5:30am - You’re awakened by that obnoxious and traitorous alarm clock. You have to get up, but you don’t want to. The thought of going to the school - where church currently meets - to set up the auditorium (for the 3^rd week in a row) paralyzes you with bitterness and frustration. Outside your window, a heavy rain soaks down. You’ll need to bring extra clothes; it’s a long walk hauling equipment from the church van. You desperately hope that maybe you are sick today. Why You? Can't someone else do it?

Maybe you have never had strong feelings about serving one way or the other. For you, serving is simply part of church - a necessary nuisance. You punch in and punch out doing your job without much thought as to why - only that it needs to be done. So like a robot, you systemically and faithfully go about your task. In your world, serving is passionless duty simply going through the motions. You never ask “why you?” because you see much point in such a question. It is a task so that people can do church effectively, so someone has to do it.

If any or all of these situations describe you, then I know how you feel. I have been there. I lied about being sick to get out ushering. I deliberately ducked requests to serve in children’s ministry by making sure that I worked in the cushy book store. I was purposefully late to avoid certain jobs that I especially hate - like lugging in heavy speakers.  I performed more tasks on uncaring auto-pilot than I care to remember. I have lain in bed, procrastinating, as the irritation and resentment about having to serve consumed me.

Yet, my Christian life did not start out with such an attitude to serving in the church. When I became a Christian at the age of 25, immense joy and gratitude fueled me to give back to God. I was so excited to be saved, that I didn’t mind the time or effort spent serving and I threw myself into all kinds of service. After awhile, however, it became harder and harder to force myself to serve in the church. The tedium and insignificance of the tasks began to take its toll on my affection for both God and the church. Bitterness and laziness soon set in. I started to loathe Sunday mornings because I didn’t want to serve, I didn’t want to give up another Sunday.

The bitterness strengthened as I perceived that everyone else, seemingly able to remain Christian without serving, were enjoying their Sundays while I toiled. The more I thought about enjoying my Sundays, the more I became sour to the idea of serving.  Serving in the local church seemed a thankless, monotonous, meaningless, and colossal waste of time and talent. Why me? Can’t someone else do it?

If you have been around church long enough, chances are good you have encountered similar feelings or situations. The struggle to serve is not limited by age, social, economic, or racial differences. Neither is it restricted by the type of church. Whether it is a large church or small, a rural church or urban, a new plant or established, owns a building or rents, people are going to have issues with serving. The frantic, overburdened, and burnt out servant in church plant can become complacent and disengaged in an established church. Basically as long as there are people in your church, there will be struggles with serving at some point and time.

We believe in a good sovereign God who takes personal interest and delight in His children. How then can such a God create such a futile and menial drudgery such as parking duty, children’s ministry, and setting up chairs? These things are not church! How can we encounter God with such pointless serving? Yet while we entertain such thoughts, how can we not think that maybe our good and sovereign God has a purpose for us, the task at hand, and the church? Why would God (as we have in the Bible), who sent his only son to die in our place, then subject you and me to futile and menial drudgery? As if God realized after he instituted the church, “Great now my people can worship me. Oh wait, there are some little annoying details to take of like child care and how people get seated. Well my people can sweat the small useless stuff; I need to worry about more important issues.”

This is not the standard “God don’t make no junk” speech.  Instead, maybe it is more than possible that the all-powerful, all knowing, made the whole universe God who loves us to the point of sacrificing his son for us, well maybe that God has a plan and a purpose for those little details of church. Maybe serving in the local church is more than just an afterthought. It is hard to imagine that God would go to such lengths to establish and support the church and not care about every detail. It is even more difficult to fathom that God would let menial and senseless tasks undermine and exasperate the very people (us) he uses to proclaim His Word and manifest His goodness. However, the most disturbing things about such a lack of purpose of serving would be why God would subject his very children to such spirit breaking tedium.

Conversely, if God does have a purpose for serving – a purpose that brings both eternal meaning and worth - then what how would the affect how we serve? How does that purpose address our bitterness, apathy, and pride about serving?

