service

• nature of service › divinity correlated in personality as ministry

0:1.17Di­vin­ity is crea­ture com­pre­hen­si­ble as truth, beauty, and good­ness; cor­re­lated in per­son­al­ity as love, mercy, and min­istry; dis­closed on im­per­sonal lev­els as jus­tice, power, and sov­er­eignty.

• Jesus › came as one who served

5:4.7The Zoroas­tri­ans had a re­li­gion of morals; the Hin­dus a re­li­gion of meta­physics; the Con­fu­cian­ists a re­li­gion of ethics. Je­sus lived a re­li­gion of ser­vice. All these re­li­gions are of value in that they are valid ap­proaches to the re­li­gion of Je­sus. Re­li­gion is des­tined to be­come the re­al­ity of the spir­i­tual uni­fi­ca­tion of all that is good, beau­ti­ful, and true in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence.

• motivations for service › moral thinking and religious living

5:5.4Moral con­duct is al­ways an an­te­ced­ent of evolved re­li­gion and a part of even re­vealed re­li­gion, but never the whole of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. So­cial ser­vice is the re­sult of moral think­ing and re­li­gious liv­ing. Moral­ity does not bi­o­log­i­cally lead to the higher spir­i­tual lev­els of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. The ado­ra­tion of the ab­stract beau­ti­ful is not the wor­ship of God; nei­ther is ex­al­ta­tion of na­ture nor the rev­er­ence of unity the wor­ship of God.

• Infinite Spirit is ministry

8:4.2God is love, the Son is mercy, the Spirit is min­istry—the min­istry of di­vine love and end­less mercy to all in­tel­li­gent cre­ation. The Spirit is the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of the Fa­ther’s love and the Son’s mercy; in him are they eter­nally united for uni­ver­sal ser­vice. The Spirit is love ap­plied to the crea­ture cre­ation, the com­bined love of the Fa­ther and the Son.

• result of service › satisfaction of more replete function where need is greater

23:2.17There is no lim­i­ta­tion upon the ser­vice of Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers in the super­uni­verses; they may func­tion as ex­e­cu­tion­ers of the high tri­bu­nals or as in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ers for the good of the realm. Of all the super­cre­ations they most de­light to serve in Or­von­ton be­cause here the need is great­est and the op­por­tu­ni­ties for heroic ef­fort are greatly mul­ti­plied. In the more needy realms we all en­joy the sat­is­fac­tion of a more re­plete func­tion.

• all s. sacred and exhilarating in spiritual world

25:1.1Though de­nom­i­nated servi­tals, these “mid­way crea­tures” of the cen­tral uni­verse are not ser­vants in any me­nial sense of the word. In the spir­i­tual world there is no such thing as me­nial work; all ser­vice is sa­cred and ex­hil­a­rat­ing; nei­ther do the higher or­ders of be­ings look down upon the lower or­ders of ex­is­tence.

• nature of service › yielding to one’s fellows of that received from one’s spiritual benefactors

25:4.12Those mor­tals and mid­way­ers who serve tran­siently with the ad­vis­ers are cho­sen for such work be­cause of their ex­pert­ness in the con­cept of uni­ver­sal law and su­preme jus­tice. As you jour­ney to­ward your Par­a­dise goal, con­stantly ac­quir­ing added knowl­edge and en­hanced skill, you are con­tin­u­ously af­forded the op­por­tu­nity to give out to oth­ers the wis­dom and ex­pe­ri­ence you have al­ready ac­cu­mu­lated; all the way in to Ha­vona you en­act the role of a pupil-teacher. You will work your way through the as­cend­ing lev­els of this vast ex­pe­ri­en­tial uni­ver­sity by im­part­ing to those just be­low you the new-found knowl­edge of your ad­vanc­ing ca­reer. In the uni­ver­sal regime you are not reck­oned as hav­ing pos­sessed your­self of knowl­edge and truth un­til you have demon­strated your abil­ity and your will­ing­ness to im­part this knowl­edge and truth to oth­ers.

• nature of service › few are the duties for the lone servant

28:5.14These are the an­gels who fos­ter and pro­mote the team­work of all Or­von­ton. One of the most im­por­tant lessons to be learned dur­ing your mor­tal ca­reer is team­work. The spheres of per­fec­tion are manned by those who have mas­tered this art of work­ing with other be­ings. Few are the du­ties in the uni­verse for the lone ser­vant. The higher you as­cend, the more lonely you be­come when tem­porar­ily with­out the as­so­ci­a­tion of your fel­lows.

• result of service › deferred rewards inherent in unselfish
• secoraphic Satisfactions of Service stimulate

28:5.176. The Sat­is­fac­tion of Ser­vice. These an­gels are highly re­flec­tive of the at­ti­tude of the di­rec­tors of con­duct on Par­a­dise, and func­tion­ing much as do the Joys of Ex­is­tence, they strive to en­hance the value of ser­vice and to aug­ment the sat­is­fac­tions to be de­rived there­from. They have done much to il­lu­mi­nate the de­ferred re­wards in­her­ent in un­selfish ser­vice, ser­vice for the ex­ten­sion of the king­dom of truth.

28:5.18The Di­vine Coun­selors, to whom this or­der is at­tached, uti­lize them to re­flect from one world to an­other the ben­e­fits to be de­rived from spir­i­tual ser­vice. And by us­ing the per­for­mances of the best to in­spire and en­cour­age the mediocre, these se­con­a­phim con­tribute im­mensely to the qual­ity of de­voted ser­vice in the super­uni­verses. Ef­fec­tive use is made of the fra­ter­nal com­pet­i­tive spirit by cir­cu­lat­ing to any one world in­for­ma­tion about what the oth­ers, par­tic­u­larly the best, are do­ing. A re­fresh­ing and whole­some ri­valry is pro­moted even among the se­raphic hosts.

