The privilege of being God’s children and joining Him in His mission: Go! …and make disciples of all…, …and teach them to obey, that is, to love me, and do it just like Me: as a servant! (Mat 28; Phil 2)
So, where do we start? Our mission to the lost should be an extension of how we live and love those closest to us. Acts 1:8
It begins at home with those we live and work with - it is ours to love and serve others by praying, caring, and sharing. Service with one another fuels our spiritual fervor, bringing to a boil our heart’s zeal for God, His people, and His mission - and this happens when we lovingly cooperate with God and each other.
Service is a love expressed to the ones we serve and share and is an expression of our love for God in response to God’s love so to serve others is a loving act of obedience to Jesus and His commands and is a grateful and humble response of the heart that has been loved, a loved heart that desires to please the One Who loves, expressing this love the same way it has been loved.
Our heart’s passion, is fanned into flame, by service, and bringing our spirits to a “boil”, our hearts begin to spill over with love for God and what God loves, now, loving as God has loved us, there is forming in us a compassion for the world, that is, the lost, and a growing compelling us to go.
4 spheres of impact -
Family – 1Timothy 5:8 “But those who won’t care for their relatives, especially those in their own household, have denied the true faith. Such people are worse than unbelievers.”
Family of God - Galatians 6:9-10 “9Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. 10Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.”
Neighbor – Lev 19:118 “love your neighbor as yourself”- Matt 5:43; Ja 2:8; Ro 13:8; Ga 5:14
The lost – Setting apart Christ as Lord we are the to be prepared to give a reason for your hope when you’re asked - we “go” to make disciples (Matt 28) - with a prepared heart (attitude and posture of a servant) to do good (serve) and have a ready answer for those who are and would ask 1Peter 3:13-16
And how is it that we are to impact them?
Romans 12:1-13
Through a sincere love that expresses itself in service: this is Jesus - in us and through us! Eph 2:8-10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God…, …we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Galatians 5:6 “...The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.” NIV or “...[if we are] in Christ Jesus…, …only faith activated and expressed and working through love. AMP
Why would my heart be inflamed when and as we serve? Because we are living out our true nature (1Co 1:30; 2Co 5:21) and that nature's purpose: to be like Jesus (Ro 8:29): so know that - when we serve that is when We are most like Jesus - a humble, loving servant enslaved to those He serves.
Philippians 2:1-8
Serve - to be a slave, enslaved - the verb
I am a slave, am subject to
to serve as a slave, having all personal ownership rights assigned to the owner; (figuratively) to willingly give over the prerogative to be self-governing.
to yield obedience, Romans 7:6; τίνι, to obey one's commands and render to him the services due.
How can this be?! Well, if we are REALLY “...created in Christ Jesus…” and that “...to do good works…” then it must be that we are what He is and are to think and act as He does - because this IS real and sincere love.
Ephesians 5:1-2 Imitation: the greatest form of flattery - a form we cannot avoid because we are God’s children!
Philippians 2:13 loving co-operation: it is God who works in us to desire and (want to) do His will and purposes! (Gal 5)
Where does this start? We will, for now, assume this - well, after being loved and served by Jesus Himself, we, begin to think and act like Him!
Phil 2:1 “1Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion”
Just like Jesus reminded Himself - we need to be reminded, not just assume: So, Jesus, reminding Himself of the truth of Who He was in and to His Father “...knowing from whom He came and where He was going - being held by His Father - He would now show the disciples the extent of His love… He put on the servant’s towel and took up the servant’s basin and took the servant’s attitude, posture, position, and acts of service, or, enslavement” John 13:1-5
So, being reminded of who WE are IN and TO God, our Father, we can now show each other the full extent of our love (born out of Jesus’ love for us and the Spirit in us)
Phil 1:2-4 2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. 3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.
Seeing “others as better than ourselves” AND “not only to our own interests, but we look also to the interests of others” and love and serve with IS A MATTER OF HAVING THE “same attitude as Jesus…”
So know that… Attitude is EVERYTHING!
Phil 2:5-8 “5In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: 6Who, being in very nature a God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; 7rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature b of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death…”
All of this starts with an attitude… …an attitude adjustment that is - we are not our own.
Jesus, a slave? - the noun, the one who serves or is a slave - in this case, to His Father’s will.
someone who belongs to another; a bond-slave, without any ownership rights of their own. Ironically, ("bond-slave") is used with the highest dignity in the NT – namely, of believers who willingly live under Christ's authority as His devoted followers.
And in our case, to the One who has purchased us - and that - with His own life, for eternal life!
So if Jesus is a slave, a bond-servant, and we are in Jesus - created in Him - we too are bondservants, slaves, bought with a price - we are not our own!
1Corinthians 6:19-20; Romans 7:4 “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price.”
We are not our own, we are Jesus’s, and, whether we know it or not, each others
Romans 12:5 “...so it is with Christ’s body. We are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other.”
