We Believe In Jesus: The PriestExemplo

Responding to Christ with Service: 1 John 3:16

The Bible teaches that Jesus’ sacrifice on our behalf should inspire us to serve him faithfully. Throughout Romans 6, Paul made it clear that because Jesus died to save us, we are obligated to love and to obey him. He died to give us new life — life that is free from the mastery of sin. And one way we should express our thanks for this salvation is to fight against sin in our lives, to refuse to submit ourselves to it again. As Paul wrote in Romans 6:2-4:

We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? … We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life (Romans 6:2-4).

Jesus died in part so that we could be free from sin’s mastery. And the only appropriate response to that sacrifice is to live in ways that please him.

Scripture also mentions many other ways that we can serve Christ in light of his sacrifice. Obviously, we should follow the example of Christ by being willing to suffer and even to die for his purposes. In fact, passages like Acts 5:41 and Philippians 1:29 indicate that it’s a great honor and blessing when we suffer for the sake of Christ.

And the Bible also encourages us to serve Christ by sacrificing ourselves for the same people that Jesus died to save. It teaches us to be patient and compassionate with each other in Ephesians 4:32–5:2. It instructs us to give up our freedoms for the sake of those who are weaker in faith in Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8. And it even commands us to lay down our lives, just as Christ did, for the sake of other believers. As John wrote in 1 John 3:16:

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers (1 John 3:16).

Jesus’ once-for-all-time sacrifice of atonement on the cross was completely sufficient for its intended purpose, namely, taking on himself God’s just punishment for sins. We could never atone for ourselves, let alone for another human being. But we can follow Jesus’ example by laying down our lives for the sake of others. 

And if we should be willing to die for them, then we should also be willing to make lesser sacrifices for them, parting with our time, our money, our comfort, and our possessions in order to serve them. 

It’s easy to talk about how important it is to love others, and to sacrifice for them. But sometimes it’s hard for us to follow through with these ideas. To love people well, we have to sacrifice things we often hold very dear to us — our time, our finances, and our comfort. These are just a few of the sacrifices necessary to love others. It’s so difficult for us to value the kingdom of God and his righteousness, more than our own comforts. But when we don’t, we miss out on one important truth: we gain more in offering these sacrifices than the sacrifices themselves. We gain the opportunity to worship God and see his reign extend in this world by the way we give of our lives for the sake of others.