 God has passed on the ability to have personal relationships to those who bear his image: humankind. Humans are only personal because God is personal. Not only does He create us to have a relationship with him (otherwise how can it be a relationship), but in Genesis 2 God shows Adam how he can have one with other humans, namely his new wife Eve. In Genesis 2:24, God tells Adam and Eve just how deep this relationship between them should go, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”

However God is capable of having far deeper and more meaningful relationships that we cannot even begin to fathom. As Louis Berkhof states, “The original form of personality is not in man but in God…, what appears as imperfect in man exists in infinite proportion in God.”^[i] No matter how hard I try, I could never know anyone as intimately and completely as God could – just read Psalm 139.

In addition to fellowship with God, we also come into union with God’s people. Christ brought us not only individually to him but he also created a people - bound together through his blood, see Eph 2:18-22. Our new fellowship and relationship with God’s people serves as the basis for relationships with others, especially other Christians – since we are one body together.

Pastor John Stott writes, “Thus the very purpose of his (Christ) self-giving on the cross was not just to save individuals, and so perpetuate their loneliness, but to create a new community whose members would belong to him, love one another, and eagerly serve the world.”^[ii] Christ himself prayed to the Father that God’s people may be one even as he was one with the Trinity, “Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.” John 17:10b.

So it is logical that if love is the basis God’s relationship with us, it is also the foundation and model for our relationships with others. Author Bruce Ware writes, “May we see in the Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, how their relationships are expressed, and may we learn from this something better about how our relationships and work ought to be lived out, for our good and for the glory of his great and triune name.” ^[iii] A Triune God enables us to establish loving and service-oriented relationships with one another, mirroring the one God has with us and with himself.

In fact, the Trinity not only makes Biblical Servanthood possible, it defines how it should be carried out. The Apostle John again writes, “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.” 1 John 4:11-12. Love is basis for both God’s relationship within himself and with us.  So therefore, John states, love must be basis for relationships with each other – both in and out of the local church.

In fact, John goes so far as to say that when we love others, God (rather God’s image) is perfected in us. Follow the logic; if God is love and we are made in his image, then if we love, we project and perfect his image in us. Therefore, Trinity not only enables us to enter into relationships, it provides the very values to base them on. For example Paul writes in the book of Ephesians 5:2, “And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” Here, we see that loving others is based on the Son’s sacrifice, the Father’s acceptance, and the Spirit’s work. Our love for others is based on His love for us.

Our relationships should not only mirror the Trinity’s love, but also its unity and diversity as well. In the Trinity, while each member is fully God and retains all the divine attributes, they each have distinct and diverse roles. Each part of the Trinity distinguishes themselves by their work and relation to man. The Father created the world and planned salvation, the Son came to earth and carried out the redemption, and the Holy Spirit works to change us through sanctification.

The ability to, as Berkhof states, “subsist wholly and indivisibly in more than one person”^[iv] is strictly a trait of God’s divinity. This supernatural ability allows God to both maintain unity and diversity within Himself: Diversity as each member has a distinctive role as part of God’s overall will and purpose; Unity as each member works to complement and serve the others as part of one divine essence.

Like the Trinity, we are to be diversely unified by our love for each other. Servanthood, while it might be different in look and feel, must be unified in love and purpose. Bruce Ware in his book Father, Son, & Holy Spirit explains how the Trinity and the relationship within should inform our own relationships.

“If we are to thus to represent God and reflect who he is in our relationships and activities, part of this involves reflecting the ways in which the triune Persons relate to one another. As we see the love and relationship among the Trinitarian Persons, we should seek the same kind of love to be expressed among us, God’s people…We are created to reflect what God is like, and this includes a reflection of the personal relationships within the Trinity.” [v]

In our reflection of the Trinity through love and service, we glorify God as we seek to be more like him. Indeed, we worship God as we seek to be perfected in his image because it communicates the very nature and power of God. This communicates and celebrates everything about the character of God, as well as our dependence on Him, first for salvation and then for works. Puritan Thomas Watson writes,  “Glorifying God has respect to all the persons in the Trinity; it respects God the Father who gave us life; God the Son, who lost his life for us; and God the Holy Ghost, who produces a new life in us; we must bring glory to the whole Trinity.” [vi]

Paul explains this very thought to the church in Romans, “For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.” Romans 12:4-8.

