How to Serve Others (6 of 6) By James Boice

6. We must restore one another. Speaking the truth in love, which includes the exposure of sin and the pronouncement of forgiveness for the one who repents of it and turns to Christ, has as its object the complete restoration of the other person. In aiding in this we perform what is perhaps our greatest form of service.

Here we get closest to what Christ’s example of foot washing was all about. In His explanation of His actions to Peter we learn that Jesus chiefly had in mind cleansing from the defilement of sin followed by the restoration of the one sinning. When Jesus told Peter, “A person who has had a bath needs only to wash his feet; his whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you,” it was evident that He was not thinking about physical dirt but about sin and the way to be cleansed from it through justification and a subsequent growth in grace. He was telling Peter that He was a justified person and therefore needed only to be cleansed from the contaminating effects of sin and not from sin’s penalty.

The image is of an Oriental who would bathe completely before going to another person’s home for dinner. On the way, because he would be shod in sandals and because the streets were dirty, his feet would become contaminated. When he arrived at his friend’s home his feet would need to be washed but not his whole body. In a parallel way, those who are Christ’s are justified men and women, but they do need constant cleansing from their repeated defilement by sin in order that the fellowship they have with the Father and Son might not be broken. It was Jesus’ washing of His disciples’ feet, not their heads or entire bodies, that Jesus commanded to us by His example. If we carry this out in spiritual terms, as we must, we must seek to restore others from sin’s defilement. We must do as Paul admonishes the Galatians, “Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted” (Galatians 6:1).

How do we seek to restore a brother who has fallen into some sin? How do we seek to wash the feet of such a one? We are to take the Word of God and then gently, ever so gently, apply it to him, desiring that he might respond to it by the grace of God.

Notice that I said “gently.” In his commentary on these verses Harry A. Ironside points out that if we are going to wash another’s feet, we ought to be careful of the temperature of the water. You would not go to anyone and say, “Here, put your feet into this bucket of scalding water.” Nor would you ask him to place his feet in a bucket of ice water. It is just as bad to be too hot in approaching another person as it is to be too cold and formal. Stedman points out that in trying to cleanse others some Christians attempt to do without water at all. They try to dry-clean feet. They scrape them free of dirt and unfortunately sometimes take the skin with it. Instead of this, we are to approach the other in meekness and great love, realizing that we are capable of the same sin ourselves.

How to Serve Others (5 of 6) By James Boice

5. We must speak God’s truth to the other person. When I began this listing of what it means to serve others I said that Christians tend to talk without listening, assuming that they already know what is about to be said and that they already have the answer to it. I stressed that service begins with real listening. That is true; it is an important first requirement. But having said that, we need to realize that there is also a time to speak and that Christians are distinguished from others at this point by having something genuinely helpful to say…because they can speak God’s words as they have heard them in Scripture. This gives us service far ahead of secular psychologists and counselors. They listen…often better than we do. They offer wise advice or counsel. But the help of a purely secular counselor stops there. The Christian, once he has heard and understood, can go on to share the cure for the problem or the hope for the despair given by God in the Bible.

Many persons have a natural reluctance to instruct another person, particularly another believer. They are conscious, as we should all be, that they are often confused themselves. But fear of our own proneness to failure should not keep us from saying what is necessary at the proper time. The Christians at Rome had not had a benefit of apostolic instruction when Paul wrote to them, but he said, “I myself am convinced, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, complete in knowledge and competent to instruct one another” (Romans 15:14).

Bonhoeffer is right on this point:

Where Christians live together the time must inevitably come when in some crisis one person will have to declare God’s word and will to another. It is inconceivable that the things that are of utmost importance to each individual should not be spoken by one to another. It is unchristian to consciously deprive another of the one decisive service we can render to him. If we cannot bring ourselves to utter it, we shall have to ask ourselves whether we are not still seeing our brother garbed in his human dignity which we are afraid to touch, and thus forgetting the most important thing, that he, too, no matter how old or highly placed or distinguished he may be, is still a man like us, a sinner in crying need of God’s grace. He has the same great necessities that we have, and needs help, encouragement and forgiveness as we do.

At times we must speak words that sound harsh to the one who has to hear them. It is difficult to speak such words. More often, it is our privilege to speak words of comfort that the Bible contains. We may have to speak of sin. But we can always also speak of God’s grace and forgiveness. We can tell our brother, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). We can assure him that, if he has confessed his sin, God has already forgiven it for Jesus’ sake.

