The Service of God

The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many (Matt. 20:28)

He is the exact image of the invisible God....For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things...(Col. 1:15, 19).

Jesus, the Servant of man, is the Mirror reflecting on earth what is already in heaven---that is, that God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, is the servant of mankind, ministering daily to the sons of men out of His glorious riches in heaven. 

The ancient Babylonian creation myths portrayed the gods creating mankind to act as servants to the gods.  Pagan religions, from the beginning, held that the gods wanted to be fed---with grain, with wine, with the sacrifice of our bodies and of our children.  When visiting the Aztec ruins of Mexico, we discover that blood sacrifice from both priests and priestesses was demanded: a sacrifice of blood from their own bodies, too horrible to contemplate. 

Even in the Old Testament, the God of Israel asked for animal and grain and oil sacrifice---probably as a way to feed the priests and to keep people from manufacturing their own ideas of what He wanted as sacrifice.  Indeed, when they began to sacrifice their own children to Molech, in imitation of their pagan neighbors, He was enraged.

But gradually, through the prophets, Yahweh began to wean His people away from sacrifice and to teach them that He Himself would feed them, instead of the other way around.  Jesus was able to teach His disciples to ask the Father for their daily bread and to deliver us from evil---in other words, to depend on the Father for our daily lives.  Even by the time of David, God had already revealed Himself as Minister and Caretaker---a Good Shepherd to the needs of men.  Psalm after psalm cries out testimony to the One Who Serves man:

But I call to God, and the Lord saves me.

Evening, morning, and noon

I cry out in distress,

and he hears my voice.

He ransoms me unharmed from the battle waged against me....

Cast your cares upon the Lord, and he will sustain you (Ps. 55).

Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior,

who daily bears our burdens (Ps. 68).

We all recognize that eating once in awhile is not enough to sustain our lives; we must be fed constantly in order to live.  God's ministry to us is constant and on-going; He bends low to hear our cry and to meet our daily need.  And if He asks us to serve Him, it is that we may imitate Him by serving his "sheep."  Jesus asked Simon Peter to "feed [His] sheep." 

Jesus called Himself The Good Shepherd, One who came to tend the flock that could not tend themselves---sheep have no claws, no sharp teeth, with which to defend themselves.  They are not even able to find food for themselves unless they are led to a tableland.  Without the Shepherd, they are totally defenseless and cannot survive. 

It is easy to think of Jesus this way, because we have learned this image from childhood.  It is harder to realize that He is the exact Image of the invisible God, His Father.  He does exactly what He sees the Father doing.  He said that He came to do the work of God.  By studying who He is, we finally begin to believe in the daily ministry of God to us.