Servitude and likeness to Christ belong together and strengthen each other. Union with Christ leads to servanthood. But servanthood also leads to a deeper union with Christ

I experienced this myself in Franeker with the Christmas meals in “De Voorhof,” our church building. In 2006, we held a Micah project in Franeker, in line with the Micah Challenge,  which is committed to justice. We also decided to do something concrete, and chose to organize a meal in our church building on Boxing Day, intended for anyone who feels like having a Christmas dinner at Christmas but is home alone, or for those who have no money for a Christmas dinner. Last year, we organized our seventh edition. We receive around twenty to thirty-five guests each year, most of whom would otherwise never come to our church.

For the first year, I enjoyed serving food myself. Words like service, love, and hospitality suddenly take on more meaning. The great thing is that both young people (teenagers) and older people are involved. Organising such a Christmas meal together is a wonderful way to get enthusiastic about the church. After all, this is church, this is Christmas: together welcoming people and helping them celebrate. Every year it makes everyone happy: our guests, but also all the older and younger church members who help make it a success.

Crockery⤒🔗

In recent years, we have also consistently adopted a table. Adopting a table means that for a table with around eight seats, you provide the plates, glasses, cutlery and dishes. You set the table and get your possessions back after the Christmas meal, but unwashed. Now, we have an old dinner service that belonged to my grandparents. The first few times we adopted a table, we naturally did not give that crockery: Imagine something breaking! After a few times, however, we decided to make that beautiful, old crockery available. If something is allowed to break somewhere, the Christmas meal is the right place. Hospitality may cost something. After all, God’s hospitality also cost him something.

Two-way traffic←⤒🔗

This example shows that spirituality (your life in communion with Christ) and servitude reinforce each other in two ways. Those who want to be conformed to Christ cannot avoid being servants, but the opposite is also true: that your spiritual life deepens by practising service. Service opens your eyes in a new way to what Jesus Christ has done for us and to how God in his love has served us. Being engaged together strengthens community and commitment. So there is a two-way street: connection with Christ leads to service, and service deepens your connection with Christ. I want to elaborate on both aspects in this article.

Christlikeness←⤒🔗

I’ll start with the first movement: connection with Christ leads to servitude. This connection with Christ is, in my opinion, the core of Christian spirituality. The result of that connection is Christlikeness: our becoming more and more like him.

What typifies Jesus? If you read the story of the foot washing (John 13), demonstrating servant love to the extreme is typical of Jesus. Washing his disciples’ feet is only a small example of this, because Jesus’ servant love goes further, to the extreme: He gives his life for his friends (John 15:13; 1 John 3:16).

To clothe yourself with Jesus (Romans 13:14) means putting on servitude, and getting the attitude of Jesus (Philippians 2:5) means acquiring a service-minded disposition . Those who belong to Jesus live by Jesus’ servant love. To belong to Jesus and to follow Jesus means to follow Jesus in servant love. Commitment to justice and the diaconate are therefore intrinsic to following Jesus.

Loving one’s neighbour in a servitude way can sometimes be very satisfying, but at other times it is a matter of perseverance. People who need help do not always respond kindly and sometimes have their lives decidedly out of order. Often they have structural problems that you can’t just simply remove, or people make choices that go against what you would do. This can raise questions: does it make sense to help? Do I even want to help?

Especially when it comes to persevering, there is one aspect of being conformed to Christ that can help you: becoming conformed to Christ also means that you are going to share in his suffering.

Persevere←⤒🔗

What does that sharing in the sufferings of Christ have to do with persevering servitude? Paul writes often in his letters about becoming like Christ. Twice this involves suffering for the sake of others. For example, he writes to the Corinthians about his suffering: that death is at work in us, but life is at work in you (2 Corinthians 4:12). Something similar is found in Colossians 1:24. Paul writes there that for the benefit of the church he adds to the sufferings of Christ. Apparently, you can suffer for others and share in Christ’s suffering in that.

To suffer for others means that you want to reach your neighbour’s heart with the love of Christ, the love of God, and continue to do so when it brings you adversity and suffering. That is also what Jesus himself did: He wanted to reach our hearts with God’s love. He wanted our hearts to be open to God again. He continued to seek our hearts even when it brought him adversity and he was beaten, when we were irritating. Jesus’ love remained; it cost him his life. More can be said about the meaning of Jesus’ death, but what is important now is that in this way we too can suffer for others. For example, Paul had a deep desire that people would become aware of God’s love. In order to reach their hearts, he wanted to endure adversity and suffering. That is sharing in Christ’s suffering for others, as from the desire to make someone aware of God’s love, we can persevere when that someone is disappointing or irritating.

Encouraging←⤒🔗

It can encourage you when following Christ is disappointing: you come to someone whom you wish could have an eye for the love of Christ, and so you try to embody for that other person the love of Christ. But the way he or she responds hurts you.