• nature of service › only untrustworthiness prevents opportunity for

28:6.165. The Sanc­tity of Ser­vice. The priv­i­lege of ser­vice im­me­di­ately fol­lows the dis­cov­ery of trust­wor­thi­ness. Noth­ing can stand be­tween you and op­por­tu­nity for in­creased ser­vice ex­cept your own un­trust­wor­thi­ness, your lack of ca­pac­ity for ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the solem­nity of trust.

• nature of service › goal of time
• nature of service › play ever alternates with
• result of service › produces highest satisfaction

28:6.17Ser­vice—pur­pose­ful ser­vice, not slav­ery—is pro­duc­tive of the high­est sat­is­fac­tion and is ex­pres­sive of the di­vinest dig­nity. Ser­vice—more ser­vice, in­creased ser­vice, dif­fi­cult ser­vice, ad­ven­tur­ous ser­vice, and at last di­vine and per­fect ser­vice—is the goal of time and the des­ti­na­tion of space. But ever will the play cy­cles of time al­ter­nate with the ser­vice cy­cles of prog­ress. And af­ter the ser­vice of time there fol­lows the super­ser­vice of eter­nity. Dur­ing the play of time you should en­vi­sion the work of eter­nity, even as you will, dur­ing the ser­vice of eter­nity, rem­i­nisce the play of time.

• result of service › greatest is he who serves

28:6.18The uni­ver­sal econ­omy is based on in­take and out­put; through­out the eter­nal ca­reer you will never en­counter mo­not­ony of in­ac­tion or stag­na­tion of per­son­al­ity. Prog­ress is made pos­si­ble by in­her­ent mo­tion, ad­vance­ment grows out of the di­vine ca­pac­ity for ac­tion, and achieve­ment is the child of imag­i­na­tive ad­ven­ture. But in­her­ent in this ca­pac­ity for achieve­ment is the re­spon­si­bil­ity of ethics, the ne­ces­sity for rec­og­niz­ing that the world and the uni­verse are filled with a mul­ti­tude of dif­fer­ing types of be­ings. All of this mag­nif­i­cent cre­ation, in­clud­ing your­self, was not made just for you. This is not an ego­cen­tric uni­verse. The Gods have de­creed, “It is more blessed to give than to re­ceive,” and said your Mas­ter Son, “He who would be great­est among you let him be server of all.”

• nature of service › particularly for worthy beings in need and distress

28:6.206 and 7. The Se­cret of Great­ness and the Soul of Good­ness. The as­cend­ing pil­grims hav­ing awak­ened to the im­port of time, the way is pre­pared for the re­al­iza­tion of the solem­nity of trust and for the ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the sanc­tity of ser­vice. While these are the moral el­e­ments of great­ness, there are also se­crets of great­ness. When the spir­i­tual tests of great­ness are ap­plied, the moral el­e­ments are not dis­re­garded, but the qual­ity of un­selfish­ness re­vealed in dis­in­ter­ested la­bor for the wel­fare of one’s earthly fel­lows, par­tic­u­larly wor­thy be­ings in need and in dis­tress, that is the real mea­sure of plan­e­tary great­ness. And the man­i­fes­ta­tion of great­ness on a world like Uran­tia is the ex­hi­bi­tion of self-con­trol. The great man is not he who “takes a city” or “over­throws a na­tion,” but rather “he who sub­dues his own tongue.”

• nature of service › yielding to one’s fellows of that received from one’s spiritual benefactors

30:3.9The en­tire as­cen­dant plan of mor­tal pro­gres­sion is char­ac­ter­ized by the prac­tice of giv­ing out to other be­ings new truth and ex­pe­ri­ence just as soon as ac­quired. You work your way through the long school of Par­a­dise at­tain­ment by serv­ing as teach­ers to those pupils just be­hind you in the scale of pro­gres­sion.

• nature of service › yielding to one’s fellows of that received from one’s spiritual benefactors

30:4.23There are three or­ders of stu­dent spir­its in ac­cor­dance with their so­journ upon the mi­nor sec­tor, ma­jor sec­tors, and the super­uni­verse head­quar­ters worlds of spirit pro­gres­sion. As mor­ontia as­cend­ers stud­ied and worked on the worlds of the lo­cal uni­verse, so spirit as­cend­ers con­tinue to mas­ter new worlds while they prac­tice at giv­ing out to oth­ers that which they have im­bibed at the ex­pe­ri­en­tial founts of wis­dom. But go­ing to school as a spirit be­ing in the super­uni­verse ca­reer is very un­like any­thing that has ever en­tered the imag­i­na­tive realms of the ma­te­rial mind of man.

• nature of service › God understands every creature’s need for function

32:4.2God has full un­der­stand­ing of the need of ev­ery in­tel­li­gent crea­ture for func­tion and ex­pe­ri­ence, and there­fore, in ev­ery sit­u­a­tion, be it con­cerned with the des­tiny of a uni­verse or the wel­fare of the hum­blest of his crea­tures, God re­tires from ac­tiv­ity in fa­vor of the galaxy of crea­ture and Cre­ator per­son­al­i­ties who in­her­ently in­ter­vene be­tween him­self and any given uni­verse sit­u­a­tion or cre­ative event. But not­with­stand­ing this re­tire­ment, this ex­hi­bi­tion of in­fi­nite co-or­di­na­tion, there is on God’s part an ac­tual, lit­eral, and per­sonal par­tic­i­pa­tion in these events by and through these or­dained agen­cies and per­son­al­i­ties. The Fa­ther is work­ing in and through all these chan­nels for the wel­fare of all his far-flung cre­ation.

