THE SERVANT IS A SUFFERER
THE SERVANT IS A SUFFERER
To serve in itself implies that there is need of service, and if there be ability, the greater the need the greater will be the demand on the servant; and the one who can meet a great demand will be a great sufferer. If there be charity, the very existence of the need imposes on him who is able to relieve it an extent of toil or suffering equal to the demand. If there be only need, and a ready ability to meet it, there will be a reciprocity between the giver and receiver which renders them mutually interested in one another. One is ready to impart, and the other thankfully and heartily to receive as a child from its parent; but if with the need, there be an opposition in the needy one, like an irritable child refusing to accept his mother’s care, how grievously will the mother suffer! The servant thus suffers not only from the tax on his strength and resources to minister to the need, but also from the unkind and perverse opposition to him in his beneficent purposes.
Now as the ability to serve must exist before one can [p. 230] be a servant, so also, the greater the ability, the more is the servant taxed if there be need of his services.
Cain excuses himself about Abel by asking, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” thus implying that to be responsible for his brother was beyond his ability. The servant must be able to secure sure footing for himself before he can offer to serve another with any benefit. Cain condemns himself when he denies his responsibility to be his brother’s keeper. The toil of acquiring ability to serve must precede the suffering, and hence Abram is in the land, and separate too from all the contending parties, when he undertakes to deliver Lot. And then he suffers; all his resources, yea, his own life, are imperilled to rescue his brother. He goes out by night into deadly conflict; he, from the circle of his home and quietude, in self-sacrifice risks all he has to secure the life and property of his brother. He is thus the sample of a true servant; he has really nothing to gain, but everything to lose. Personally he was safe himself, but from this place of security he rises up to effect the deliverance of his captured brother.
Service seems to be an exceptional thing with Abraham. His calling was more to trace out and walk in the path of faith when evil was widespread in the earth.
In Moses we get a sample of the true servant more fully. He gave up every personal advantage in order that he might serve his people. Before he essayed to deliver them out of Egypt, he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; he esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt, because he had respect unto the recompense of the reward. He had himself broken with Egypt, and that in its most attractive form, before he attempted to deliver his people. As a servant he risked his life and slew an Egyptian. This was but the toil and danger of service; this he rendered without fear or discouragement; but when the one whom he had served the day before [p. 231] thrust him away and became his opponent, upbraiding him for the very service he had rendered (Exodus 2: 14), then this great servant tastes of the greatest suffering, and he fled “at this saying, and was a stranger in the land of Midian”, Acts 7: 29. He could say, “They have rewarded me ... hatred for my love”. And this is the bitterest suffering. It is not the toil or the danger in rendering the service, however great that may be, but the pain which the servant must feel that where he has suffered most he should be repulsed and hated. Moses suffered that he might be competent to serve; and then, when he essays to serve, he has the great pain of finding that his service is not acceptable. He suffers to be competent, he suffers in his service, and above all, he suffers because he is misunderstood and unacceptable to those for whom he suffered and whom he was able efficiently to serve. Thus it ever is, the greatest servant is the greatest sufferer. The servant who can be diverted from his service because he is not acceptable to those whom he is called to serve, is one who has not comprehended the simplest duty of a servant. Every servant of God to man has suffered more from the professed people of God than from His avowed enemies; that is, he has endured more from being unacceptable to those whom he offers to serve than from the world. The servant must suffer on account of the people of God, or he will not be skilful to help them through the difficulties. The servant of God in Babylon helps the people of God who are there. The one with the remnant helps the remnant, and suffers with them.
In our blessed Lord we see the perfect Servant. He says, “I am among you as he that serveth”. “The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many”. He has the ability to meet every variety of need, and hence there was the greatest demand on Him, so that as we read in Mark 6: 31, “they had no leisure so much as to eat”. But this was not all; in order to meet the whole need [p. 232] of man, He gave His life a ransom for many. The greater the need the greater the service required, and the greater the suffering in rendering the service; the need of man could only be met by One who could undergo the liability which has created the need. Christ served unto death, and instead of His services being accepted, for His love He had hatred. He had done among them works which none other had done, and at the end of it He had to say, “Now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father”. Service was fulfilled in the Lord. He was the greatest Servant and the greatest Sufferer. He alone was able to meet the need of man, and He met it; and when cast out and put to death, He died not only to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself, but also to set aside in His death that in us which refused His service. He is the “keeper” which Cain refused to be, for Cain killed his brother, but Jesus died to make us His brethren. “He is not ashamed to call them brethren”.
All service now must be after this order. “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant ... and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross”. All service now must bear the character of the Master’s service: we are to love one another as He has loved us; as He has washed our feet we are to wash one another’s feet; as He died for us we are to die for one another. Our service then as to others is to remove everything which defiles by the word of Christ; and as to ourselves, to suffer unto death, as Paul says, “I endure all things for the elect’s sakes”. I am not serving after the manner of the love of Christ if I do not seek in my service to separate the souls of my fellow disciples from everything which would morally distance them from Christ. And this necessarily entails on me suffering and exercise of heart, because I cannot [p. 233] help another unless I experimentally — personally — know the good of the thing which I offer. Without this I really do not know how to help; and hence the greater the servant, the more he suffers in every way, both in order to acquire ability to serve, and from the opposition which he encounters in his service.
In 1 Corinthians 13 charity, which is the more excellent way, shapes and forms the servant. It is not what it confers on others, but what it effects in himself. The great object of service is to present every man perfect in Christ. And this is death to the flesh. And the servant’s ability is in proportion to his own advance and practical self-denial.
Service in its nature now is death to oneself. “If any man serve me, let him follow me”. True, there is a reward for the slightest act of service, even “a cup of cold water”; but service in principle is placing myself at the disposal of another, and not seeking my own profit, but to please Him who hath chosen me for His servant. Hence the fuller and the greater the service, the greater the self-surrender and self-sacrifice. It is not giving what one can spare without feeling it, but I will not offer to the Lord “that which doth cost me nothing”. “I endure all things for the elect’s sakes”. “For the work of Christ he was nigh unto death”. “This poor widow hath cast in more than they all: ... she of her penury hath cast in all the living that she had”. The service declares its virtue and aim by the suffering which is endured in rendering it, for what can be done at one’s ease is generally done without much concern for the one to whom it is rendered, and thus the true quality is lost or overlooked.