Serving Like Christ
As I visited a patient in the hospital, I was struck by the actions of a young doctor standing with a team of other inexperienced physicians. The group listened as a more seasoned doctor explained about the patient’s health. Suddenly, the patient anxiously announced that she needed to use the bathroom and couldn’t get up. In fact, she couldn’t wait for a nurse’s aide to be summoned to the room.
Amid the frantic scene, the young doctor got a bed pan off the shelf and assisted the patient. When the nurse’s aide arrived, she was shocked to find someone had already assisted the patient. The lead physician proudly acknowledged the assistance of the young doctor.
Jesus didn’t cling to His divinity and refuse to assist humanity. Though He was “in very nature God, [He] did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage” (Philippians 2:6). As a human, Christ was able to become our sin offering and sacrifice Himself for us. He saw our need for help and salvation, and He humbly laid down His life (v. 8). Paul wrote, “He made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant” (v. 7).
We’re called to imitate Jesus’ attitude and sacrificial ways in our relationships with others. As He helps us, let’s humbly serve them no matter how lowly the job may seem.
By Katara Patton - Our Daily Bread Ministries
Philippians 2:3-8
3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.
5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
