By J.R. Hudberg
Look around. What do you see? Whom do you see? As Jesus walked the earth, he saw people for who they were and met them at their greatest point of need. From physical and emotional issues to their deepest pressing spiritual concerns, Jesus served the needs of others. Jesus said that serving others was why he came.
Opportunities to serve like Jesus are all around us and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the amount of need that surrounds us and guilty that we are not doing more. But service isn’t about obligation. Serving others is about seeing and valuing them.
Where do we start? Jesus himself and the parable of the Good Samaritan help us ask the right questions so that we can serve where we can, how we can, and with what we have.
The Road of the Good Samaritan
In Jesus’s famous parable of the Good Samaritan (see Luke 10:25-37), he explains our responsibilities in meeting the needs of those around us.
The story starts with a lawyer asking Jesus who is his neighbor. The lawyer wants to define the limits of his responsibility to “love his neighbor as himself.” So Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan to answer the question “who is my neighbor?” (v. 29).
We would expect that the one who is in need is the neighbor we should love. We should provide for those needs that we see as we have the ability and the opportunity. But Jesus says something intriguing. Rather than identifying the neighbor in need, he asks the lawyer to identify the one who acted like a neighbor (see Luke 10:36).
It seems that rather than defining the outermost edges of our responsibility, Jesus wanted to suggest that it is the kind of person we are that matters. Are we acting like neighbors to those we encounter? In the parable, the hero is unexpected while the expected heroes turn out indifferent if not villainous. The point is not that we find people to be objects of our generosity, but that we become the kind of people who are always generous.
By making a Samaritan the “hero” (from a group of people strongly disliked by the Jews), Jesus was forcing the lawyer to see himself not as the person loving the neighbor but as the one in need. The challenge struck home, because no self-respecting Jew would be able to relate to a Samaritan.
Jesus was telling a story of both how we meet needs and also of how we see people. There are no boundaries to who is a neighbor. Instead, we are to act like neighbors.
Meeting the needs of others is a noble end in itself. But what motivates us to care for the needs of others?
Jesus and the Why of Serving
In Philippians we read about what Jesus gave up simply to walk among us: “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness” (Philippians 2:6-7).
Jesus was willing to take what was rightfully his and give it up for the good and sake of others. Jesus had the willingness to give up everything for humanity in desperate need. Paul is presenting Jesus as an example of what it means to consider the needs of others. Paul points to the incarnation as a model of how to give up something for the sake of another.
When we look at Jesus and his becoming human and living a life of service, we are given a clear picture of what serving others looks like.
And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:8-11)
In the final phrase of these verses, we get a glimpse of the ultimate reason: the glory of God the Father. Jesus’s motivation in serving humanity was to bring glory to God. This can also be our motivation for serving others and meeting the needs of those around us.
From this passage in Philippians, we can see that it is not simply the act of service that is significant. The logic of the passage suggests that the entire process—service and result—brings glory to God.
Of course God is glorified by acts of service! When we meet the needs of others in an act of love, we are acting toward one another in a way that honors their dignity and value in the eyes of their Creator. But when we meet the needs of others so that they too are in a position to flourish, to live according to the designs and desires of God our Creator and Savior, this glorifies God too.
It is when we live the way God intended us to live and help others to do the same that God is most glorified.
Excerpted and adapted from Discovery Series “Going the Extra Mile” by J.R. Hudberg, published by Our Daily Bread Ministries
Read Also:
Discovery Series: “Going the Extra Mile”
In Going the Extra Mile: Learning to Serve Like Jesus, author J.R. Hudberg points us to the life and character of Jesus to understand how we can best serve others. We need to know how Jesus saw people before we can honor what we’ve been called to do—glorify God.
Are we willing to follow Jesus’ lead, His actions, and His teachings, to meet people with love and compassion no matter where they are or how they got there? Will we go the extra mile?
Our Daily Bread Ministries in Indonesia is supported by the freewill offering of individuals in Indonesia, who through their gifts enable us to continue to bring the life-changing wisdom of the Bible to many here. We are not funded by any church or organisation.
