This post is from Moms Take Ten episode 136, “Love Day–Christ’s Love for Us, which you can listen to wherever you listen to podcasts or at https://sites.libsyn.com/403493/love-day-christs-love-for-us
Valentine’s Day is this week. Last year, we had a fun episode hearing what kids think about love. The year before that, my husband and I did an episode together. This year, I’ve been thinking about Christ’s love for us and the examples that he sets before us for how to live out that love. There’s one story in particular that I was struck by recently.
I don’t know about you, but the new year started out a bit rough for me. I got sick on New Year’s Day which is not how I planned to finish out our winter break. I had wanted us to go rock climbing and maybe to a trampoline park. I had visions of fun family time playing board games and watching movies while eating too many cookies. My kids did an amazing job managing themselves with me in bed and Jonathan at work. And yet, I had a number of thoughts that sound like this: Why are they yelling? Don’t they know I have a headache. I can’t believe they are waking me up to ask for that! You made me come all the way down here because of your behavior when you know it hurts to walk.
Not very gracious of me, I know. As though just because I’m sick my kids are supposed to suddenly stop being who they are.
Unfortunately, I have been known to have thoughts like that on healthy days as well. I get exasperated by their needs. I get overwhelmed by the constant questions and demands. I think more highly of my wants over theirs. I am, well, selfish.
An Advent devotional that I finally finish mid-January led me to John 13. Let’s read it now…
Before the Passover Festival, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. Now when it was time for supper, the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas, Simon Iscariot’s son, to betray him. Jesus knew that the Father had given everything into his hands, that he had come from God, and that he was going back to God. So he got up from supper, laid aside his outer clothing, took a towel, and tied it around himself. Next, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet and to dry them with the towel tied around him. He came to Simon Peter, who asked him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” Jesus answered him, “What I’m doing you don’t realize now, but afterward you will understand. You will never wash my feet,” Peter said. Jesus replied, “If I don’t wash you, you have no part with me.” Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not only my feet, but also my hands and my head.” “One who has bathed,” Jesus told him, “doesn’t need to wash anything except his feet, but he is completely clean. You are clean, but not all of you.” For he knew who would betray him. This is why he said, “Not all of you are clean.”
When Jesus had washed their feet and put on his outer clothing, he reclined again and said to them, “Do you know what I have done for you? You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are speaking rightly, since that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done for you. Truly I tell you, a servant is not greater than his master, and a messenger is not greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.” (John 13:1-17)
If anyone has a right to be served, it is Jesus. This passage talks about how Jesus was fully aware of who he was, of the authority he had, and because of that knowledge, he bent down to serve his disciples. They should have been the ones washing his feet. Yet not one of them offered to do the job. Too gross. Too lowly. Peter expresses what all the disciples must have been thinking when he says, “Are you going to wash my feet?” Like, surely this can’t be happening. What are you doing?! Get up! This is beneath you. And uncomfortable for me.
But this is the example that Jesus had continually set before his disciples. Matthew and Mark both record the conversation between Jesus and his disciples James and John, who were seeking some pretty prominent positions for themselves, where he tells them that their lives were to be ones of service just like his. “…the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve…” he said. Now, in the upper room, they still weren’t getting it. Not even after witnessing his many hours spent giving of his time and energy so that people would be healed and fed and taught and loved. So he got down low and washed the filthy feet of his disciples to show them the kind of life they were to live.
That’s the kind of life we are to live, a life of servant love, and motherhood makes that even more apparent. Because we have these little, or not so little, people in our home who constantly ask for, and have need of, us. Opportunity after opportunity after opportunity presents itself for us to lower ourselves to wash their feet. The physical acts of cooking, cleaning, comforting, teaching, correcting, and all else we do as moms are to represent a heart posture before our King Jesus and towards his beloved children that delights in serving them rather than condescends to do so.
This applies even in moments of discipline. Recently, a mom shared with me what was taught in a parenting class at her church. The gist being that a parent should not lower their body down to their child’s level when correcting them. We are, they said, not on the same level and to bring ourselves down strips away our authority.
That teaching stands in such opposition to what we see of Christ throughout the entirety of Scripture, including the story we’ve been discussing. He physically lowered himself, not just to the disciples level but even lower, to their feet. And the Scriptures say that he did that knowing the authority he had.
This brings to mind another powerful example from the life of Christ, when a woman was brought before him, having been “caught”, trapped more like it, in the act of adultery. Jesus knelt down in the midst of all the angry, indignant, self-righteous men who were ready to stone the woman. Standing would have kept him on the same level as all the men, but he lowered himself down, to where she was. By the end, it was absolutely clear who had the authority, the command, in that situation and it was him. Not for one minute was his authority lost. He knew who he was, he knew what he was about, and he didn’t need to tower over, to lord over, for that to be true. (See John 8:2-11)
That doesn’t mean that this kind of love doesn’t cost anything. It does. It costs our pride. It costs our time and our energy. It might cost how others view us if they don’t agree with what serving our family should look like. It might cost our preferences and our desires. That can be a hard thing for me to accept. Sometimes I don’t want to pay the price. Sometimes it feels to high. As I sit in this story, in the Scriptures, I am reminded of something that moves me to servant love.
Jesus himself paid that cost. He served us in the ultimate way on the cross and continues to serve us today. He actually delights to do so. Dane Ortlund, in the book Gentle and Lowly, shares this excerpt from a sermon by Jonathan Edwards. “There is no love so great and so wonderful as that which is in the heart of Christ. He is one that delights in mercy; he is ready to pity those that are in suffering and sorrowful circumstances; one that delights in the happiness of his creatures. The love and grace that Christ has manifested does as much exceed all that which is in this world as the sun is brighter than a candle. Parents are often full of kindness towards their children, but that is no kindness like Jesus Christ’s.”
Daily Christ meets us with his servant love. He knows that unless he provides, we do not have. Unless he sustains, we cannot continue. Unless he empowers, we fail. Unless he saves, we are lost. Unless he comes down to us, we cannot reach him. So he does. David Platt puts it like this, “It’s not just to the point of our salvation. In fact, it’s every single day in our salvation.” He continues, “I’m here in this world this morning as I’m thinking about all the needs in my life, and Jesus is saying, “I’m gonna wait on you. I’m gonna serve you. I’m gonna provide you with the wisdom you need. And I’m gonna provide you with the strength you’re gonna need in your weakness. I’m gonna enable you to resist temptation in this way or that way.” (https://radical.net/podcasts/pray-the-word/jesus-came-to-serve-us-matthew-2028/)
Be encouraged by this–When we are feeling weary in our mothering, in our serving, in our loving, we can hold onto the incredible truth that as we are pouring of ourselves onto our children, Christ is pouring of himself unto us. May you not only know that Jesus loves you, but may you feel it today.
Lyssa Stoyko 