Each of us has various talents, experiences, and traditions. Yet we are to act in unison and out of love for God and one another.  It is through, not despite, our diversity that we love and serve others. Presbyterian pastor Edmund Clowney writes, “The gifts of the Spirit do differ, but they never divide, for they enable the church to function as an organism, the body of Christ… Organic unity requires diversity of function (1 Cor. 12)” ^[vii]

In the early part of the 1600’s, Jesuit Priests who lived, worked, and proselytized among the native tribes began to experiment with the potential medicinal effects of the cinchona bark.  Despite being bitter and fetid in taste, it was important to South American tribesmen who used it as muscle relaxant to combat shivering caused by exposure to the cold, damp Andean weather.

In 1631, a Jesuit elder boarded a ship off the coast of Peru bound for Rome. He had heard horror stories of the 1623 Papal election in Rome when 44 of the 45 electing cardinals became sick with the fever, shivering, and vomiting of the Roman Fever. Ten of them, along with hundreds of their attendants, died suffering from the shivers of the fever. He brought with him a pouch containing the medicinal powder made from the bark of the cinchona tree.

So it was that, when the Jesuit elder arrived in Rome several months later, he set in motion a chain of events that would impact world history. We now stand on the cusp of our own discovery that will forever change how we serve. The Trinity has changed everything.

[i] Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology,

[ii] John Stott, The Cross of Christ pg. 249

[iii] Bruce Ware, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit pg 22

[iv] ibid

[v] Bruce Ware, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit pg 133

[vi] Thomas Watson, Body of Divinity

[vii] Edmund Clowney, The Church pg 81

The relationship within the Godhead is the foundation and the reason we can have relationship with God himself.  The threefold nature of God shows us that He has the ability personally to relate us. In Understanding the Trinity, Pastor Alister McGrath explains the importance of a personal God, “The fundamental point behind the idea of a personal God is this: God is able to enter into a personal relationship with us.”^[i] God is not some distant, unapproachable, uncaring figure; he is capable of having real meaningful relationships with man.

God can and does enter into a relationship with his creation because not only is he capable of such an act, but he desires it. In Genesis, he is personally involved with creation and oversees every aspect of the work. Then after he creates Adam is his own image, God speaks to him, blesses him, and starts a relationship with him in Genesis 1:26-29. The Genesis account alone stands as a testimony to the very personal nature of God.

God’s relationship within himself is the origin for his relationship with us. This love based intra-Trinitarian connection means then that God’s relationship with us is also characterized by that same love. But if, as the Bible states, humans are naturally fallen and undeserving of fellowship with God because of sin, then why would God love us in the first place? God loves because of his goodness and not because of ours. God’s love for us is a consequence of His goodness.

J.I. Packer states in Knowing God, “Of this goodness God’s love is the supreme and most glorious manifestation.”^[ii] Because he is relational, God has created a people to be His to manifest His own glory and gladness. To that end, the Trinity acts in self-sacrificing love to accomplish their shared will.  God also deals lovingly with his people because ultimately they will be united him as adopted sons.

But how can we know for sure that God really loves us? Assurance that God loves us is found in the fact that he sent His son, the second member of the Trinity, to die for us so that we may have a relationship with Himself. As the Apostle Paul writes in Romans 5:8 “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” The Father loves us so much that he was willing to sacrifice the Son for us.

The incarnation of Christ was the single greatest proof that God loves us and desires a relationship with us. It also shows how personal God is willing to be. The apostle John writes, “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” 1 John 4:9-10. Thus here we see the proof of God’s love for you and me. It is in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the second member of the Trinity. 