• result of service › faith sons enjoy deliverance from flesh in service

34:7.6Not­with­stand­ing this dou­ble dis­as­ter to man’s na­ture and his en­vi­ron­ment, pres­ent-day mor­tals would ex­pe­ri­ence less of this ap­par­ent war­fare be­tween the flesh and the spirit if they would en­ter the spirit king­dom, wherein the faith sons of God en­joy com­par­a­tive de­liv­er­ance from the slave-bond­age of the flesh in the en­light­ened and lib­er­at­ing ser­vice of whole­hearted de­vo­tion to do­ing the will of the Fa­ther in heaven. Je­sus showed man­kind the new way of mor­tal liv­ing whereby hu­man be­ings may very largely es­cape the dire con­se­quences of the Cali­gas­tic re­bel­lion and most ef­fec­tively com­pen­sate for the de­pri­va­tions re­sult­ing from the Adamic de­fault. “The spirit of the life of Christ Je­sus has made us free from the law of an­i­mal liv­ing and the temp­ta­tions of evil and sin.” “This is the vic­tory that over­comes the flesh, even your faith.”

• nature of service › yielding to one’s fellows of that received from one’s spiritual benefactors

35:4.1A highly spe­cial­ized branch of Mel­chiz­e­dek ac­tiv­i­ties has to do with the super­vi­sion of the pro­gres­sive mor­ontia ca­reer of the as­cend­ing mor­tals. Much of this train­ing is con­ducted by the pa­tient and wise se­raphic min­is­ters, as­sisted by mor­tals who have as­cended to rel­a­tively higher lev­els of uni­verse at­tain­ment, but all of this ed­u­ca­tional work is un­der the gen­eral super­vi­sion of the Mel­chiz­e­deks in as­so­ci­a­tion with the Trin­ity Teacher Sons.

• nature of service › universe station and status provide opportunity for

37:6.3The meth­ods em­ployed in many of the higher schools are be­yond the hu­man con­cept of the art of teach­ing truth, but this is the keynote of the whole ed­u­ca­tional sys­tem: char­ac­ter ac­quired by en­light­ened ex­pe­ri­ence. The teach­ers pro­vide the en­light­en­ment; the uni­verse sta­tion and the as­cender’s sta­tus af­ford the op­por­tu­nity for ex­pe­ri­ence; the wise uti­liza­tion of these two aug­ments char­ac­ter.

• nature of service › assignment of definite tasks with qualified teachers as to best methods to employ

37:6.4Fun­da­men­tally, the Neb­a­don ed­u­ca­tional sys­tem pro­vides for your as­sign­ment to a task and then af­fords you op­por­tu­nity to re­ceive in­struc­tion as to the ideal and di­vine method of best per­form­ing that task. You are given a def­i­nite task to per­form, and at the same time you are pro­vided with teach­ers who are qual­i­fied to in­struct you in the best method of ex­e­cut­ing your as­sign­ment. The di­vine plan of ed­u­ca­tion pro­vides for the in­ti­mate as­so­ci­a­tion of work and in­struc­tion. We teach you how best to ex­e­cute the things we com­mand you to do.

• nature of service › yielding to one’s fellows of that received from one’s spiritual benefactors

37:10.5Al­ways there is at­tached to the uni­verse ser­vice a corps of as­cend­ing mor­tals, in­clud­ing the glo­ri­fied mid­way crea­tures. These as­cend­ers, af­ter at­tain­ing Sal­ving­ton, are used in an al­most end­less va­ri­ety of ac­tiv­i­ties in the con­duct of uni­verse af­fairs. From each level of achieve­ment these ad­vanc­ing mor­tals reach back and down to ex­tend a help­ing hand to their fel­lows who fol­low them in the up­ward climb. Such mor­tals of tem­po­rary so­journ on Sal­ving­ton are as­signed on req­ui­si­tion to prac­ti­cally all corps of ce­les­tial per­son­al­i­ties as helpers, stu­dents, ob­servers, and teach­ers.

• motivations for service › appreciating brotherhood, one could not take so much and give nothing

39:4.11What is loy­alty? It is the fruit of an in­tel­li­gent ap­pre­ci­a­tion of uni­verse broth­er­hood; one could not take so much and give noth­ing. As you as­cend the per­son­al­ity scale, first you learn to be loyal, then to love, then to be fil­ial, and then may you be free; but not un­til you are a fi­nal­i­ter, not un­til you have at­tained per­fec­tion of loy­alty, can you self-re­al­ize fi­nal­ity of lib­erty.

• angels delight in

48:6.347. Min­is­ter­ing Re­serves. A large corps of all or­ders of the tran­si­tion ser­a­phim is held on the first man­sion world. Next to the des­tiny guard­i­ans, these tran­si­tion min­is­ters draw the near­est to hu­mans of all or­ders of ser­a­phim, and many of your leisure mo­ments will be spent with them. An­gels take de­light in ser­vice and, when un­as­signed, of­ten min­is­ter as vol­un­teers. The soul of many an as­cend­ing mor­tal has for the first time been kin­dled by the di­vine fire of the will-to-ser­vice through per­sonal friend­ship with the vol­un­teer servers of the se­raphic re­serves.

• nothing equals importance of work of world in which we are living
• we can do important work if we are not self-important

48:6.37You will learn that you in­crease your bur­dens and de­crease the like­li­hood of suc­cess by tak­ing your­self too se­ri­ously. Noth­ing can take prece­dence over the work of your sta­tus sphere—this world or the next. Very im­por­tant is the work of prepa­ra­tion for the next higher sphere, but noth­ing equals the im­por­tance of the work of the world in which you are ac­tu­ally liv­ing. But though the work is im­por­tant, the self is not. When you feel im­por­tant, you lose en­ergy to the wear and tear of ego dig­nity so that there is lit­tle en­ergy left to do the work. Self-im­por­tance, not work-im­por­tance, ex­hausts im­ma­ture crea­tures; it is the self el­e­ment that ex­hausts, not the ef­fort to achieve. You can do im­por­tant work if you do not be­come self-im­por­tant; you can do sev­eral things as eas­ily as one if you leave your­self out. Va­ri­ety is rest­ful; mo­not­ony is what wears and ex­hausts. Day af­ter day is alike—just life or the al­ter­na­tive of death.

