to “look not only to our own interests but also to the interests of others” (Phil 2: 4). And who provides the most compelling example for us to babystep towards? None less than the very Son of God.
Christ could have come as emperor; no one could have disputed his rightful claim. After all, he was the only person in history who ever truly deserved the highest position available on earth. In fact, we should have created one—Master of the Universe!—just to accommodate him.
But that’s not the position he wanted for himself. He chose another.
“Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him.” (John 13:3–5)
This blows my mind. Jesus, the eternal Son who came from the Father and would return to Father, the one to whom the Father had given all things, humbled himself, took up the position and the tools of a servant, and stooped to wash feet. He performed the lowly and humbling task of cleaning the soles of those who would, within a few short hours, betray him, deny him, and abandon him.
I know that’s provocative, but it’s Scripture. By beholding his face and remembering his example, we all “are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor 3: 18).
Babystep #2 – Becoming a Slave
Paul makes a similarly provocative claim when he tells us that Jesus took “the form of a servant” (Philippians 2:7).
Servant is an amazing word when applied to God, but it only begins to capture the scope of sacrifice contained in the Greek word, doulos. Perhaps the most accurate translation is “bondslave”— one who voluntarily puts himself in slavery to another.
God intentionally chose this metaphor to explain what his eternal Son has done for us. And it underscores the all-encompassing claim the gospel makes upon the lives of Christians, whom Paul describes as “slaves to God” (Romans 6:22).
How often do we live unsatisfied or discontent because our roles don’t live up to our desires? We grumble to friends or whine in the confines of our car, frustrated because that next step of ascent is blocked by something or someone. Why not? If my life is all about me, then such frustrations pose a legitimate threat to my satisfaction and fulfillment.
But this is not the way of Christ!
Authentic, Spirit-filled Christianity gets us babystepping in a different direction. We can stoop downward. We want to be servant-directed. Others-oriented. We do not hunger for our own name or pursue unrestrained self-promotion. We’re not on a quest to broker our own future.
The gospel reminds us that our ambitions, renewed now in the image of our Lord, should follow his action. If God submitted his great majesty to the call of servanthood, we can also submit our creative talents, our teaching desires, our leadership dreams, our organizational skills to the call of servanthood. May we aim to babystep in the footsteps of our Lord.
Today’s Tenacious Question
Think about the past three big decisions you made about your career path. Do they reflect desires to promote your own interests alone, or can you point to specific ways that serving Christ and his church were in view?
Prayer
Lord Jesus, make me a servant, humble and meek. Help me in every decision I make to seek to serve in whatever capacity and with the strength that you supply. Help me to follow your example. In your name I pray, amen.
Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash
