Serve One Another In Love
“For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” – Galatians 5:13-14
Service. It’s a multi-faceted word. When I was younger, I used to think of Christian service only in terms of how it related to serving God. Now, let me pause there – of course all Christian service relates to and really is serving God. That’s why we are told to “serve the Lord with gladness…” in Psalm 100:2. We should always be occupied with and joyfully serving God with our whole lives, as an offering to Him (like Paul reminds us in Romans 12:2). So my problem was not that I had an overemphasis on “serving God,” but what I had done was flatten it out to mean something less than intended.
What does it mean to serve God? How do we do it? That question could have as many answers as people asking it, because there is a unique way in which every child of God can use their gifts, talents, and inclinations to serve God and work for His kingdom and glory. But perhaps one of the most critical ways that we serve God is by serving one another. Attempting to serve God without serving His people would be like attempting to work on your marriage without giving attention to your spouse. Think of the words that Paul wrote in Galatians 5. We are called to freedom – but we cannot use our freedom as an opportunity for the flesh. In other words, we cannot use our freedom in selfish and self-serving ways.
Is it possible that we can feign serving God while we are actually serving ourselves? Perhaps you are a person given to study or reading. All the study and learning in the world, even if it is in godly material, can turn into a selfish ambition if it is to the neglect of serving your brothers and sisters. Imagine one of your brothers comes up to you in a time of need. Imagine they are in a crisis, and they desperately need your help. Perhaps it is time-sensitive and critical – if you don’t help them that moment they will suffer immensely. So they ask you, “brother, can you help me?” And your reply is, “sorry – I’m reading the scriptures. I cannot help you.”
That seems silly, like we would never have that mentality. But do we exhibit it in smaller ways? Do you ever put on an air of busyness in order to avoid helping someone? Busyness at the expense of love, and serving one another, could amount to nothing but selfish ambition. Jesus addressed something similar at the time when his disciples were accused of lawbreaking for picking and eating heads of grain on the Sabbath. His response was striking – “if you had known what it means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice’ you would not have condemned the guiltless.” He went on in the same chapter (Matt. 12) to ask a hypothetical question: if someone had a sheep that fell into a pit on the Sabbath, would you pull it out? The unstated answer is, of course! Of course you would rescue your sheep if it fell in a pit. Jesus said, “how much more value is a man than a sheep?” He said all this because he was about to confound the Pharisees by healing a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath. But after all that, the Pharisees still missed it. They went out and conspired against Him, how to destroy him.
Do you see how you could feign “serving God” while stifling real service? Do you see how you can major on one aspect of Christianity, one aspect of our faith, while failing at the point of keeping the great commandments? It is no coincidence that when asked what the greatest commandments in the law are, that Jesus responded with two answers: Love God, and Love your neighbor. These commands aren’t opposed to one another, they are connected. For one of the supreme ways which we exhibit love for God is in love for neighbor. That is exactly what Paul was pointing out in Galatians 5. May we use our freedom in Christ to love and serve one another! In another place (2 Timothy 2:10) Paul said “I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they may also obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus…” Was Paul saying there that he was working for others in stead of for God’s glory? Of course not. Paul’s theology of all things for the Glory of God is one of the clearest in scripture – but He understood what it means that God desires mercy and not sacrifice. He understood the connection between loving God and loving neighbor. He understood that even as an Apostle of Jesus Christ, there was a mission and a mandate that included the people whom Christ had died for.
And for us, it is no different! May we use our freedom to love and serve one another. May we serve the Lord with gladness, and in doing so bear one another’s burdens and lift one another up. May we never use our spirituality as an excuse for solitude or selfishness, but may we be like Christ in serving one another in love as we seek to glorify and serve our great God.
