Mark 10:42-45 (NIV) 42Jesus called them together and said, "You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. 43Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 44and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. 45For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."
II Peter 1:3, 5-7 (NIV) 3His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 5For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love.
Everyone is excellent at something. Our decisions about what we want to be excellent at doing are very important. We follow those decisions with time, dedication, and energy and they have a profound influence in shaping our lives.
Jesus says be excellent at serving. We have often heard this command to be a servant, and with it Jesus sets up a cycle of excellence. Serving others breaks the bond of blatant self-centeredness, which brings a death to the spirit long before it affects the body. Service pushes us out of that tiny world of self. Serving also breaks the bond of benign self-centeredness which is harder to recognize but can be equally as destructive. It is a kind of self-centeredness that develops when we focus our attention and energies on the self that we are seeking to improve.
But, as we focus our attention on serving others for Christ’s sake, something else begins to happen. We begin to receive those gifts that we need to be Christ’s servant, granted these gifts for God’s glory and for our excellence. We are given the gifts of Christ’s life that we might use those gifts in the service of others: the gift of faith, or more accurately, faithfulness; “moral excellence,” which is hard to describe but easy to identify as the art of knowing how to treat others with a touch of class; knowledge, those moments of awakenings that reveal to us the truth about ourselves, another person, about God, or what life is really all about. Self-control is probably one of the more misunderstood gifts of the spirit of Christ. We tend to think of it as stifling when it is really freeing. It is continuing to serve Christ despite personal upheaval in life. Perseverance and godliness are gifts of waiting it out with style. Godliness here means simply being sensitive to the work of God in a given situation.
These are not gifts that we strive for, try for, or seek to achieve for our life. These gifts are given as we serve, so that we may serve others with the life of Christ. Whatever our service may or may not accomplish for others, it moves us one step closer to Christian excellence, to that conforming of life to the life of God seen in Jesus Christ.
Preached by Henry Dobbs Pope October 15, 1989
© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell Broyles
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