• ascension plan equips ascenders for transcendent s.

48:8.2There is a def­i­nite and di­vine pur­pose in all this mor­ontia and sub­se­quent spirit scheme of mor­tal pro­gres­sion, this elab­o­rate uni­verse train­ing school for as­cend­ing crea­tures. It is the de­sign of the Cre­ators to af­ford the crea­tures of time a grad­u­ated op­por­tu­nity to mas­ter the de­tails of the op­er­a­tion and ad­min­is­tra­tion of the grand uni­verse, and this long course of train­ing is best car­ried for­ward by hav­ing the sur­viv­ing mor­tal climb up grad­u­ally and by ac­tual par­tic­i­pa­tion in ev­ery step of the as­cent.

48:8.3The mor­tal-sur­vival plan has a prac­ti­cal and ser­vice­able ob­jec­tive; you are not the re­cip­i­ents of all this di­vine la­bor and painstak­ing train­ing only that you may sur­vive just to en­joy end­less bliss and eter­nal ease. There is a goal of tran­scen­dent ser­vice con­cealed be­yond the hori­zon of the pres­ent uni­verse age. If the Gods de­signed merely to take you on one long and eter­nal joy ex­cur­sion, they cer­tainly would not so largely turn the whole uni­verse into one vast and in­tri­cate prac­ti­cal train­ing school, req­ui­si­tion a sub­stan­tial part of the ce­les­tial cre­ation as teach­ers and in­struc­tors, and then spend ages upon ages pi­lot­ing you, one by one, through this gi­gan­tic uni­verse school of ex­pe­ri­en­tial train­ing. The fur­ther­ance of the scheme of mor­tal pro­gres­sion seems to be one of the chief busi­nesses of the pres­ent or­ga­nized uni­verse, and the ma­jor­ity of in­nu­mer­able or­ders of cre­ated in­tel­li­gences are ei­ther di­rectly or in­di­rectly en­gaged in ad­vanc­ing some phase of this pro­gres­sive per­fec­tion plan.

48:8.4In travers­ing the as­cend­ing scale of liv­ing ex­is­tence from mor­tal man to the De­ity em­brace, you ac­tu­ally live the very life of ev­ery pos­si­ble phase and stage of per­fected crea­ture ex­is­tence within the lim­its of the pres­ent uni­verse age. From mor­tal man to Par­a­dise fi­nal­i­ter em­braces all that now can be—en­com­passes ev­ery­thing pres­ently pos­si­ble to the liv­ing or­ders of in­tel­li­gent, per­fected fi­nite crea­ture be­ings. If the fu­ture des­tiny of the Par­a­dise fi­nal­i­ters is ser­vice in new uni­verses now in the mak­ing, it is as­sured that in this new and fu­ture cre­ation there will be no cre­ated or­ders of ex­pe­ri­en­tial be­ings whose lives will be wholly dif­fer­ent from those which mor­tal fi­nal­i­ters have lived on some world as a part of their as­cend­ing train­ing, as one of the stages of their age­long prog­ress from an­i­mal to an­gel and from an­gel to spirit and from spirit to God.

• nature of service › what God does for us, we do for the Supreme Being

56:8.3Bear in mind, all that God the Fa­ther and his Par­a­dise Sons do for us, we in turn and in spirit have the op­por­tu­nity to do for and in the emerg­ing Su­preme Be­ing. The ex­pe­ri­ence of love, joy, and ser­vice in the uni­verse is mu­tual. God the Fa­ther does not need that his sons should re­turn to him all that he be­stows upon them, but they do (or may) in turn be­stow all of this upon their fel­lows and upon the evolv­ing Su­preme Be­ing.

• result of service › greatest is he who serves

56:10.14Ev­ery im­pulse of ev­ery elec­tron, thought, or spirit is an act­ing unit in the whole uni­verse. Only sin is iso­lated and evil grav­ity re­sist­ing on the men­tal and spir­i­tual lev­els. The uni­verse is a whole; no thing or be­ing ex­ists or lives in iso­la­tion. Self-re­al­iza­tion is po­ten­tially evil if it is an­ti­so­cial. It is lit­er­ally true: “No man lives by him­self.” Cos­mic so­cial­iza­tion con­sti­tutes the high­est form of per­son­al­ity uni­fi­ca­tion. Said Je­sus: “He who would be great­est among you, let him be­come server of all.”

• obligation and privilege of s.

71:3.10The ide­als of state­hood must be at­tained by evo­lu­tion, by the slow growth of civic con­scious­ness, the rec­og­ni­tion of the obli­ga­tion and priv­i­lege of so­cial ser­vice. At first men as­sume the bur­dens of gov­ern­ment as a duty, fol­low­ing the end of the ad­min­is­tra­tion of po­lit­i­cal spoils­men, but later on they seek such min­istry as a priv­i­lege, as the great­est honor. The sta­tus of any level of civ­i­liza­tion is faith­fully por­trayed by the cal­iber of its cit­i­zens who vol­un­teer to ac­cept the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of state­hood.