Becoming conformed to Christ can then mean that you choose to go ahead anyway, because you would like that other person to be allowed to experience the love of God and hope that there will still be room for God’s love. After all, this is exactly what Jesus did for us: carrying on in the face of adversity, irritants, and verbal and physical aggression. He demonstrated it: enduring adversity and suffering in order to reach others with God’s love. We may follow him in this.

Being connected to Christ and wanting to become like him thus leads to servitude. Moreover, it helps you to persevere in it.

Deepening←⤒🔗

But the reverse also happens: servitude also deepens your connection to Christ. To go back to the beginning, we would not have provided my grandparents’ dinner service for a Christmas meal if we had not experienced previous Christmas meals, which had caused us to rethink hospitality, what hospitality may cost and what it cost God. Commitment to service thus deepened. In the remainder of this article, I would like to elaborate on that based on the following two questions: how does this deepening take place, and in what sense does deepening occur?

True love←⤒🔗

In answer to the first question, deepening occurs first of all through putting faith into practice. You can think and talk about faith, but putting it into practice deepens faith, just as a Bible story you read comes to you differently than when it is played out in a biblical drama. Because there is a difference between theoretical learning and a practical exercise, by actually doing something, you discover new things.

But there is more. To practice servitude is to love in deed. This is what John writes about (1 John 4:12): "But if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”  By actually practising love, God abides in us. He who loves with deed remains close to God, is closely connected to him. At the same time, God’s love is fully realized in us. God’s love is invisible to many people until it becomes visible in how people treat each other. People who love one another make God’s love a concrete experience and tangible. Moreover, God wants to pass on his love to others through us, and this can only become a reality when we actually demonstrate love. Our actions make God’s love more of a reality in us, for others, but also for ourselves. So our actions therefore add something: the realization of God’s love. God’s love does not remain a story or a possibility, but is actually realized. Therefore, it is not surprising that deepening takes place: by doing, we can learn and discover in a different way than just by thinking and talking; and by doing, God’s love becomes truly a reality in us.

Amazement←⤒🔗

The second question was: in what sense does deepening take place? Servitude deepens communion with Christ in at least three ways.

First, an understanding of God’s love and God’s kingdom grows. As we join God and God’s love takes visible shape in us, we begin to better understand what God’s love means. God’s love is love that cost something. It is not just broken dishes, or someone getting injured. There is Someone who gave his life - for us. And when I resemble the one who is sometimes so tiresome or irritating that I no longer want to help, or someone whose life is not in order and who raises the question “Is there any point in helping here?,” then, when I notice how difficult it is then to persevere in loving, I get more respect for God who has reached out to us. God did persevere with us and did not give up when things became difficult. God, in Christ, took the blows himself. Amazing...

By the way, the term “insight” falls short here. More appropriate are amazement and joy: Oh, this is church! God’s kingdom is like a Christmas meal with people from all over. That is enjoyment! That is something beautiful to look back on, but above all to long for. Suddenly the penny drops, with young and old: But if God is like this, so hospitable, generous and subservient, then I want that too. Because that is beautiful!

Growth←⤒🔗

Secondly, there is deepening through growth in conformity to Christ. Putting on Christ is something that can only happen through action. After all, putting on Christ also means acting the same as he did. Whoever does like Christ becomes more like Christ. His mentality, his character, his disposition become flesh and blood in me.

As well the Holy Spirit’s work, the disposition of Christ also grows in us by doing like Christ.

Those who see this have great motivation to participate in diaconal projects themselves and to motivate others to do so.

Commitment to others through a meal project or by sprucing up someone’s home, including dirty cleaning work, is a spiritual exercise. Perseverance and wanting to share in Christ’s suffering in order to reach someone’s heart with God’s love is an exercise in godliness. Through this training, you are moulded, and Christ takes shape in you.

Collectiveness←⤒🔗

Thirdly, a collectiveness emerges. You notice this when you organize a meal together. It brings people together when many church members contribute by bringing food, donating money, adopting a table, serving or working in the kitchen. Together you enjoy going for the same thing. You enjoy beautiful moments together, that you can look back on with pleasure. You also enjoy each other.

Experiencing enjoyment together unites, and in a double sense: not only between the followers of Jesus among themselves, but also between us and Jesus himself. For Jesus himself is there: "I no longer live, but Christ lives in me" (Galatians 2:20). Christ is the source of life in us and he grows in us to become visible in us. That means that we enjoy together with Jesus. We enjoy going for the same goal, with beautiful moments that you can look back on with pleasure. You may even say that we and Jesus enjoy each other. That is a wonderful extra dimension.

But also remember Jesus’ words in Matthew 25: "For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me” Jesus also lives in that person. If you do this for Jesus, you are helping Jesus himself. It is he who, in that person, needs your help. You will find out (Matthew 25:34-36): He looks back on it with joy!