Through His goodness, God reaches into our world to establish a relationship based on the characteristic that defines His innermost relationships, love. To prove and secure it, He sends one whom His own son to suffer, die, and pay the cost of man’s sin. We have a God that was willing to send His beloved Son to condescend to our level because of His love towards man (John 3:16).

The Son of God was to endure humiliation and pain at the hands of man in order to die on a cross. There he was momentarily cut off from the love of the Trinity, the greatest relationship ever known, to bear the wrath of God on behalf of sinners. On the Cross, Jesus sacrificed more than is body; he temporarily exchanged his loving relationship with God the Father for God’s wrath for our sin. He did this so that we may have an eternal relationship with God.

The covenant of grace allowed man to enter a relationship with the loving Triune God. TF Torrance writes, “It means that God is not limited by our feeble capacities or incapacities, but that in his grace and outgoing love he graciously condescends to enter into fellowship with us, to communicate himself to us, in such a way as to be received and known by us.” ^[iii]

[i] Alister McGrath, Understanding the Trinity pg. 82

[ii] J.I. Packer, Knowing God pg123

[iii] T.F Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God pg.4

Fundamentally, the triune nature of God inherently means the ability to have, as well as desire, relationships. A relationship is the interaction and mutual interest that can only exist between two or more parties. The threefold nature of God essentially implies that a relationship must exist between each member of the Godhead.

Many things can bring people into relationships: hate, love, mutual interest, etc. Normally, a relationship is fraught with differences between members. In most cases, the people in a relationship have more disparities than they have things actually in common. In fact, we can be in a relationship that may even be a destructive or an argumentative one. However, this does not describe the connection we see within the Trinitarian Godhead.

Since the members are equally God, the bond between them is in complete and total harmony. The persons within the Godhead flawlessly relate to one another because they are divinely unified into one essence. That kind of perfect unification can only happen if it consists of unwavering mutual love.

But how can we be certain that this kind of love characterizes the relationship between the members of the Trinity? The Bible clearly states that God is the very definition of love and love exists in God. “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”  1 John 4:10. Notice John does not merely say that God knows about love intellectually and emotionally but he uses the stronger term that God is love. John is stating that God is the very essence and source of love. Octavius Winslow states that, “God is love, from Himself, and not from another; He is absolutely, independently love. His love is not a quality or accident of His being, imported into His essence– something foreign to Himself; it is His essence itself.”[i]

Come with me back in time to before the creation of the universe, back before Genesis 1. As we travel back, keep in mind Hebrews 13:8, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” and also Malachi 3:6 “For I the Lord change not”. As we arrive before anything except God existed, we find God unchanged from the God we know today. He is the same in power, in essence, in attributes before and after Genesis.

 How is the immutability of God pertinent to a discussion on the Trinity’s impact on servanthood? It matters because love presupposes a relationship; there is always the subject (the one doing the loving) and the object (the recipient of the love). God’s unchangeable nature means that before anything else existed, God was love.  The very essence of love means that God has to be in a relationship.

However, if no one else was around pre-Genesis, then who did God have a relationship with? God is love because he is Triune. God is in a relationship with himself, in the Trinity. He was not only in a relationship; he was a relationship - made of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This relationship is based on and fosters a divine, complete, and eternal love. Jesus himself testified to this intra-Trinitarian relationship; “for the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing’” John 5:20.  Here the Son of God reveals that amongst the Trinity, love is central and active.

The unified Trinity means that God is capable of loving relationships. A God that is love is not only a person who can be known (otherwise a relationship is impossible) but that he can personally know others as well. Of course we must be careful to make a distinction when applying the word “person” to God. When we typically think of a person our mind usually pictures a human being with all the capabilities and limits. However, God is the perfect picture of personhood in a way we will never understand.