• nature of service › compared to profit motivation

71:6.2In eco­nomics, profit mo­ti­va­tion is to ser­vice mo­ti­va­tion what fear is to love in re­li­gion. But the profit mo­tive must not be sud­denly de­stroyed or re­moved; it keeps many oth­er­wise sloth­ful mor­tals hard at work. It is not nec­es­sary, how­ever, that this so­cial en­ergy arouser be for­ever self­ish in its ob­jec­tives.

• result of service › Adjuster contact facilitated by wholehearted loving s.

91:7.1Mys­ti­cism, as the tech­nique of the cul­ti­va­tion of the con­scious­ness of the pres­ence of God, is al­to­gether praise­wor­thy, but when such prac­tices lead to so­cial iso­la­tion and cul­mi­nate in re­li­gious fa­nati­cism, they are all but rep­re­hen­si­ble. Al­to­gether too fre­quently that which the over­wrought mys­tic eval­u­ates as di­vine in­spi­ra­tion is the up­ris­ings of his own deep mind. The con­tact of the mor­tal mind with its in­dwelling Ad­juster, while of­ten fa­vored by de­voted med­i­ta­tion, is more fre­quently fa­cil­i­tated by whole­hearted and lov­ing ser­vice in un­selfish min­istry to one’s fel­low crea­tures.

91:7.2The great re­li­gious teach­ers and the proph­ets of past ages were not ex­treme mys­tics. They were God-know­ing men and women who best served their God by un­selfish min­istry to their fel­low mor­tals. Je­sus of­ten took his apos­tles away by them­selves for short pe­ri­ods to en­gage in med­i­ta­tion and prayer, but for the most part he kept them in ser­vice-con­tact with the mul­ti­tudes. The soul of man re­quires spir­i­tual ex­er­cise as well as spir­i­tual nour­ish­ment.

• Jesus › requires life of loving s.
• Jesus › s. to least is s. to Jesus

92:4.84. Je­sus of Naz­a­reth. Christ Mi­chael pre­sented for the fourth time to Uran­tia the con­cept of God as the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, and this teach­ing has gen­er­ally per­sisted ever since. The essence of his teach­ing was love and ser­vice, the lov­ing wor­ship which a crea­ture son vol­un­tar­ily gives in rec­og­ni­tion of, and re­sponse to, the lov­ing min­istry of God his Fa­ther; the free­will ser­vice which such crea­ture sons be­stow upon their breth­ren in the joy­ous re­al­iza­tion that in this ser­vice they are like­wise serv­ing God the Fa­ther.

• religion must not lose motivation for unselfish loving s.

99:4.7There is no dan­ger in re­li­gion’s be­com­ing more and more of a pri­vate mat­ter—a per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence—pro­vided it does not lose its mo­ti­va­tion for un­selfish and lov­ing so­cial ser­vice. Re­li­gion has suf­fered from many sec­ondary in­flu­ences: sud­den mix­ing of cul­tures, in­ter­min­gling of creeds, diminu­tion of ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal au­thor­ity, chang­ing of fam­ily life, to­gether with ur­ban­iza­tion and mech­a­niza­tion.

• nature of service › yielding to one’s fellows of that received from one’s spiritual benefactors

100:2.1Spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment de­pends, first, on the main­te­nance of a liv­ing spir­i­tual con­nec­tion with true spir­i­tual forces and, sec­ond, on the con­tin­u­ous bear­ing of spir­i­tual fruit: yield­ing the min­istry to one’s fel­lows of that which has been re­ceived from one’s spir­i­tual bene­fac­tors. Spir­i­tual prog­ress is pred­i­cated on in­tel­lec­tual rec­og­ni­tion of spir­i­tual pov­erty cou­pled with the self-con­scious­ness of per­fec­tion-hunger, the de­sire to know God and be like him, the whole­hearted pur­pose to do the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.

• result of service › discover spiritual reality by means of

101:6.113. Sal­va­tion from spir­i­tual blind­ness, the hu­man re­al­iza­tion of the fra­ter­nity of mor­tal be­ings and the mor­ontian aware­ness of the broth­er­hood of all uni­verse crea­tures; the ser­vice-dis­cov­ery of spir­i­tual re­al­ity and the min­istry-rev­e­la­tion of the good­ness of spirit val­ues.

• motivations for service › finding God impels man to seek loving service-contact with less illuminated fellows

102:3.4Re­li­gious de­sire is the hunger quest for di­vine re­al­ity. Re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence is the re­al­iza­tion of the con­scious­ness of hav­ing found God. And when a hu­man be­ing does find God, there is ex­pe­ri­enced within the soul of that be­ing such an in­de­scrib­able rest­less­ness of tri­umph in dis­cov­ery that he is im­pelled to seek lov­ing ser­vice-con­tact with his less il­lu­mi­nated fel­lows, not to dis­close that he has found God, but rather to al­low the over­flow of the welling-up of eter­nal good­ness within his own soul to re­fresh and en­no­ble his fel­lows. Real re­li­gion leads to in­creased so­cial ser­vice.

• nature of service › ideal life is one of loving s.

110:3.4I can­not but ob­serve that so many of you spend so much time and thought on mere tri­fles of liv­ing, while you al­most wholly over­look the more es­sen­tial re­al­i­ties of ev­er­last­ing im­port, those very ac­com­plish­ments which are con­cerned with the de­vel­op­ment of a more har­mo­nious work­ing agree­ment be­tween you and your Ad­justers. The great goal of hu­man ex­is­tence is to at­tune to the di­vin­ity of the in­dwelling Ad­juster; the great achieve­ment of mor­tal life is the at­tain­ment of a true and un­der­stand­ing con­se­cra­tion to the eter­nal aims of the di­vine spirit who waits and works within your mind. But a de­voted and de­ter­mined ef­fort to re­al­ize eter­nal des­tiny is wholly com­pat­i­ble with a light­hearted and joy­ous life and with a suc­cess­ful and hon­or­able ca­reer on earth. Co-op­er­a­tion with the Thought Ad­juster does not en­tail self-tor­ture, mock piety, or hyp­o­crit­i­cal and os­ten­ta­tious self-abase­ment; the ideal life is one of lov­ing ser­vice rather than an ex­is­tence of fear­ful ap­pre­hen­sion.

