To Love is to Serve; To Serve is to Love
The world operates in two realities simultaneously: there is the natural world around us, which can be measured and described with our physical senses and perceived through our mind and emotions. Then there is the supernatural world which is encountered through our spirits for those “who have eyes to see and ears to hear”; and through power encounters with God like the ones described throughout the New Testament.
In this supernatural realm, also called the ‘unseen real’, life is lived according to one overarching principle: the kingdom. There are only two kingdoms: the kingdom of the world (aka the kingdom of self) and the Kingdom of God. Every human being, with no exceptions, lives in one of these kingdoms. There is no in-between and you cannot have dual citizenship.
Kingdoms usually have a king. In the Kingdom of God, it is simple: The King is God. The kingdom of the world does not have a king because there is only one King. But the kingdom of the world does have a ruler: satan (1 John 5: 19; John 12: 31; 14: 30; 16:11; 2 Corinthians 4).
Satan manipulates us through deception. He allows us to believe that we are free when we choose to find our ultimate value in self in the myriad ways and things of the world. In the end, this life puts an intolerable burden on human beings – a burden heavy enough to crush even the most indomitable spirit. Freedom is not found in the kingdom of the world – life in this kingdom is always slavery to sin and to the demonic powers that inhabit this kingdom. It is a life of darkness, sadness, futility, emptiness, and endless striving. Paul calls this kingdom “the dominion of darkness.”
God’s Kingdom is the Kingdom of light because “God is light; in Him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1: 5 NIV). Wherever the King goes there will be light. And wherever the King is, there is His Kingdom. I have heard the Kingdom of God defined as “the Presence of the King”. When we are in the presence of the King, we are in the light. But it is still a Kingdom and God is the King. That means when we live in the Kingdom of God, we are subject to the commands of the King. We are His servant.
So, whether we live in the kingdom of the world or the Kingdom of God, we are servants. We will either serve the one who came to “steal, kill, and destroy” or we will serve the one who died on the cross so that we can be set free “from the dominion of darkness”.
The service demanded of the servant in the kingdom of the world is very different from the service God calls us to in the Kingdom of God – in other words, although we are servants in both places our roles and responsibilities are very different. In fact, diametrically opposed.
In the kingdom of the world, satan’s role for his servants is to align themselves with his malign and malignant power, to become carriers of his hatred, anger, destruction, and death. Throughout human history we see satan’s fingerprints and his ‘agenda’ being carried out bygroups or individuals. In the 20th Century Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Pol Pot are some notable individuals who collectively killed 100s of millions of people. Mobs have been used by satan to steal, kill, and destroy. For example, in the French Revolution where hundreds of innocents met Madame Guillotine or the Russian Revolution where hundreds of thousands were executed by firing squads or died in the gulags, often because they were ‘privileged’. Even religion is being used by satan to spread death and destruction.
Satan also works through philosophies like Marxism, Wicca, and various ‘denominations’ of satanism and witchcraft.
The outcome of all of these historical events and philosophies is always the same – death, destruction, and chaos. No matter what the dictators, philosophers, or mobs proclaim, for example freedom for the oppressed or justice – the ends, which they usually claim justify the means, are always death for everyone, including those who serve satan the most faithfully.
But most people are not monsters. Most people see themselves as good – they would never intentionally hurt another person. The deception runs deep. Anyone who looks for their ultimate value in the ways and things of the world, in self or their flesh, releases evil into the world in one form or another. The evil might manifest itself in gossip, hatred of someone who got what you wanted, anger that you release over your family, shame, unforgiveness, the destruction of someone’s career or life, deceit or manipulation, or a thousand other ways that human beings attempt to gain ascendency or control over each other. Sin, even the sin done in private, is darkness that in some way impacts the world beyond each of us.
“Do not love the world or anything in the world . . . For everything in the world – the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does – comes not from the Father but from the world” (1 John 2: 15, 16 NIV), that is, from satan.
The end result of aligning our lives with the ruler of this world is always more hate, more brokenness, more loneliness, more death. It is never good. We see this in American today – more hatred, more anger, and even more death as states like New York pass laws allowing babies to be killed in their mother’s womb up to full term, and rampant drug addiction claims many thousands of lives — as more and more people turn to the kingdom of the world to find their ultimate value and away from God.
Every inhabitant of the kingdom of the world is a servant, even a slave. But if you called them that they will reject that label. “Live free of die”, some say. Some might oppose you violently. Deception, especially self-deception, is satan’s most powerful tool masking his purpose to destroy God’s creation.
The Kingdom of God is different. God is love. His Kingdom brings life, not death, to His subjects. In fact, God’s son, Jesus, died on the cross to defeat the power of satan, sin, and death. But it is true that in God’s Kingdom we are called servants and even slaves. But we are also called children of God. “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called the children of God! And that is what we are!”
Obviously, while Jesus calls us to be servants, even slaves, of all we are not servants and slaves in the sense of the world. God’s Kingdom has one fundamental, eternal principle: love. In His Kingdom we are enabled by the indwelling Holy Spirit to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength; we are called to love our neighbors as ourselves, even to love our enemies. And this love is not as the world loves – God’s Kingdom love is unrequited, selfless, and unconditional. It is covenant love; not contract love. It is love based on a decision, not based on an agreement.
We are called to be servants – Paul calls us to” serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in one command: Love your neighbor as yourself” (Galatians 5: 13, 14 NIV). This is Jesus’ call to servanthood. We do not serve out of obligation or under compulsion. We serve out of love. We serve out of a deep sense of who we are – His valuable and beloved children. And ironically, this servanthood is the only path to true freedom, joy, and peace. Where there is true love, there will be true joy and peace. “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free” (Galatians 5: 1) – free from slavery and servitude in the world, free to love and be loved. Blessed to be called servant of Christ.
The contrast between the kingdom of the world and the Kingdom of God cannot be greater – good vs evil, light vs darkness, death vs life. Satan deceives us – he gets us to call good evil and evil good, so that we can live in the darkness believing that the darkness is light. But God is light. Darkness is simply the absence of light. Light chases away the darkness; darkness cannot overcome the light. And where the light of God shines, there you will find love.
“Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness. Whoever loves his brother lives in the light and there is nothing in him to make him stumble. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in darkness; he does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded him” (1 John 2: 9 – 11 NIV).
“This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. Why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous . . . We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death . . . This is how we know what love is: Christ laid down His life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers . . . Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth” (1 John 3: 11 – 12; 14; 16 – 18 NIV).
We all live in an unseen reality – the supernatural world of power where darkness and light are continually at war; where the powers and principalities of the kingdom of the world are battling the angelic hosts commanded by God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And even though Jesus won the battle on the cross, the war rages on. All of us are aligned with one side or the other, whether we know it or not. Moses puts it well:
“This day I call heaven and earth (the two kingdoms) against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord you God, listen to His voice, and hold fast to Him. For the Lord is your life” (Deuteronomy 30: 19, 20 NIV).
Choose life, not death; blessings, not curses; light, not darkness; choose love, not hatred. Choose Jesus – His burden is light and His yoke is easy. To love is to serve. And to serve, we must surrender to Jesus. In the Holy Spirit, pick up your cross, die to self, and follow Him.
Love,
John