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.