As Wayne Grudem explains, “This tri-personal form of being is far beyond our ability to comprehend. It is a kind of existence far different from anything we have experienced, and far removed from anything else in the universe.”^[ii] God’s capacity to love and to have relationships far exceeds, by any stretch of the imagination, our ability to do and have the same. What does it mean to us that God is both a person and personal? What then is the significance of God being able to be in relationships?

[i] Octavius Winslow, The Love of God, 1870

[ii] Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology Pg254

In the book Seeds of Change: Six Plants That Transformed Mankind, Henry Hobhouse writes that the cinchona plant is one of the most influential plants in man’s history - along with sugar cane, tea, cotton, and the potato. Despite the fact that millions of people still use it daily to safeguard their lives, the typical person in the 21^st Century is actually quite unaware of the magnitude of the cinchona tree’s importance.

How did one plant so drastically impact human history? The cinchona contains a special alkaloid, known as quinine, which is used to make medicine for one of the deadliest diseases known to man - malaria. Quinine works as an inhibiter to the malarial parasite’s effects on the human body, dramatically increasing its victims’ survival rate.

Before the turn of 20^th Century, malaria was responsible for tens of millions of deaths every year. The malaria viral parasite induces severe fevers, chills, and severe vomiting as it infests and destroys its victim’s blood cells. Quinine not only subdues the symptoms of malaria, it completely represses the virus. Malaria infested jungles became plantations that supplied the world with coffee, sugar, tobacco and other important consumer and industrial products, many of which are on Hobson’s list.

The cinchona’s relative anonymity despite its significance invites comparison to another subject that greatly impacts Biblical Servanthood: the Doctrine of the Trinity. Even though it has had a far greater influence on mankind than cinchona bark, the Trinity’s inherent mystery and supernatural notion frequently relegate it to the theology classroom.  Mistakenly, most Christians find very little application for it in their everyday life.

The Trinity and Christian Service

The Westminster Shorter Catechism defines the construct of God as “There are three Persons in the Godhead; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory.”[i] The God of the Bible is not a cadre of multiple gods but rather one God comprised of three distinct persons. While the term Trinity is not explicitly used in the Bible, John Calvin points to Christ’s own teaching on baptism as prime proof of the Trinity.^[ii] Each of three persons of the Godhead - the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit - is also clearly identified in verses like 1 Corinthians 13:14, Deut. 6:4, and Isaiah 44:6.

All three of the individuals that comprise the Godhead are the same in substance, equal in power and glory, yet distinct in their role. Theologian Herman Bavinck explains that the word person, when used in the context of the Trinity, indicates the existence within God’s divine essence of a threefold distinction. Plainly stated, the Trinity is more than a role distinction, it is the existence of three different persons in one being.

A single person of the Trinity is not more of God than the other two members - The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are not each one-third of God. Each person contains within themselves all that God is. While the role remains different for person of the Trinity, each retains all of the attributes assigned to God (holiness, omnipotence, omnipresence, veracity, among others).

However, the Trinitarian nature of God is more than just a classroom discussion. Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck explains in his book The Doctrine of God, “the doctrine of the Trinity is of the utmost importance for practical religion…The doctrine of the Trinity is the sum and substance of the Christian faith, the root of all dogmas, the essence of the new covenant.”^[iii] A clear understanding of the Trinity can literally change lives and open new worlds into Christian service, because it gives meaning to everything Christians do both in and out of church.

In other words, the Trinity is the very foundation of our faith and our life. Therefore it is so essential to every Christian – not just that we intellectually assent to it, but seek the application of its significance in the very way we live. But how does the fact that God exists as a Trinity impact how Christians serve? How we seek to apply its significance to servanthood? The Trinity’s impact on Christian Service flows as three part progression (don’t you love the symmetry):

1. The Trinity is characterized by perfect, communal, and indwelling love amongst its members. God is by nature a relationship. The threefold nature of God signifies that he can enter into relationships and that he is personal.
2. From the basis of the Trinity’s perfect harmony, unity, and love, God reached out to enter into a relationship, through His Son, with his created image bearers.
3. He has passed his ability to have relationships. God’s relationship with us instructs how we are to relate with others. Our relationships are to model the unity and diversity of the Trinity.

