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?