How to Serve Others (4 of 6) By James Boice

4. We must bear one another’s burdens. The Bible is able to express the whole work of Christ for us as bearing our burdens, “Surely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows” (Isaiah 53:4, KJV). So it is not surprising that it can describe the whole of the Christian life as bearing the cross and admonish us to “carry each other’s burdens,” saying, “and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2)

Small groups are particularly important if we are to do that effectively. For how are we to carry others’ burdens if we do not know what they are? How are we to learn about them unless we have a context in which Christians can confide in one another honestly? There are many problems at this point, one of which is our natural reluctance to let our hair down and confess what is bothering us. If we have problems with our schoolwork or our children, we hesitate to say so because admitting to what may be a failure leaves us vulnerable. We worry about what others think. Again, if we are having difficulties with husband or wife, we are afraid to admit it. We keep it in, and the problems build to the point where they sometimes prove unsolvable. How are Christians to share their burdens in such areas? The easiest way is building acceptance in a small-group setting.

There is another advantage of the small group. Often people come into our orbit who have tremendous problems. They need so much physical help or psychological and emotional rebuilding that one person, or even one family, simply cannot meet the need…even with the best of will and intentions. In a small group the task is distributed, and the one being helped can get back on his or her feet without developing an unbalanced and unhealthy dependence on one person.

In Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s study of these themes there is a useful development of “bearing” in the area of another person’s freedom and sins. The freedom of the other is often a burden, because it collides with our own autonomy. Anyone who has ever tried to help another needy person knows what this means, because one of the things that makes helping another so difficult is that the person generally does not contribute to the process and in fact usually fights against it at our expense. He refuses to fall in step with us. So we find ourselves having to shoulder that burden as well.

In a previous chapter we talked about denying oneself and taking up our cross. There is probably no area of the Christian life where this is more necessary or more difficult. To bear another’s burdens, particularly those of an extremely disoriented and needy person, means involvement with him or her at our own cost and inconvenience, which means we will only be able to bear it by a genuine crucifixion of our selves.

What about sin in the other person? It is not just freedom that inconveniences. Sin divides. It divides the individual from God, but it also divides the individual from all other individuals…in this case ourselves. In trying to bear the other’s burdens we are often sinned against, and a barrier comes up. The only way we can deal with this is by the recognition that it was “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Jesus did not wait for us to get better or even repent of our sin. He died for us while we were still rebellious. In the same way, we are to die to self for others, knowing that it is by the example of such selfless love that God generally wins sinners to Himself.

Bonhoeffer writes, “Since every sin of every member burdens and indicts the whole community, the congregation rejoices, in the midst of all the pain and the burden the brother’s sin inflicts, that it has the privilege of bearing and forgiving.”

How to Serve Others (3 of 6) By James Boice

3. We must give to others. The world says, “What’s mine is mine, and what’s your’s is mine, if I can get it.” The Christian says, “I have nothing but what I have first received from God, and therefore I am only a steward of my possessions. What is mine is yours, if you have need of it.”

In the history of the church there have been Christians who have taken giving to others to the extreme of selling all the have had and distributing it to the poor or giving it to the church for its administration. At one point the Christians in Jerusalem did this (Acts 2:44-45). This is a form of Christian living that God may call some to at one time or another. But it is clear that this cannot be the whole of Christian obligation; for if all Christians in every place and at all times sold their goods and lived a common life in near-poverty conditions, no one would have anything to give to others again. To give to others does not mean that we must give everything or even that we should stop making money through honorable work. On the contrary, for some of us it could mean trying to make more so we will have more to give. It means that we must be generous with what we have, not counting it our own but rather that which God has given to us for others’ benefits.

Then, too, we must not forget that the best giving is often giving ourselves. When Paul wrote to the Corinthians about financial matters he commended the Macedonian churches for their rich generosity, explaining, “And they did not do as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then to us in keeping with God’s will” (2 Corinthians 8:5). Clearly, the Macedonians were able to be generous with their money because they had first been generous with themselves. Having given themselves to God and others, their material goods followed naturally.