• service

110:3.93. Lov­ing man and sin­cerely de­sir­ing to serve him—whole­hearted rec­og­ni­tion of the broth­er­hood of man cou­pled with an in­tel­li­gent and wise af­fec­tion for each of your fel­low mor­tals.

• Jesus › requires life of loving s.
• result of service › greatest is he who serves

137:8.11“In my Fa­ther’s king­dom there shall be nei­ther Jew nor gen­tile, only those who seek per­fec­tion through ser­vice, for I de­clare that he who would be great in my Fa­ther’s king­dom must first be­come server of all. If you are will­ing to serve your fel­lows, you shall sit down with me in my king­dom, even as, by serv­ing in the simil­i­tude of the crea­ture, I shall pres­ently sit down with my Fa­ther in his king­dom.

• nature of service › yielding to one’s fellows of that received from one’s spiritual benefactors

138:6.1The next week was de­voted to a pro­gram of in­tense train­ing. Each day the six new apos­tles were put in the hands of their re­spec­tive nom­i­na­tors for a thor­ough­go­ing re­view of all they had learned and ex­pe­ri­enced in prepa­ra­tion for the work of the king­dom. The older apos­tles care­fully re­viewed, for the ben­e­fit of the younger six, Je­sus’ teach­ings up to that hour. Evenings they all as­sem­bled in Zeb­e­dee’s gar­den to re­ceive Je­sus’ in­struc­tion.

• measure of greatness
• result of service › greatest is he who serves

140:1.6“Whoso­ever would be­come great in my Fa­ther’s king­dom shall be­come a min­is­ter to all; and whoso­ever would be first among you, let him be­come the server of his breth­ren. But when you are once truly re­ceived as cit­i­zens in the heav­enly king­dom, you are no longer ser­vants but sons, sons of the liv­ing God. And so shall this king­dom pro­gress in the world un­til it shall break down ev­ery bar­rier and bring all men to know my Fa­ther and be­lieve in the sav­ing truth which I have come to de­clare. Even now is the king­dom at hand, and some of you will not die un­til you have seen the reign of God come in great power.

• nature of service › render in accordance with one’s own endowments

141:5.2“In this way you may ex­pe­ri­ence a per­fected unity of spirit pur­pose and spirit un­der­stand­ing grow­ing out of the mu­tual con­scious­ness of the iden­tity of each of your in­dwelling Par­a­dise spir­its; and you may en­joy all of this pro­found spir­i­tual unity in the very face of the ut­most di­ver­sity of your in­di­vid­ual at­ti­tudes of in­tel­lec­tual think­ing, tem­per­a­men­tal feel­ing, and so­cial con­duct. Your per­son­al­i­ties may be re­fresh­ingly di­verse and markedly dif­fer­ent, while your spir­i­tual na­tures and spirit fruits of di­vine wor­ship and broth­erly love may be so uni­fied that all who be­hold your lives will of a surety take cog­nizance of this spirit iden­tity and soul unity; they will rec­og­nize that you have been with me and have thereby learned, and ac­cept­ably, how to do the will of the Fa­ther in heaven. You can achieve the unity of the ser­vice of God even while you ren­der such ser­vice in ac­cor­dance with the tech­nique of your own orig­i­nal en­dow­ments of mind, body, and soul.

• motivations for service › true religion unfailingly manifests itself in s.

142:7.4He next ex­plained that the “king­dom idea” was not the best way to il­lus­trate man’s re­la­tion to God; that he em­ployed such fig­ures of speech be­cause the Jew­ish peo­ple were ex­pect­ing the king­dom, and be­cause John had preached in terms of the com­ing king­dom. Je­sus said: “The peo­ple of an­other age will bet­ter un­der­stand the gospel of the king­dom when it is pre­sented in terms ex­pres­sive of the fam­ily re­la­tion­ship—when man un­der­stands re­li­gion as the teach­ing of the fa­ther­hood of God and the broth­er­hood of man, son­ship with God.” Then the Mas­ter dis­coursed at some length on the earthly fam­ily as an il­lus­tra­tion of the heav­enly fam­ily, re­stat­ing the two fun­da­men­tal laws of liv­ing: the first com­mand­ment of love for the fa­ther, the head of the fam­ily, and the sec­ond com­mand­ment of mu­tual love among the chil­dren, to love your brother as your­self. And then he ex­plained that such a qual­ity of broth­erly af­fec­tion would in­vari­ably man­i­fest it­self in un­selfish and lov­ing so­cial ser­vice.

• nature of service › of kingdom requires courageous manhood

143:1.6“Be­cause my Fa­ther is a God of love and de­lights in the prac­tice of mercy, do not im­bibe the idea that the ser­vice of the king­dom is to be one of monotonous ease. The Par­a­dise as­cent is the su­preme ad­ven­ture of all time, the rugged achieve­ment of eter­nity. The ser­vice of the king­dom on earth will call for all the coura­geous man­hood that you and your cowork­ers can muster. Many of you will be put to death for your loy­alty to the gospel of this king­dom. It is easy to die in the line of phys­i­cal bat­tle when your cour­age is strength­ened by the pres­ence of your fight­ing com­rades, but it re­quires a higher and more pro­found form of hu­man cour­age and de­vo­tion calmly and all alone to lay down your life for the love of a truth en­shrined in your mor­tal heart.

• motivations for service › beneficence of God leads to s.

