Love serves. Though God is exalted, he actually serves us.
God’s love for us leads him to do many surprising things, and perhaps the most surprising is his choice to serve us. We normally think that it is we who serve God, not God who serves us. It even sounds wrong to say the great, exalted God serves us. But in fact it is God who to an infinitely greater degree serves us because of his love for us.
He truly humbles himself to serve us. For example, changing diapers is not prestigious work, yet parents—because of love—do for their infant children what they would not lower themselves to do for others. They humble themselves and serve them.
Love serves.
Because God loves us, he serves us, not just now and then, but continually, for we continually, unceasingly need his support, for we are completely dependent on him for life, breath, and everything else—at all times. At no time are we self-sustaining. So God in love, in humility, serves us, like a restaurant server waits tables, like a nurse cares for patients.
Love serves
Jesus, who is the perfect reflection of God, made a point of this:
“ 1 Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. 2 During supper…3 Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, 4 rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. 5 Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him” (John 13:1–5, ESV).
Notice it says, “He loved them to the end.” It was love that moved Jesus to serve the twelve—even the man he knew would betray him—and it is love that moves him to lower himself and serve you, for to wash feet one must stoop.
God’s love keeps on serving
This was not a one-time aberration. “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28). Everything Jesus did for us during his earthly ministry was an act of servanthood. He gave his life for others, for you.
Moreover, he is not finished. Teaching about his Second Coming, Jesus said, “Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will dress himself for service and have them recline at table, and he will come and serve them” (Luke 12:37). So, even when Jesus comes as the unmistakable King in power and glory, he will change his clothes, direct everyone to find a seat at the banquet table, and serve them dinner.
Why does he do this? This is not the way kings act. But it is the way God acts. He humbles himself to serve the people he loves. How can we resist loving a God like this?
Letting God serve you
Even so, it doesn’t feel right to have someone as great as Jesus serve you. Peter felt it when Jesus came to wash his feet. Lapsing into another of his “I need to straighten out Jesus” moods, Peter told him, “You shall never wash my feet.”
Jesus answered, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.”
Peter wisely reverted course: “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!”
Our way and God’s way
Our way: We may regard serving others in humble ways as demeaning.
God’s way: The Lord shows his humble love by stooping to serve us.
Life principle: To receive God’s humble love actually takes humility, for it requires that we acknowledge how much we need him. God’s humble servanthood teaches us to serve him in return, and to serve others. To be a servant is to imitate God.
Jeremiah 9:23–24: “Thus says the LORD: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.’” (ESV)