We Get to Serve

“It is not that you have to; you get to.” My friend’s words to a teenage boy were met with a side glance of disbelief. He didn’t want to spend his summer serving while doing what he considered meaningless tasks around the outside of the church. Summer was meant to be a time of relaxation and enjoyment for a high school student. He didn’t see how a summer of service could be fun, yet he didn’t consider how a summer of service would be a mark of faithfulness.

A Mark of Faithfulness

Service is a mark of faithfulness because God’s Word calls for His followers to be faithful. While we could survey many biblical passages on the command to serve, Jesus’s own words before His death and resurrection instruct us on both the model of service and the motivation for service. In Matthew 20:26-28, Jesus says to His disciples, “But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Notice, the discussion on service is not that being served reveals God’s favor on your life; it is that serving others reveals faithfulness to God in your life. To be great is to be faithful, and Jesus is that model of service. His sinless life and death on the cross for sinners are the greatest examples of serving. He gave of Himself to redeem many from their sins. It is with Jesus’s model of service we also find our motivation.

Saved to Serve

Our motivation for service comes from what Jesus has done for us in reconciling us back to God (2 Corinthians 5:17-21). This is crucial for understanding how we serve wholeheartedly as Christians. When we receive the command to serve, it is not a means of salvation. In other words, our service and good works cannot save us from our sins or make us right with a holy God. We are only by the grace of God alone through faith in Christ alone. 

However, God has a purpose for our good works and service. We may not be saved by acts of service, but we are saved for acts of service (Ephesians 2:8-10). This is a point we must not miss. Sometimes in Christian circles, we can highlight how God has saved us from sin but tend to downplay the truth He has also saved us for serving. As we serve, too, we do so with hearts transformed by the gospel. Our times of service are not consistently marked by grumbling but out of gratitude. This is what it means to serve wholeheartedly, the transformation of our hearts leading to the transformation of our actions. We serve out of gratitude toward what God has done for us in the gospel. The freedom we have in the gospel is not a place to spend selfishly on our desires, but it is an opportunity to love and serve one another (Galatians 5:13-14).

Blessings for Both

If we are not careful, though, we can fall into the trap that our service to others should not lead to us feeling good about the work we are doing. This is where we need to be reminded of the truth in Acts 20:35, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Certainly, the recipient of one’s service will receive blessing. But the Bible is clear that serving also affects and bless the server. How does it bless the server? It blesses the server through growing them to look more like Christ (as Matthew 20:28 mentions). It blesses the server through seeing the good done to their neighbor. It blesses the server through their witnessing the encouragement others are receiving through their service.

Look Up, Look In, Look Around

All these components lead to a life of serving wholeheartedly. To serve wholeheartedly in the church and community involves looking up, looking, looking around. We must look up and recognize God is the one who has given us gifts to serve Him and His church. The gifts He has entrusted to us then require us to look in and consider what the gifts are we each have to serve. For some, it is sharing words of encouragement or being generous with what they have. For others, it is the gift of teaching or the gift of mercy. However, the Lord has shaped you, the call for you is to be a faithful steward of that gifting by serving the Lord and His church with it (1 Peter 4:10). This leads to the final takeaway of serving wholeheartedly, look around. What are areas in your local church where there is a need and seems you have the gifting to serve there? What are ministries you can get plugged into to serve, no matter how small they may be?

My friend’s words to the teenage boy were a reminder for me in serving the Lord and His church. It is not that I have to. I get to. I get to spend my Sunday morning each week investing in and teaching middle and high school students, even when they may still be trying to mentally wake up. I get to serve my church through using my gift of encouragement in our counseling center on Sundays. This perspective on serving is a change that only the gospel can make, and it can!