Christian Living

To Serve Jesus

by Duncan Atkinson
09/09/16
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To Serve Jesus

Jesus said to them, "Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. (John 6:53, NIV)

In the classic Twilight Zone episode, ‘To Serve Man’, aliens arrive on our planet–ostensibly, to grant mankind unparalleled peace and prosperity through their advanced technology. These aliens even have a book entitled ‘To Serve Man’....SPOILER ALERT!....it’s a cookbook.

It can be relatively easy to focus on serving Jesus, piling up good works to imperfectly justify ourselves to ourselves. The one thing needful, however, may be to ‘serve up’ Jesus as spiritual food; to feed on him in our hearts, through faith, and intimately receive into our core all he freely gives. That is, simply, himself. His righteousness, his love, his word, his wisdom, his life–both dead for our sins, and living in our deeds (Phil 2:13, 1 Cor 2:16, Rom 5:5, John 17:26, Jer 15:16).

There are others who look only to be served by God. Perpetually consuming His material blessings–even His spiritual blessings, or enough of them to stay comfortable. But one who ‘serves up’ Jesus and receives him must also be served to the Lord in the cookbook sense. They are a living sacrifice, consumed for the glory and the will of God. This is the faithful, reasonable response to the knowledge of Jesus’ mercy (Rom 12:1). This is the nature of Jesus, the self-giving saviour, made into our own (Gal 2:20). To believe in Jesus is to seek Jesus, to seek Jesus is to find and receive Jesus, to receive Jesus is to know him, to love him, to believe in him, and to live forever (Matt 7:7, John 17:3).

Duncan is a Christian chemist living in Bristol, UK