How to Serve Others (2 of 6) By James Boice

2. We must help one another. The desperation people have in needing to talk to someone is not always merely their desire to be heard, though that is important in itself. It is also often the case that they need help. Their speech is really a cry for assistance. If we stop to listen to listen to people, we will find that their needs come rushing to the surface, and we have infinitely more to do than merely wash their feet. There will be people to feed, thirsty ones to whom to give a drink, naked people to clothe, lonely people to visit, sick and dying persons to care for, and so on for a host of other needs and obligations.

The problem is that helping people is seldom convenient. We have our own schedules and our own hours, and days are full. This is perhaps a bit truer of our time than earlier times due to the frantic pace of modern life, but our situation is not fundamentally different from what people of earlier days experienced. It is always inconvenient to help others. It was inconvenient for the Samaritan in Jesus’ parable who helped the poor man who had fallen prey to thieves. He had his own journey. He too was on the way to Jericho. He too had business of family obligations. He interrupted these. He stopped his journey, attended to the wounded man, deviated from his itinerary in order to take the victim to an inn, spent the night, paid for his care, and then planned to return the same way after his own business was settled. This is what service means. It means putting others’ well-being ahead of our own. Bonhoeffer writes,

It is a strange fact that Christians and even ministers frequently consider their work so important and urgent that they will allow nothing to disturb them. They think they are doing God a service in this, but actually they are distaining God’s “crooked yet straight path” (Gottfried Arnold). They do not want a life that is crossed and balked. But it is part of the discipline of humility that we must not spare our hand where it can perform a service and that we do not assume that our schedule is our own to manage, but allow it to be arranged by God.”

How to Serve Others (1 of 6) by James Boice

We must be practical at this point. Jesus served us by leaving heaven, taking on true human nature, teaching, and then dying on the cross for our sin. We cannot do that. So we must ask, “How can we serve others? In what way must we demonstrate the servant nature of our Master?” I suggest the following.

1.We must listen to others. In Life Together Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls this the first part of genuine Christian service.

The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love to God begins with listening to His word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them. It is God’s love for us that He not only gives us His word but also lends us His ear. So it is His work that we do for our brother when we learn to listen to him. Christians, especially ministers, so often think they must always contribute something when they are in the company of others, that this is the one service they have to render. They forget that listening can be a greater service than speaking.

The reason that listening is so important is not always that people have a great deal to say but rather that they are desperate to have someone listen to them. Our world is characterized by a great cacophony(harsh or discordant sounds)of voices. People are shouting at us everywhere. They are shouting in commercials, in books and magazines, in signs by the roadside, at home, at work, at play. Everywhere we go someone is trying to get some message across to us. No one is listening to what we have to say. Everyone is too busy talking.

For many people life is like picking up a telephone, dialing a number, and getting a recording. We want to say, “Stop playing that thing, and listen to me.” But, of course, no one is even listening to our complaint.

So we have the unique phenomenon in our day of people paying other people to listen to them, which is what the psychiatric, psychological, and counseling professions are all about. Counseling is a billion-dollar business. But it is not that counselors actually advise or guide people in the vast majority of cases. Basically all they do is listen. They are paid to do what people in an earlier day did voluntarily.

Christians should be the greatest listeners this world has ever had. But unfortunately, they too are often talking instead of listening. Or even if we are listening, we are often listening only partially or impatiently, as we wait for the person to stop so we can get on with telling him what he should do to get right with God or get his life in order. Is that not true? Think of conversations you have had recently and ask your self if your mind was not wandering as the other person spoke, if you were not hoping he or she would make it short, if you were not anxiously restless until you got your turn to speak. Ask yourself if your conversations with others are not mostly your sounding off about what interests you rather than really hearing the other person and responding directly to what he or she has to say.

If you are doing this, you should know that it is not only the other person who is harmed. You are harmed too, for, as Bonhoeffer astutely points out, “He who can no longer listen to his brother will soon be no longer listening to God either; he will be doing nothing but prattle in the presence of God too. This is the beginning of the death of the spiritual life, and in the end there is nothing left but spiritual chatter and clerical condescension arrayed in pious words.”

