Spiritual Reality Means Becoming a Servant

If you were to die tomorrow, and somebody had to write your obituary, what would they write? What would be the things they would focus upon that would capture the essence of your life?

Not too many people ever get a chance to find out. Usually, we’re not around to read our own obituary! But that very thing once happened to a wealthy businessman about a hundred years ago. He read his own obituary and it changed his life.

Alfred Nobel was a Norwegian industrialist who invented dynamite. He made a great deal of money by blowing things up. One morning in the year 1888, he picked up his newspaper and, to his shock, found himself reading his own obituary. The obituary had been printed by mistake. Alfred’s brother had died but the newspaper had mistakenly printed Alfred’s death notice instead.

As Alfred Nobel read his own obituary, he began to realize, with dismay, what people thought about him. The newspaper called him the “Dynamite King”; the great industrialist who had made millions from high explosives. As far as the general public was concerned, that had been the main accomplishment of Alfred Nobel’s life—a wealthy businessman who had left a legacy of death and destruction.

By the time he finished reading his obituary, Alfred Nobel resolved to make some radical changes in the way he would live the rest of his life. Making dynamite would no longer occupy his time. He would give himself full-time to the work of world peace. And, because he was getting to be an old man, he determined to change the way he planned to dispose of his fortune.

Nobel set up a foundation to award international prizes each year to the scientists, artists, and statesmen who made the most significant contribution to peaceful world progress. Those prizes would become a lasting testimony to the values and ideals that Alfred Nobel held dear. Today, when we hear about the Nobel Prize, we remember what Alfred Nobel’s values were really all about.

And it all happened because he read his own obituary.

This morning, I want to ask you to do something that Alfred Nobel did one hundred years ago. I want you to ask yourself “What is my life all about? Why am I here? What is my reason for living? When the time comes for me to die, as sooner or later it must, how will people remember me? What will they think were my deepest convictions and values? What was the guiding principle that steered my life?”

We have been studying the book of Colossians in order to discover the key to spiritual reality. We have seen that spiritual reality comes from having a relationship with God and living according to His plan for my life. We have seen that such a relationship can come only through Jesus Christ because Jesus is God Himself in human form. He came to earth to reveal Himself to us and to reconcile us to himself—to bring us back into relationship with him.

When you enter into this relationship, God has a special purpose for you—to become a servant. It is in serving God that we realize God’s plan for our lives and find the key to spiritual fulfilment.

The world tells us that the key to satisfaction—the secret of fulfilment—is to be served. To have other people serve you. And we’re constantly bombarded with this message through advertizing and the media.

But the truth is quite the opposite. The greatest satisfaction, the greatest impact, the greatest significance and sense of fulfilment you can ever find in life is found when you become a servant. Someone once said that the measure of your success and your impact in life is not found in how many people are serving you, but in how many people you are serving.

In Matthew 23:11-12, Jesus said “The greatest among you will be your servant. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”

Jesus himself was a servant—he described his own job description in those terms in Mark 10:45. He said “For the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

So having a relationship with God means becoming a servant. A servant who is at God’s disposal.

And an excellent example of such a person is found in Colossians 1–2 in the person of the Apostle Paul. At the end of chapter 1, and the beginning of chapter 2, Paul describes his role as a servant of God. Specifically, he reveals three things about what it means to be a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ.

1. The Call to Be a Servant

2. The Cost of Being a Servant

3. The Concerns of a Servant

1. The Call to be a Servant

Look at the latter portion of Col. 1:23…

This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant. Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church. I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness

Paul says “I have become a servant of the gospel—God’s message—and I have become a servant of the church—God’s people.” And this servanthood was not of his own doing—he was commissioned to it by God. He was called by God to be a servant.

In Acts 9, we have the account of Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus. Jesus appeared to him very dramatically and saved him—brought him into relationship with himself. And in Acts 26, Paul testifies that Jesus said to him “I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen of me and what I will show you.”

In other words, Paul was not called to become a Christian in order to live for his own benefit. He was not called to be a Christian in isolation from other Christians—he was called to live for the benefit of others—to be a servant and a witness.

How many of us go through life as though we were just living for our own benefit? And then we wonder why we feel depressed and unhappy. Instead we should be asking: “How can I be of benefit someone else for the Lord’s sake? How can I help someone else come to know Jesus Christ?”

The truth is that the more you give yourself to serving and helping others for Christ’s sake, the better you are going to feel about yourself, because you will be doing that which God created you to do.

