7-23. Sacrificial Service
“I endure all things for the elect’s sake” (2 Tim. 2:10).
Our Father’s mercy is all-encompassing. It includes our salvation—” . . . according to His mercy He saved us” (Titus 3:5); and our service—” . . . by the mercies of God, present your bodies a living sacrifice. . . which is your reasonable service” (Rom. 12:1).
Reasonable service is based upon sacrifice: “I, Paul. . . rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for His body’s sake, which is the church” (Col. 1:23, 24).
“To truly minister to others is always to accept new happiness and new distress, both of them forever deepening and entering into closer and more inseparable union with each other, the more profound and spiritual the ministry becomes. The one who gives himself to others can never be a wholly sad person; but no more can he be one of unclouded gladness.” -G.M.
“The fuller the service, the greater the surrender and sacrifice. It is not giving what one can spare without feeling it, for I will not offer the Lord ‘that which doth cost me nothing’ (2 Sam. 24:24).
“The service declares its virtue and aim by the suffering which is endured in rendering it, for what can be done at one’s ease is generally done without much concern for the one to whom it is rendered, and thus the true quality is lost.”
“I will very gladly spend and be spent for you; though the more abundantly I love you, the less I be loved” (2 Cor. 12:15).