It is significant in regard to this part of Christian service that one of the tasks God has given His people is hearing one another’s confessions (James 5:16). To hear a confession is something almost never practiced today-at least in the Protestant church. Protestants probably justify this as a rejection of what we regard as a Catholic error, that is, the saying of a confession to a priest and the receiving of absolution by him in Christ’s name. We are probably right in identifying the erroneous aspects of this practice. But is that really the reason we fail to hear confessions? Is it not rather that we are too busy talking to listen to what our fellow believer has to tell us? Is the other person not defrauded and harmed by our neglect? God listens to us and forgives us through the words of Scripture. We should listen to others, as God listens to us, so that we may speak the consoling words of God to them.”

The Path of Service (James Montgomery Boice)

“Following the Lord Jesus Christ is an individual matter, but it is not individualistic.

When we say that discipleship is an individual matter we are saying that it is something that the individual himself must do. No one else can follow Jesus for you. Your wife cannot be your proxy. Your children cannot read the Bible for you, pray for you, obey the Lord for you. You must do these things yourself; and if you do not do them, you are not a true disciple. Individualism is something different. The dictionary defines individualism as “any doctrine or practice based on the assumption that the individual and not society is the paramount consideration or end.” Christianity is not individualistic because it is never merely the individual but also all other persons who are in view.

The Lord indicated this when He responded to the question about the first commandment. He said that the first commandment is found in Deuteronomy 6:5, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." But having spoken of the individual’s relationship to God, Jesus immediately went on to speak of the individual’s relationship to all other people, citing Leviticus 19:18: “And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.” All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:39-40).

What should our relationship to other persons be? Jesus said that we are to love them, but how is that love shown? Do we show love by some form of benevolent rule in the same way that a king might be said to love his people? Do we love them the way that a performer might be said to love his audience-or the way an audience might be said to love the performer? Christ’s answer was that we are to love others by serving them.

Jesus demonstrated what He had in mind. John tells us that at the Last Supper, which Jesus observed with His disciples before His arrest and crucifixion, the Master got up from the table, laid His clothes aside, and then wrapping a towel around His waist, poured water into a basin, got down on His knees, and began to wash His disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around Him.

An action like that was so unheard of that the outspoken Peter objected, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” Jesus said, “you do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”

That was enough for Peter, and he obviously thought he understood enough to rebuke the Lord, as he had before on an earlier occasion (“Never, Lord!…This shall never happen to you!” Matthew 16:22). Peter declared emphatically, “No…you shall never wash my feet.” However, when Jesus explained that unless He washed him Peter could have no part with Jesus, Peter reversed himself, saying, “Then, Lord,…not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!” He was still trying to tell Jesus how to do things.

Jesus explained that He only needed to wash Peter’s feet, the very thing He had set out to do. Then He continued the foot washing, rose, and put His normal clothes back on, and returned to His place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” He asked.

They obviously did not.

He continued, “You call Me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you and example that you should do as I have done for you. I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them” (John 13:13-17; cf. vv 1-17).

According to that explanation, following Christ means serving others in accordance with His own example.”

So in light of Christ’s example and command to serve others as a proof of our discipleship…what is it that holds us back from doing this? We must agree that if all of those who claim the name of Christ as their own…nearly 82% of Americans according to George Barna…were actually worshiping God by selflessly serving others…our families, neighborhoods, communities, nation and world should look much different than they do. If those of us who profess to love God with all that we have take Christ’s second command seriously to love our neighbors as much as we love ourselves…why is it that we have poverty, homelessness, broken homes and broken communities? I have some thoughts…how about you? How do we serve others to the Glory of God and for the joy of all peoples?

How Should We Then Live? (James Montgomery Boice)

As Christians we are not only to know the right worldview…but consciously to act upon that worldview so as to influence society in all its parts and facets across the whole spectrum of life, as much as we can to the extent of our individual and collective ability. (Francis A. Schaffer)

Harry Blamires is an Englishman who has written an important Christian book titled The Christian Mind: How should a Christian Think? He was a student of C.S. Lewis, and his book was first published in 1963. It’s main thesis, repeated over and over in chapter 1, is that “there is no longer a Christian mind.” Blamires meant by this that in our time there is no longer a distinctly Christian way of thinking. There is to some extent a Christian ethic and even a somewhat Christian way of life and piety. But there is no distinctly Christian frame of reference, no uniquely Christian worldview to guide our thinking in distinction from the thoughts of the secular world around us.

Unfortunately, the situation has not improved since Blamires put forward his thesis. In fact, it has grown worse. Today, not only is there little or no genuine Christian thinking, there is very little thinking of any kind, and the western world (and perhaps the world as a whole) is well on its way to becoming what I and many others have frequently called a “mindless society.”