The world says “Get yourself into a position where everyone else is serving you—wherre you’re getting your needs met—then you’ll be happy.” But Jesus said “If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all.” True satisfaction comes through serving.

Paul says in v. 25: “My calling is in the form of a commission from God”

That word “commission”, which is translated “dispensation” in the KJV, is the Greek word “oikonomia”. It comes from two Greek words; “oikos” which means “house”, and “nomos” which means “law”. So “oikonomia” literally means “the law of the house”.

Now I’m sure that in your house, you have certain rules. In my house, we all help to clear the table after a meal. We don’t leave our dirty clothes on the floor; we put them in the laundry. We put our stuff away after we are finished with it. We have certain chores that we do each week. That’s the law of the house. We have those responsibilities that come with living in that household.

Likewise, as members of God’s household, we have been called to take up certain responsibilities. We are stewards, or servants in God’s household, and our responsibility involves two things:

1. to communicate the truth

2. to live the truth

Paul says in v. 25 “God gave me a commission to present to you the word of God in its fullness”. We saw that word “fullness” last week. It means to be ready, to be fully equipped, to be prepared as a ship would be prepared to go out to sea.

When Paul communicated the Word of God to them, he taught it to them so that they would be prepared to live it. He didn’t teach the Word of God just as an intellectual exercise. His goal wasn’t to produce people who had their heads full of theological facts, but people who knew how to live the truth.

And what is the content of that teaching? It is the mystery that “Christ is in you, the hope of glory” v. 27.

When we talk about a mystery, we usually mean something that is hidden, something that is obscure, that is a puzzle. But when used here, and elsewhere in the NT, the word mystery means something that God has revealed to us; something that he has made plain to us. We didn’t know it before, but now we do know it because God has shown it to us.

And the truth that God has shown to us is that Jesus Christ lives in us. Whether you are a Jew or a Gentile, when you become a follower of Jesus Christ, God comes and dwells in your life in the person of Jesus Christ.

And his dwelling in your life is to be visible before other people. It should be obvious that there is something different about you as a follower of Jesus Christ. There ought to be a supernatural dimension of your life that comes from having God living in you. By the way you live, you actually make God visible to other people.

As servants of Jesus Christ, we are not only called upon to communicate the truth—to tell other people about the Gospel—we are called to incarnate the truth—to live the Gospel by the power of God who is living in us.

And the result should be that people come to know Jesus Christ when they come to know us. Paul said in v. 28 “We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ.” That word “perfect” means “complete”.

So the call to be a servant of God involves two things—communicating the truth, and living the truth.

But there’s a price tag that comes with being a servant. There is a…

2. Cost to Being a Servant

Colossians 1:24 Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church.

What Paul is saying here is that a servant lifestyle is going to involve some suffering.

When he talks about what is “still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions” he isn’t saying that there was something missing, or inadequate, about what Christ did for us on the Cross. The Bible teaches that when Christ died for us as our Mediator—as our Substitute—his death was perfect in the sight of God. His sacrifice was complete, and there is nothing that needed to be added to it.

But Paul is not referring here to Christ’s mediatorial suffering; he’s talking about Christ’s ministry sufferings as the head of the church.

Remember back in Acts 9 when Paul was converted to Christ on the road to Damascus? What had he been doing prior to that? He had been persecuting the early church, hunting down Christians and hounding them to their death. He had caused much suffering in the early church.

Do you remember what Jesus said to Paul on the road to Damascus? He said “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” He didn’t say “Why are you persecuting my followers?” he said “Why are you persecuting me?”

Because Jesus Christ is the head of the church, Jesus was really the ultimate target of Paul’s persecution. When Paul made those early Christians suffer, he was ultimately causing Jesus to suffer, because Jesus is the head of the Body. Jesus is integrally connected to His people.

And in that sense, although Jesus’ mediatorial suffering as the Redeemer of the church is over and done with, his ministerial suffering as the Head of the church isn’t finished yet. He still suffers when his followers are persecuted for being Christians.

Now here Paul, who has become a Christian, says “I rejoice in what I can suffer for Christ. I am glad that I can be the target of the suffering that is ultimately directed at Him. I am glad that I can be the channel, to make up in my flesh, what is still coming to Jesus Christ by way of suffering.

This is what he means when he says in Philippians 3:10 “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings”. He wanted to share with Christ that ministerial suffering that Christ experiences as the Head of the Body.

I’m sure that most Christians are ready to share in the power of his resurrection. But I wonder how many of us are willing to share in the fellowship of Jesus’ sufferings? Paul was. And in that, he revealed to us part of the cost of being a servant. To be a servant is to suffer…to bear the persecution that is ultimately directed toward Jesus Christ.

