Sent to Serve

Time and again, the New Testament reminds us that Jesus came to serve. As Jesus himself explains, “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

Jesus’s becoming like us to serve us is the model for our lives as his followers. The Apostle Paul calls on the church at Philippi to embrace this servant mindset in their relationships with one another:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross (Philippians 2:5-8).

As God the Son, our Lord Jesus had all the honor, glory, and power of being God himself, and yet he did not use that for his own advantage. Instead, he became a servant, taking on human form, and he suffered the death of a slave on the cross. He became a slave so that we could be free. He became like us so that we could become like him.

Jesus himself sends us out to serve like he served. He commissions his followers, “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you” (John 20:21). He has sent us into this world, just as he was sent into the world (John 17:18). Likewise, the Father sent Jesus to serve (Mark 10:45), and so now Jesus has sent us to serve in word and in deed.

In discussing Christ’s sending us into the world, John Stott likened it to seeing a person drowning in the ocean. It does no good to stand on the shore, shouting instructions on how to swim. Instead, one must swim out into the waves in order to rescue a person. While it is far easier to stand at a distance and shout at people the truths of Christianity, we are called to enter into their world and to serve them by declaring and displaying the gospel.

This proves to be a daunting, and frankly, terrifying task. Yet, our hope is that Jesus not only provides the model for this life of service but he also empowers us to serve as he served. John records that right after sending his disciples, Jesus “breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’” (John 20:22). Jesus empowers us to join him on his mission by pouring out his Holy Spirit on us. For this same reason, when Paul instructs the Philippians to embrace the servant mindset of Jesus, he tells them, “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5). They can live this way because when they trusted in Christ, they now, by his Spirit, have the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16).