“Truly he was the servant of all,” said a friend of J. Hudson Taylor’s
as he concluded a narration of some incidents in the life of the great
missionary in China. Hudson Taylor was like his Master. Only in so far
as the service of any of us Christians is after the example of our Lord
is it real service.
In the study of “How Jesus Lived the Victorious Life,” it was seen that
Christ emptied himself in order that he might live as a man and open
the way for his brethren to win the victory _in the same way that he
won it_. Jesus lived down here as God intended a man should live――in
utter, moment by moment, dependence upon Another, and in the last study
it was pointed out that our Victory motto must be the motto that Jesus
lived by: “I will put my trust in _Him_.” It is our purpose now to view
this truth in particular relation to the service of a Christian, and
to examine more closely the meaning of Christ’s “emptying” that we may
know wherein he was our example in service.
It is not primarily the acts in the life of Jesus that furnish us our
example in service. Many of the recorded activities of Christ, the
things he did and the things he said, are by their very nature,――their
uniqueness,――deeds and words that we cannot imitate. It is the mind of
Christ we are to have. Then shall we have the secret of the spirit and
the power of his service.
The great passage in the second chapter of Philippians on the
humiliation of our Lord deals with profound mysteries of the eternal
world, yet it touches in the most vital way the everyday life and
service of the Christian. It concerns the sending of Christ Jesus out
of Glory with the Father into the world of men and sin. How startling,
then, that our Lord should take such a sublime event, which goes too
deep for utterance, and bring it to our very doorsteps, when he says:
“As the Father hath sent me into the world even so send I you into the
world.”
“Have this mind in you which was also in Christ Jesus,” the Apostle
enjoins. What is “this mind”? How are we to have it? Paul goes on to
describe it: “Who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being
on an equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself,
taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and
being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient
unto death, yea, the death of the cross” (Phil. 2:5-8).