One of the costs of being a servant is to suffer. Another cost is to struggle. Paul said in v.29 “To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me.”

The word “struggle” is from a Greek word which means to toil, or to labor—to wrestle to the point of exhaustion—much like a woman does when she gives birth.

It means to be willing to work hard for the cause of Christ. Paul struggled for these new believers in Colosse. He thought about them; he prayed for them; he wrote to them to encourage them; he did whatever he could to keep them growing in their faith.

Someone has said that when a child is born into the world, some woman must travail in pain; and the reason that there are not more people being born again is because there are not enough believers who are willing to work hard, to struggle, to travail in pain so that it might happen.

The first cost of being a servant is suffering—being willing to face persecution; the second is struggling—working hard for the Gospel.

There is a third cost: striving. Paul says in

Colossians 2:1 I want you to know how much I am struggling for you and for those at Laodicea, and for all who have not met me personally.

But the word translated “struggle” there is actually a different Greek word from the word he used in v. 29. I don’t know why the NIV translated it the same way, but the KJV translates it: “For I would that you knew what great conflict I have for you.”

The word in Greek is the word “agon”, from which we get our English word agony. It is a word that was used of an athlete in the Olympic Games, striving and wrestling against his opponents. This refers to spiritual warfare, and spiritual warfare is another cost of being a servant.

Ephesians 6:12 says that “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

You can be sure that if you determine to be a servant of Jesus Christ, sooner or later, you are going to be involved in spiritual warfare. Satan is going to pay you a visit. He’s going to try to discourage you; to trip you up; to drag you down so that you cannot follow through on your commitment to serve Jesus Christ.

But the Bible says that “greater is He that is in you than He that is in the world.” And we can go forward with confidence into spiritual battle, with our spiritual armor on, knowing that we have the victory in Christ.

So there are three costs to being a servant—suffering with Christ; struggling for Christ; and striving against the enemies of Christ.

Finally, Paul talks about

3. The concerns of a servant

Colossians 2:2 My purpose is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Paul had three goals for those he served:

• 1. encouragement

• 2. endearment

• 3. enlightenment

1. Encouragement:

He says “I want that the people I serve be strengthened in heart.” Our English word encouragement actually means just that—it means “to have heart”.

The word for “encourage” in Greek means “to be called alongside”.

Scientists who study whales tell us that when a whale is injured, the other whales in the pod will actually come alongside the injured whale and use their bodies to lift that whale up to the surface to help it breathe. That is exactly what this word means.

A true servant desires that people be lifted up and strengthened in heart—that they be encouraged to keep on growing; to keep on living for the Lord; to keep on being faithful.

2. Endearment

Paul says “I also want the people I serve to be united in love.” The KJV uses the expression “knit together”. The same word is used down in 2:19 to talk about how the body is held together by the ligaments and sinews.

A true servant of God is always going to be working toward unity in the Body of Christ. He’s not going to be sowing discord or disharmony.

Ephesians 4:3 Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.

3. Enlightenment

Paul says “I want that the people I serve might be completed in understanding—that they might have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”

A true servant of God is going to want to see other people getting to know Christ better. He’ll want to see them completed in their understanding of who Christ is and what he has done for them, so that they will not be taken in by the fancy arguments of the false teachers.

He’ll want to see them becoming rooted and firm in their faith, just as he says in verse 5.

These are the marks of a servant of God.

1. Called to be a servant

• to communicate the truth

• to incarnate the truth

2. Willing to bear the cost of being a servant…

• to suffer persecution for the faith

• to struggle and work hard for the Gospel

• to strive against spiritual opposition

3. A concern is that people be…

• encouraged in their commitment to the Lord

• brought close to one another in love

• completed in their knowledge of who Christ is

I look at my own life and I ask myself: “Are these characteristics true of me?” Am I aware of what God has called me to be? Am I willing to undergo hardship to be what God has called me to be? And are his concerns at the top of my priority list?

A woman named Ruth Calkins wrote some powerful sentences about servanthood that I want to leave you with…

You know Lord how I serve you

with great emotional fervor when I’m in the limelight.

You know how eagerly I speak for you at a women’s club.

You know how I effervesce when I promote a fellowship group.

You know my genuine enthusiasm at a Bible study.

But how would I react, I wonder if you pointed me to a basin of water

and asked me to wash the calloused feet of a bent and wrinkled old woman

Day after day, month after month

In a room where nobody saw, and nobody knew.

Lord, teach me to be a servant.