Christ First then Service

2 Corinthians 8:5 – “…and this, not as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us.”

Throughout the world, there are many days that are deliberately set aside to celebrate an event, a person, or even a food item. In America alone, we have a special day for almost everything. We have days like Talk like a Pirate Day on September 19, National Pretzel Day on April 26, Memorial Day on every last Monday of May, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Day on every third Monday of January. We celebrate tons of holidays, but the truth is after a while, we forget why we celebrate a holiday in the first place. We go through Memorial Day without even taking a few moments to thank God for the people who gave their lives for this country. We go through Veteran’s Day not even taking an opportunity to call a veteran we know in our lives and thank them for their service. We celebrate Easter searching for eggs without a thought of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. And we go through Christmas buying presents, having parties, singing carols, and spending time with family without even considering the birth of our Lord, for whom the whole event is commemorated. After celebrating these holidays countless of times, we begin to forget why we celebrate the day in the first place.

 
We do this quite often with projects in our live as well. For example, there is a story about a town enclosed by hills. Every week, as the hills eroded, boulders would roll down the hill and come near the town. To prevent the town from being surrounded by massive boulders, the people voted to have different townspeople take turns bringing boulders out of the city every week. Eventually, decades down the road, the hills surrounding the town were completely gone so boulders no longer rolled down to the town, yet the townspeople continued the tradition of sending a townsperson out each week to remove a boulder. Finally, nobody had an idea why they were doing this task, they just found a random rock in town and took it outside of the city each week. They had eventually forgotten the purpose of doing the task.

 
I personally experience this in the field of scientific research. When I first began doing an experiment my supervisor used to ask me why I performed every step, because by knowing why I did each step I would never forget to do it and would understand which were critical steps and which were not. But over time after performing the same experiment over and over, I eventually forgot why I performed certain steps, I just did it because “I had to.” If anyone would have ever asked me why I did it, I would tell them, “I don’t know. I was told I had to.”

 
Sadly, this same exact experience happens in our spiritual lives. So many Christians are inspired to serve the Lord and jump into a ministry, spending countless of hours discipling others and winning others to Christ so that they can bring honor and glory to God. Unfortunately, as they serve, the ministry then becomes more important then God who they perform the ministry for. They begin to neglect their own personal relationship to perform the ministry. They begin to forget to love others in exchange for getting a job done. Martha did this when she was serving Jesus when He came to her house. She went through the hustle and bustle of preparing food and her house for Him, but she forgot that what God really wanted was her attention as Mary her sister gave Him (Luke 10:38-42). When Martha asked Christ to rebuke her sister, Christ answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.”

 
In our passage from 2 Corinthians 8, Paul told the Corinthian church to give like the church in Macedonia to help their fellow brethren. But as he spoke about the Macedondian church, described a key aspect of their character in verse 5 stating, “…they gave themselves first [bold personally added] to the Lord and then by the will of God to us.” The church in Macedonia did not concentrate on their giving of tithes and offerings to help serve the ministry primarily, but instead they first focused on the thing of real importance, giving themselves to the Lord. The Lord does not desire our sacrifices, money, offerings, and service, what He really wants is an obedient heart of service to Him – a heart that is fully given over to Him. “To obey is better than sacrifice.” (1 Samuel 15:22) As disciples of Jesus Christ, we must remember that our job first and foremost is not to a ministry or to people or to fellow brothers and sisters in Christ or even the church, it is to Jesus Christ – the One who we have given our lives to. This does not mean that we neglect the giving, the tithing, and the service, because they are all important, but this means that we must first correct our relationship with Christ then focus on the actions, for the actions will come naturally with the right relationship to God, not the other way around. Always remember Christ first then service.