Jesus Came to Serve

BY Scarlet Hiltibidal

The first time I read through the passages we are looking at today, I felt overwhelmed. 

I knew I was supposed to feel overwhelmed with joy. I mean, what a gift, that Jesus, God made flesh, came to earth and dwelt with us and left us with all this instruction on how to live, how to serve, and how to be forgiven and accepted into the kingdom of God. He left a perfect example of sacrificial love in His actions, His ministry, and His death on the cross.

Instead, I felt overwhelmed by the difficulty of His instruction. I would read through Matthew and the other Gospels as a young Christian and think, “How?”

I was such a rule follower that Jesus’s teaching about how wrong the Jewish rule-followers were in their hearts and motives scared me. “Am I to sell and forsake all I have to prove to Jesus that I love him?” I’d think to my young adult self. I didn’t have much material value at that point, but I certainly didn’t want to give up the little I did have. 

I’d see psalms like 40:8—“I delight to do your will…”—and think, “Am I really delighting? Because I feel like I’m panicking to do His will…and also failing at it.”

If you’ve ever had those thoughts too, let today’s last passage in Philippians remind you of the kind of teacher giving the instructions found in Matthew 19 and 20. Jesus “emptied Himself” and “assum[ed] the form of a servant” and then God “highly exalted” Him (Philippians 2:7,9). Jesus was the perfect servant, and His goodness and His sacrifice secured our salvation.

It took me a long time to realize that embracing this truth—that Jesus is the hero, not me—is the key to Psalm 40:8. His surrender to the will of God is what makes us capable of delighting to do the will of God.

We can only delight in being servants when we remember that our service flows from Jesus’s service. It is a gift and is meant to be a joy. We will be exalted because Jesus served us. We can be free because Jesus sacrificed for us. We are able to serve and obey and even delight because our sin is gone. That is delightful. 

I’m praying today that we may read through the book of Matthew with the eyes of forgiven, free daughters and heirs of God, who have the privilege of serving with Him.