Saved to Serve

This May, my wife’s brother (Ethan) is graduating from Yale University. He has worked incredibly hard to reach this goal and we are thankful for the opportunities he has been given (and we are, dare I say, proud of him).Undercutting Yale’s May graduation is the unfolding story of Ms. Jamie Petrone: an administrator in the school of medicine. Though tasked with aiding students in their education, she has used her position to defraud Yale out of $40 million. Just to clarify, that’s a “4” with seven zeroes after it!This incredible sum wasn’t acquired at once through some grand heist; she methodologically appropriated the funds through the course a decade or more. Little decision by little decision, day by day, Jamie deceived and thieved her way into a fortune. She was hired to serve but chose to steal instead.Likewise, each Christian was saved to serve, yet we can often use our position for selfish gain.In the context of our salvation by grace, Paul continues by stating that “we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10, NASB1995). He also warned Christians that they “were called to freedom… only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another” (Galatians 5:13). Service is one of the many reasons Christ is still in the business of calling men and women “from the domain of darkness, and [transfers] us to the kingdom of His beloved Son” (Colossians 1:13).One of the goals of discipleship, whether it’s in our own striving towards Christlikeness or in our ministry to others, is to see less “Jamie” and more “Jesus.” Being the God of the universe and creator of all things (Colossians 1:15-20), Christ still came to serve rather than be served (Mark 10:45). Shouldn’t we, His creation, likewise utilize our freedom to serve?As a biblical counselor (or discipler), this ought to be one of your main goals for the person or people you are ministering to. Looking through the lens of formal biblical counseling (though broadly applicable to Christian discipleship), allow me to suggest four ambitions to see your counselee go from Jamie to Jesus…

1) See Jesus

Speaking of money, it’s often mentioned that bank tellers are trained to identify counterfeit cash through simple means. Instead of keeping up on the (seemingly) endless permutations of counterfeit currency, they are trained very well in the real thing. How can they confidently profess a particular bill to be fake? Simple: it’s not authentic.Augustine famously wrote, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.” The most effective way to combat the thieving Jamie in each of our hearts is know the “authentic” satisfier: Jesus. Those who are “fixing [their] eyes on Jesus” will naturally be casting aside “every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles” (Hebrews 12:1-2). Selfishness will be systematically tossed by the wayside as conformity to Christ occurs (Romans 8:29). Help your counselee see Jesus!

2) Exploit Jamie

Clint Eastwood would agree: there are only two kinds of people in this world, (1) those who are selfish and know it, and (2) those who don’t think they’re selfish. But I repeat myself…Jamie began working for Yale in 2008 and was only caught this year (2022). Her crafty means of theft were carried out through department requests for electronic devices. After receiving the devices, she’d turn around to sell them and pocket the cash. Jamie avoided detection for so long by keeping each request under $10,000, circumventing any additional required approvals. Fortunately, someone reported suspected criminal behavior in 2021, sparking an investigation that led to her arrest.Jamie is hard at work in each human heart. And while it would be nice to send her to the clink once and for all, we’re limited to pacifying her covertly deceptive ways (“cruciformity,” for the theologically savvy reader). One must be able to identify the common practices of a thief in order to subvert their efforts. Likewise, each one of us has a variety of selfish manifestations abounding in our lives. It’s necessary to drag these practices into the light (1 John 1:6-10), otherwise Jamie will be free to continue her work under the radar. Exploit Jamie!

3) Work with Your Own Hands

“When is the thief no longer a thief?” This is a question I first heard during the Biblical Counseling Training Conference at Faith Church (Lafayette, IN) in 2013. What’s the natural answer? “When he stops stealing, of course!” I answered with smug confidence.Enter Ephesians 4:28 –“He who steals must steal no longer; but rather he must labor, performing with his own hands what is good, so that he will have something to share with one who has need.”Whoops: killing the practice is just step one! Jamie needs to then get a real job and start looking into creative philanthropical endeavors. Otherwise, she may just be biding her time until the next shipment of electronics arrives...From a spiritual perspective, that looks like practicing that which was antithetical to the previous activity. If selfishness manifests as wasting an inordinate amount of time playing video games or watching television, now that time is spent mowing the lawn of an elderly saint. If selfishness looked like spending money foolishly on frivolous items, now it looks like buying groceries for the single mom. You get the idea… Get Jamie working with her own hands!

4) Share with Those in Need

This is where the real cruciformity occurs. Jamie has eyes to take; Jesus has eyes to give. Jamie asks the question, “what do you have for me?” Jesus asks the question, “how can I give to you?” If the thief is no longer a thief when he is working with his own hands and giving to those in need, the selfish person is no longer letting Jamie run the show when he is reforming his time/talents/resources towards the service of others rather than self.This principle works outside of the “selfishness” confinement. For instance, in my regular discipleship, I work towards getting my guys get to a place where they are the ones ready to fill our time with ways they need to grow (i.e., “working with their own hands”) and our discipleship morphs to a more “grandfather role,” as they begin discipling others (i.e., “something to give towards those in need”). After all, the onus of spiritual growth ought not be on the discipler (2 Corinthians 5:10) and proper Christian discipleship should look like disciple-making disciples (2 Timothy 2:2). Share with those in need!Even Jamie is pleased to stop stealing (for a while) once the light is shining on her. Similarly, Jesus didn’t save us solely so we would stop doing bad things—He wants us to actively glorify Him with our lives (Matthew 5:16). Looking to Christ, we are to expose selfishness, serve in ways that directly combat that selfishness, and develop the giving eyes of Jesus (by the power of His Spirit (Ephesians 4:23)).Anyway, happy graduation, Ethan!Photo by Austin Ban on Unsplash