Tomorrow we will look at Point 1  - The God of Relationships

[i] Westminster Shorter Catechism

[ii] John Calvin, Institutes of The Christian Religion I.XIII.16

[iii] Herman Bavinck, The Doctrine of God

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i. A servant leaves all others, and confines himself to one master. We must leave the service of sin and serve God only. Being subject to God means we serve Him exclusively .The Bible itself has a lot to say about our worship of God through our service to God. In Deuteronomy 11:16, Moses makes the connection between serving other gods and worshiping them, telling his fellow men to not do either.  Watson writes, “If any can lay a better claim to us than Christ, we may serve them; but Christ having the best right to us, we are to cleave to him and enroll ourselves for ever in his services.”[ii]

The Old Testament repeatedly commands God’s people to serve only God. In fact, the third commandment equates worship and service: “You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God” Exodus 20:5.  In both Exodus and Deuteronomy, serving and worship are used in conjunction as a commandment, as if is synonymous with the other. Part of glorifying God is that we serve and worship Him alone. For if we serve a pantheon of gods, what would that communicate about our faith and love for the God of the Bible? How much it would glorify God if held other gods in equal honor?

ii. A servant is not independent, at his own disposal, but at the disposal of his master. Christians are subject to God’s decisions on whom and how we serve. Sometimes God grants the choice but most of the times He directions our service to people, places, or ways that we have either little desire or even hostility towards. In both choice and in circumstance, we must worship God by serving with same devotion and passion.

Probably the best and well-known Biblical illustration of this would be the prophet Jonah from the Old Testament. God commands Jonah to travel to the Assyrian Empire’s capitol city of Nineveh. Jonah, knowing the evil reputation of the Ninevehites has absolutely no desire to go there and preach. Scared of what would happen there, Jonah boards a ship in the opposite direction. However, the ship is tossed around during a storm and the crew dumps Jonah overboard where he is then swallowed by a whale. After three days and much prayer on Jonah’s part, the whale spat him out. Jonah still does not want to obey God, yet he reluctantly goes to the Assyrians to preach for their repentance. After the people of Nineveh repent, after being threatened by destruction, Jonah is angry with God because of the mercy God has shown to an evil people. He is so upset he goes and pouts in a booth outside Nineveh in the hot desert.

Jonah saw himself as broker for God, not a servant to God. He wanted to serve only whom he deemed worthy or who he liked to serve. Jonah did not submit himself to God’s will but rather sought to steer God’s will into his own will. The Ninevehites needed God, yet out of fear and disgust, Jonah thought he had a better plan, that God was making a mistake. Jonah wanted to serve how and who pleased him, not to serve how it pleased God. Thomas Boston explains this point further, “A servant must not do what he pleases, but be at the will of his master. Thus a godly man is a servant. He is wholly at God’s disposal.”[iii] How do you feel when you are asked to serve in place you would rather not? Or when someone who has sinned against comes to you for help? What is your reaction; is it to assert your will or follow God’s?

iii. A servant is satisfied with his master’s allowance. Puritan Jeremiah Burroughs has perhaps the best explanation of this topic in his book The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, “But this is the soul’s worship, to be subject itself to God…I beseech you: in active obedience we worship God by doing what pleases God, but by passive obedience we do as well worship God by being pleased with what God does.”[iv]We worship God by desiring to serve others even when we are not thanked or even mocked. 

We can be satisfied with God’s allowance because ultimately our treasure and reward has already been given to us through Christ, which is eternal salvation. Our worship to God and service to Him is rooted in the immeasurable treasure we have received in Christ, no matter if our service ever is recognized or even if it produces little results. It is, as pastor and author John Piper writes, “God is most gloried in us, when we are most satisfied in Him.”[v]

Paul states in Colossians 2:1-3 how much he yearns for the church to fully understand the impact and power of Christ so that they might fully enjoy what he calls “all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery”. As we have more assurance and knowledge of just what Christ accomplished, then they will worship and serve Him even more. Are you satisfied when your service goes unnoticed? What is your reaction when someone gets recognition for serving and you don’t?