149:6.4“In­tel­li­gent chil­dren do not fear their fa­ther in or­der that they may re­ceive good gifts from his hand; but hav­ing al­ready re­ceived the abun­dance of good things be­stowed by the dic­tates of the fa­ther’s af­fec­tion for his sons and daugh­ters, these much loved chil­dren are led to love their fa­ther in re­spon­sive rec­og­ni­tion and ap­pre­ci­a­tion of such mu­nif­i­cent benef­i­cence. The good­ness of God leads to re­pen­tance; the benef­i­cence of God leads to ser­vice; the mercy of God leads to sal­va­tion; while the love of God leads to in­tel­li­gent and free­hearted wor­ship.

• do not stifle feelings of

157:2.2When Je­sus had thus spo­ken, he with­drew and pre­pared for the evening con­fer­ence with his fol­low­ers. At this con­fer­ence it was de­cided to un­der­take a united mis­sion through­out all the cities and vil­lages of the De­capo­lis as soon as Je­sus and the twelve should re­turn from their pro­posed visit to Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi. The Mas­ter par­tic­i­pated in plan­ning for the De­capo­lis mis­sion and, in dis­miss­ing the com­pany, said: “I say to you, be­ware of the leaven of the Phar­isees and the Sad­ducees. Be not de­ceived by their show of much learn­ing and by their pro­found loy­alty to the forms of re­li­gion. Be only con­cerned with the spirit of liv­ing truth and the power of true re­li­gion. It is not the fear of a dead re­li­gion that will save you but rather your faith in a liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in the spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the king­dom. Do not al­low your­selves to be­come blinded by prej­u­dice and par­a­lyzed by fear. Nei­ther per­mit rev­er­ence for the tra­di­tions so to per­vert your un­der­stand­ing that your eyes see not and your ears hear not. It is not the pur­pose of true re­li­gion merely to bring peace but rather to in­sure prog­ress. And there can be no peace in the heart or prog­ress in the mind un­less you fall whole­heart­edly in love with truth, the ide­als of eter­nal re­al­i­ties. The is­sues of life and death are be­ing set be­fore you—the sin­ful plea­sures of time against the righ­teous re­al­i­ties of eter­nity. Even now you should be­gin to find de­liv­er­ance from the bond­age of fear and doubt as you en­ter upon the liv­ing of the new life of faith and hope. And when the feel­ings of ser­vice for your fel­low men arise within your soul, do not sti­fle them; when the emo­tions of love for your neigh­bor well up within your heart, give ex­pres­sion to such urges of af­fec­tion in in­tel­li­gent min­istry to the real needs of your fel­lows.”

• result of service › greatest is he who serves

158:6.3“No sooner does your faith grasp the iden­tity of the Son of Man than your self­ish de­sire for worldly prefer­ment creeps back upon you, and you fall to dis­cussing among your­selves as to who should be great­est in the king­dom of heaven, a king­dom which, as you per­sist in con­ceiv­ing it, does not ex­ist, nor ever shall. Have not I told you that he who would be great­est in the king­dom of my Fa­ther’s spir­i­tual broth­er­hood must be­come lit­tle in his own eyes and thus be­come the server of his breth­ren? Spir­i­tual great­ness con­sists in an un­der­stand­ing love that is God­like and not in an en­joy­ment of the ex­er­cise of ma­te­rial power for the ex­al­ta­tion of self. In what you at­tempted, in which you so com­pletely failed, your pur­pose was not pure. Your mo­tive was not di­vine. Your ideal was not spir­i­tual. Your am­bi­tion was not al­tru­is­tic. Your pro­ce­dure was not based on love, and your goal of at­tain­ment was not the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.

• motivations for service › true religion unfailingly manifests itself in s.

159:5.8Je­sus put the spirit of pos­i­tive ac­tion into the pas­sive doc­trines of the Jew­ish re­li­gion. In the place of neg­a­tive com­pli­ance with cer­e­mo­nial re­quire­ments, Je­sus en­joined the pos­i­tive do­ing of that which his new re­li­gion re­quired of those who ac­cepted it. Je­sus’ re­li­gion con­sisted not merely in be­liev­ing, but in ac­tu­ally do­ing, those things which the gospel re­quired. He did not teach that the essence of his re­li­gion con­sisted in so­cial ser­vice, but rather that so­cial ser­vice was one of the cer­tain ef­fects of the pos­ses­sion of the spirit of true re­li­gion.

164:1.1That evening a con­sid­er­able com­pany gath­ered about Je­sus and the two apos­tles to ask ques­tions, many of which the apos­tles an­swered, while oth­ers the Mas­ter dis­cussed. In the course of the evening a cer­tain lawyer, seek­ing to en­tan­gle Je­sus in a com­pro­mis­ing dis­pu­ta­tion, said: “Teacher, I would like to ask you just what I should do to in­herit eter­nal life?” Je­sus an­swered, “What is writ­ten in the law and the proph­ets; how do you read the Scrip­tures?” The lawyer, know­ing the teach­ings of both Je­sus and the Phar­isees, an­swered: “To love the Lord God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neigh­bor as your­self.” Then said Je­sus: “You have an­swered right; this, if you re­ally do, will lead to life ev­er­last­ing.”

164:1.2But the lawyer was not wholly sin­cere in ask­ing this ques­tion, and de­sir­ing to jus­tify him­self while also hop­ing to em­bar­rass Je­sus, he ven­tured to ask still an­other ques­tion. Draw­ing a lit­tle closer to the Mas­ter, he said, “But, Teacher, I should like you to tell me just who is my neigh­bor?” The lawyer asked this ques­tion hop­ing to en­trap Je­sus into mak­ing some state­ment that would con­tra­vene the Jew­ish law which de­fined one’s neigh­bor as “the chil­dren of one’s peo­ple.” The Jews looked upon all oth­ers as “gen­tile dogs.” This lawyer was some­what fa­mil­iar with Je­sus’ teach­ings and there­fore well knew that the Mas­ter thought dif­fer­ently; thus he hoped to lead him into say­ing some­thing which could be con­strued as an at­tack upon the sa­cred law.

