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The Form of a Servant
David Tsai
"Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equally with God somethig to be grasped,
but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself
and became obedient to death--even death on a cross!
~ Philippians 2:5-8, NIV
If we want to be followers of Christ, and have our lives and characters
patterned after His, we must freely surrender our wills to God. If we read the
Gospels, there are two truths or convictions that should be impressed upon our
hearts. The first one is that no one ever loved people so wisely adn faithfully
as Jesus Christ. Ingratitude did ward Him off, nor cold or pitiless scorn and
dis dain stop the flow of His love. How was it that Jesus loved, and loved so
loyally to the end? It was because Jesus knew that He was doing the will of His
father who sent Him, and Jesus knew that it was a will that could not be
defeated or stopped. God's will would rise triumphantly from the "apparent
wreck" of the cross! And so it must be with anyone, you and I, who would turly
wear the form of a servant.
We must wear the form of a servant always and everywhere. Christ never laid
it aside from the moment he assumed it at Bethlehem until the moment He said,
"It is finished." So it must be with you and I. Ans worship is the highest act
of service. Yet worship to be genuine it must be the crown and expression of a
life of obedience (Romans 12:1-2). Unfortunately, we often renounce and reject
the form of a servant! We like to assume it in some things, and to shed it in
others.But if we are to be Christ's, we must crucify our flesh with its
affections and lusts (Galatians 2:20). It is no longer ours to question or
dispute, to murmur or to rebel.
Where do we get the strength for such service? The strength of our service
lies in out sonship and daughtership. We see that the source of Jesus Christ's
strengthadn enthusiasm lay in His relationship to God. So also out service must
rest on fillal fellowship with God, outr Father. If it si not sustained and
upheld by this realstionship, it is rendered in our own strength, and is simply
the assertion ofour self-will. More than that, it will lack what makes it truly
acceptable to God. It will lack freedom, it wil be our denedwith the spirit of
bondage, or inspired by pride that will strip it of the character of service
and change it into the form of favors gained. Nor, on the other hand, wil it be
profitable and useful to our fellow human beinga, for through such servic may
relieve heir surface wants, and dry their tears for a time, it will not heal
and soothe their deepest wounds nor carry with it the power of eternal life.
Let us look at the perfect life of service of Jesus Christ, the Servant
-Lord. In Matthew 20:28, Jesus says, "...the Son of man did not come to be
served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom to many. "The idea here
is that Jesus came. He came to serve, not to be served. "He came" talks of His
pre-existance, Jesus'voluntary and willing entrance into our would, taking off
the glory and majasty of heaven("being in very nature God") and put on the
flesh of our humanity. He bowed so low as to enter our world. Jesus now had
hands to touch, lips to speak to human heartsm, and the heart of a man and a
brother to fell with us as well as for us. So must we be willing to enter the
world of another in service and ministry.
We must go beyond this, and dwell on some of the familiar features of His
wonderful life of self-forgetting and self-sacrificing service to others. The
life of Jesus Christ is self-forgetting make vissible. The source of His
service was love, the perfect love of God. And there was no ulterior motines or
purposes in His service. Jesus did not look left and right for possible
advantages for Himself, which often is the case for us. Christ's service was
pure throughout, and so must ours be ("Blessed are the pure i heart, for they
will see God." Matt 5:8). The perfect ministry of our Servant-Lord was
performed with unusuak and extraordinary spontaneity and cheerfulness. On the
cross, Jesus had time to turn from His own suffering and the weight of the sins
of the world upon His shoulders to look at the thief by His side. And He ended
His life serving and ministering mercy to an outlaw. "He came to minister"
cheerfully adn always without a thought of Himself.
Look too at the breadth of His service. His service was extended to all
people, equally open to His enemies and friends, to his mockers and
sympathizers, to poor and rich, to the educated and the ignorant, and on and
on. Notice too the variety of gifts that He brought in His service:caring for
the body and for the soul, alleviating sorrow,binding up wounds, purifying
hears, dealing with sin and miseries, all with equal helpfulness and love. And
wemust not forget that all of Jesus service was rendered by a Lord. There is
nothing more amazing in the Gospel than the fact that the life of Jesus, these
two things lie side by side: servant and Lord. The life of Christ brought
together the consciousness of authority and the humility of a servant.
Our service should be modeled after Christ's. Remember, too, that there is
no ground on which we can rest greatness or superiorty in Christ's kingdom
except on the ground of service. The servant who serves for love is highest in
teh hierarchy of heaven (Matt 20:25-27). If we ever are to be near he right and
the left of the Master i His kingdom, there is one way, and only one way to get
it., and that is for us to abdicatae ouer self-authority and to enthrone at teh
center of our lives Jesus Christ. Let us be ambitious to be first, but let us
not forget that he or she who is first, must be last.
Copyright 2000 EFCDC. All rights reserved.
Questions? Please email webmaster@efcdc.org.
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