[i] Thomas Watson, The Godly Man’s Picture, pg 36-38

[ii] Thomas Watson, The Godly Man’s Picturepg 42.

[iii] ibid

[iv] Jeremiah Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment,pg 120.

[v] John Piper,

Seminary Professor John Frame explains, “It is God’s intention for the creation to return glory back to him. When our lives image the attributes of God, others see the glory of God’s presence in us as his temple. So we bring God’s glorious reputation to the eyes of others. Thus we ourselves are a part of the light that goes forth from God over the earth…Our words and our lives bring praise to God, which shows his glory-light to the world. To glorify God, then, is simply to obey and therefore to proclaim his greatness by our words and deeds.”[i] The only way to show God’s love for to people is to have the same affection for them.

God calls us to glorify Him by magnifying the Gospel to others through our service. We cannot do that if we hate the very people we are showing God’s love to - as if to say “God loves you, but I sure don’t.” - No glorifying God there. Worship is more than just our actions towards others; it is about sharing the same passion for them as God has for them. God gave his only Son up to die and endure the wrath of sin for them because he loved them, John 3:16. He didn’t do it while holding his nose or muttering complaints beneath his breath. He served and died for them because he loved them.

It is this love - for people undeserving of it - that we must not only share verbally but also in motivation. When Paul writes in Romans 15:7, “Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.” he is talking about the deposition of your heart towards others that glorifies God. We treat and welcome others as Christ did us – despite our sin, he served and loved.

The amazing news of Jesus Christ is sent forth through our service in order that lives may be changed and lost souls might receive eternal life with God. As those who were once distant and under his wrath now bow their hearts and lift up praise to Him as Father, God is receiving all the glory. God is being glorified and his love manifested through serving as we share in His affection to others. Puritan Pastor Thomas Watson writes, “to be doing good to others, to be eyes to the blind, feet to the lame, much glorifies God.”[ii]

Our service to God is purposed to help others for His Glory. Biblical servanthood is about God’s glory, not ours. Serving brings God glory because as we magnify the Gospel, we honor the God who made that Gospel possible. John clarifies when he writes, “By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciple” John 15:8. However, by God’s grace, He permits and encourages us to participate in this type of worship so he may be glorified and his love extended to the world.

[i] John Frame, The Doctrine of God,pg 594

[ii] Thomas Watson, Body of Divinity

Like anything else, serving and singing can either be empty exercises without purpose or worship of God. Without a motivation to glorify God there would be little difference between say a heavy metal Goth concert and a church choir - a lot of singing and music yet hardly any worship. What makes our voices and service to become worship is not our actions but rather our heart. We glorify God when our heart desires and adores His presence.

John Stott in Christ the Controversialist writes “the first fundamental principle of Christian worship, namely that we must know God before we can worship him… It is impossible to worship an unknown God, since, if he himself is unknown, the kind of worship he desires will be equally unknown.”[i] If the person and presence of God has no value to us, then we will not seek to glorify God.  We cannot glorify someone we don’t even know nor value.

One of the most poignant and earth-shattering passages addressing the importance of adoring God’s presence in our worship is found in Luke 10:

"Now as they were on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, "Lord do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her to help me." But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her." Luke 10:38-42

On first glance, this is not the most motivating of scriptures when it comes to Christian service. Jesus actually tells Martha not to serve and to sit down like her sister Mary. Despite the apparent irony, Christ's interaction with these women is probably the clearest illustration of the roots and source of true worship. The emphasis of Luke 10:38-42 is not to explain of how to serve, but rather a declaration of whom to worship. Christ is telling Martha that the vital, distinguishing, and preeminent question in defining biblical servanthood is not “how or how much do I serve?” but rather "whom do I serve?"