What a challenge to today’s Christians! It is a challenge because we are called to think, even though the world around us does not think or at best thinks in non-Christian categories. The best statement of the challenge is the powerful statement that the apostle Paul provides in the great opening paragraph of Romans 12. He calls it mind renewal:

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God-this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is-his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Romans 12:1-2)

These two verses introduce what has often been called the “practical” section of Paul’s letter. But I do not like that way of talking about it. What people usually mean by using that word here is that the first 11 chapters of Romans are doctrinal or theological, and that the letter finally gets down to practical matters at this point. But doctrine is practical, and practical material must be doctrinal if it is to be of any help at all. A far better way to talk about Romans 12 through 16 is to say that these chapters contain applications of the very practical teachings or doctrines that Paul presented earlier.

“Application” is the word that John Murray, one of the best modern interpreters of Romans, uses in his introduction to this section: “At this point the apostle comes to deal with concrete practical application.”

Or maybe an even better word is “consequences,” which occurs to me because of the compelling slogan of the Hillsdale College newsletter Imprimis: “Because Ideas Have Consequences.”

Americans are a practical people. That is good! But we are not a particularly strong-thinking people, and that is bad, since what we do practically always flows from our minds and therefore needs to be directed by our thinking.” In other words, if you and I were to examine our lives…our actions and our interactions…these things speak volumes about our thought process, or lack there of, and of our worldview. If we call ourselves by the name of Christ then we must view everything through the lens of Jesus’ teachings in Scripture. To hold views and to act contrary to this, is neither worthy of the name by which we call ourselves or profitable for our lives or the lives of those that we are hoping to influence through the gospel. If it is true that we necessarily do what we think, then my question to the people of the portico is, “What are we thinking?”

The Incarnate Wealth of The Compassion of God (John Piper)

God is the wealthiest person in the universe. He not only owns more than anyone else. He owns everyone else and everything everyone else owns. When you create something, it belongs to you. And God created everything-including us. “It is He who made us, and not we ourselves [marginal reading]; we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture” (Psalm 100:3) There is one ultimate owner in the universe, God. All others are trustees. Neither we nor what we have is finally our own. It is all a trust to be used for the aims of the owner. In a sense, therefore, all sin is embezzling.

But, strikingly, the New Testament describes the wealth of God not mainly in terms of what He created and owns, but mainly in terms of the glory He has from all eternity. Repeatedly we read of “the riches of His glory” or “His riches in glory” (for example, Ephesians 3:16; Philippians 4:19; Colossians 1:27). If God were only rich because He made and owns all things, He would have been poor before creation. But that means He would have created out of need and would be dependent on his creation. But that is not the picture of God we find in the Bible. God did not create to get wealth; He created to display wealth-the wealth of His glory for the enjoyment of His people (Ephesians 1:6, 12, 14).

But even more specifically, the focus of the New Testament is that the wealth of God’s glory is, at its apex, the wealth of His mercy. This is something the world takes very lightly: “the riches of [God’s] kindness and forbearance and patience” (Romans 2:4). God created and redeemed the world so that He might “make known the riches of His glory for vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory” (Romans 9:23). Or, to put it another way, He creates and saves His people “so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:7). The universe exists primarily to display the wealth of the glory of the mercy of God for the enjoyment of His redeemed people from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.

Justice is essential among the perfections of God’s glory. But mercy is paramount. “He who justifies the wicked and He who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the Lord” (Proverbs 17:15). Yes. Therefore justice is essential. But something else is also true: “It is [a man’s] glory to overlook an offense’ (Proverbs 19:11). Therefore, if justice can be preserved, it is the apex of glory to show mercy.

For this reason Jesus Christ came into the world. Jesus is the mercy of God incarnate and visible. He is also the justice of God incarnate; but justice was subordinate: “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him” (John 3:17) God the Father offered up His Son in death “so that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26). The substitutionary death of Jesus Christ created the backdrop of justice where justifying mercy would shine with unparalleled glory. Therefore, the glory of God’s mercy is the aim of Christ’s coming. This is explicit in Romans 15:8-9: Christ came into the world “to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the gentiles might glorify God for His mercy.” The aim of the incarnation was to magnify the mercy of God for the enjoyment of the nations.