Understanding the difference between given glory to God and just doing a task is not derived from grasping the “hows” of service. Jesus explains that it is the “who” that we are serving which informs, motivates, and defines servanthood. As we come know and adore God, then we can start to glorify him. Serving should be both a visible manifestation of our adoration for God, as well as response to God himself. The reformer Martin Luther summarizes it best, “For the inner man, being conformed to God and created after the image of God through faith, rejoices and delights itself in Christ, in whom such blessings have been conferred on it, and hence has only this task before it: to serve God with joy and for nought in free love.”[ii]

In a meeting with a service team at my church, I asked everyone why he or she served. A very astute teenager said something so profound I wanted to share it you, which was, “When serving has become duty to me then that usually means God has become duty as well.” If we do not adore the presence of God, we will treat serving as a duty and as trivial. We will use serving as means to glorify ourselves and not God.

For Christians, biblical servanthood should be the natural reaction to having an eternal Savior. Thus God reveals that serving is not to be done for God, but primarily because of God. Thomas Boston explains, “We glorify him by our wills, choosing him as our portion and our chief good, as he really is in himself; by our affections loving him, and rejoicing and delighting in him above every other.”[iii] In other words, our knowing and adoring God transforms serving into worship. Serving, for the Christian, is worship in action, expressing our gratitude for reconciliation to both God and His people. It does not matter if we straighten chairs or play lead guitar- both can be worship or both could be dry obligated tasks. The difference between worship and duty is in how we value God.

Sharing God’s Affection Towards His People

Another ingredient to glorifying God is to share God’s affection for His people. Matthew writes in his Gospel, “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” Matthew 5:16. Worshiping God therefore is much broader than honoring God through our voices - it also includes our actions towards others.  

Seminary Professor John Frame explains, “It is God’s intention for the creation to return glory back to him. When our lives image the attributes of God, others see the glory of God’s presence in us as his temple. So we bring God’s glorious reputation to the eyes of others. Thus we ourselves are a part of the light that goes forth from God over the earth…Our words and our lives bring praise to God, which shows his glory-light to the world. To glorify God, then, is simply to obey and therefore to proclaim his greatness by our words and deeds.”[iv] The only way to show God’s love for to people is to have the same affection for them.

God calls us to glorify Him by magnifying the Gospel to others through our service. We cannot do that if we hate the very people we are showing God’s love to - as if to say “God loves you, but I sure don’t.” - No glorifying God there. Worship is more than just our actions towards others; it is about sharing the same passion for them as God has for them. God gave his only Son up to die and endure the wrath of sin for them because he loved them, John 3:16. He didn’t do it while holding his nose or muttering complaints beneath his breath. He served and died for them because he loved them.

It is this love - for people undeserving of it - that we must not only share verbally but also in motivation. When Paul writes in Romans 15:7, “Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.” he is talking about the deposition of your heart towards others that glorifies God. We treat and welcome others as Christ did us – despite our sin, he served and loved.

The amazing news of Jesus Christ is sent forth through our service in order that lives may be changed and lost souls might receive eternal life with God. As those who were once distant and under his wrath now bow their hearts and lift up praise to Him as Father, God is receiving all the glory. God is being glorified and his love manifested through serving as we share in His affection to others. Puritan Pastor Thomas Watson writes, “to be doing good to others, to be eyes to the blind, feet to the lame, much glorifies God.”[v]

Our service to God is purposed to help others for His Glory. Biblical servanthood is about God’s glory, not ours. Serving brings God glory because as we magnify the Gospel, we honor the God who made that Gospel possible. John clarifies when he writes, “By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciple” John 15:8. However, by God’s grace, He permits and encourages us to participate in this type of worship so he may be glorified and his love extended to the world.

Part 4 will be posted on Thursday..

[i]John Stott, Christ the Controversialistpg. 162-163

[ii] Martin Luther, Concerning Christian Liberty

[iii] Thomas Boston, Of Man’s Chief’s End and Happiness

[iv] John Frame, The Doctrine of God,pg 594

[v] Thomas Watson, Body of Divinity