164:1.3But Je­sus dis­cerned the lawyer’s mo­tive, and in­stead of falling into the trap, he pro­ceeded to tell his hear­ers a story, a story which would be fully ap­pre­ci­ated by any Jeri­cho au­di­ence. Said Je­sus: “A cer­tain man was go­ing down from Je­ru­sa­lem to Jeri­cho, and he fell into the hands of cruel brig­ands, who robbed him, stripped him and beat him, and de­part­ing, left him half dead. Very soon, by chance, a cer­tain priest was go­ing down that way, and when he came upon the wounded man, see­ing his sorry plight, he passed by on the other side of the road. And in like man­ner a Levite also, when he came along and saw the man, passed by on the other side. Now, about this time, a cer­tain Samar­i­tan, as he jour­neyed down to Jeri­cho, came across this wounded man; and when he saw how he had been robbed and beaten, he was moved with com­pas­sion, and go­ing over to him, he bound up his wounds, pour­ing on oil and wine, and set­ting the man upon his own beast, brought him here to the inn and took care of him. And on the mor­row he took out some money and, giv­ing it to the host, said: ‘Take good care of my friend, and if the ex­pense is more, when I come back again, I will re­pay you.’ Now let me ask you: Which of these three turned out to be the neigh­bor of him who fell among the rob­bers?” And when the lawyer per­ceived that he had fallen into his own snare, he an­swered, “He who showed mercy on him.” And Je­sus said, “Go and do like­wise.”

164:1.4The lawyer an­swered, “He who showed mercy,” that he might re­frain from even speak­ing that odi­ous word, Samar­i­tan. The lawyer was forced to give the very an­swer to the ques­tion, “Who is my neigh­bor?” which Je­sus wished given, and which, if Je­sus had so stated, would have di­rectly in­volved him in the charge of heresy. Je­sus not only con­founded the dis­hon­est lawyer, but he told his hear­ers a story which was at the same time a beau­ti­ful ad­mo­ni­tion to all his fol­low­ers and a stun­ning re­buke to all Jews re­gard­ing their at­ti­tude to­ward the Samar­i­tans. And this story has con­tin­ued to pro­mote broth­erly love among all who have sub­se­quently be­lieved the gospel of Je­sus.

165:2.1A com­pany of over three hun­dred Je­ru­sa­lem­ites, Phar­isees and oth­ers, fol­lowed Je­sus north to Pella when he has­tened away from the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Jew­ish rulers at the end­ing of the feast of the ded­i­ca­tion; and it was in the pres­ence of these Jew­ish teach­ers and lead­ers, as well as in the hear­ing of the twelve apos­tles, that Je­sus preached the ser­mon on the “Good Shep­herd.” Af­ter half an hour of in­for­mal dis­cus­sion, speak­ing to a group of about one hun­dred, Je­sus said:

165:2.2“On this night I have much to tell you, and since many of you are my dis­ci­ples and some of you my bit­ter en­e­mies, I will pre­sent my teach­ing in a para­ble, so that you may each take for your­self that which finds a re­cep­tion in your heart.

165:2.3“Tonight, here be­fore me are men who would be will­ing to die for me and for this gospel of the king­dom, and some of them will so of­fer them­selves in the years to come; and here also are some of you, slaves of tra­di­tion, who have fol­lowed me down from Je­ru­sa­lem, and who, with your dark­ened and de­luded lead­ers, seek to kill the Son of Man. The life which I now live in the flesh shall judge both of you, the true shep­herds and the false shep­herds. If the false shep­herd were blind, he would have no sin, but you claim that you see; you pro­fess to be teach­ers in Is­rael; there­fore does your sin re­main upon you.

165:2.4“The true shep­herd gath­ers his flock into the fold for the night in times of dan­ger. And when the morn­ing has come, he en­ters into the fold by the door, and when he calls, the sheep know his voice. Ev­ery shep­herd who gains en­trance to the sheep­fold by any other means than by the door is a thief and a rob­ber. The true shep­herd en­ters the fold af­ter the porter has opened the door for him, and his sheep, know­ing his voice, come out at his word; and when they that are his are thus brought forth, the true shep­herd goes be­fore them; he leads the way and the sheep fol­low him. His sheep fol­low him be­cause they know his voice; they will not fol­low a stranger. They will flee from the stranger be­cause they know not his voice. This mul­ti­tude which is gath­ered about us here are like sheep with­out a shep­herd, but when we speak to them, they know the shep­herd’s voice, and they fol­low af­ter us; at least, those who hunger for truth and thirst for righ­teous­ness do. Some of you are not of my fold; you know not my voice, and you do not fol­low me. And be­cause you are false shep­herds, the sheep know not your voice and will not fol­low you.”

165:2.5And when Je­sus had spo­ken this para­ble, no one asked him a ques­tion. Af­ter a time he be­gan again to speak and went on to dis­cuss the para­ble:

165:2.6“You who would be the un­der­shep­herds of my Fa­ther’s flocks must not only be wor­thy lead­ers, but you must also feed the flock with good food; you are not true shep­herds un­less you lead your flocks into green pas­tures and be­side still wa­ters.

165:2.7“And now, lest some of you too eas­ily com­pre­hend this para­ble, I will de­clare that I am both the door to the Fa­ther’s sheep­fold and at the same time the true shep­herd of my Fa­ther’s flocks. Ev­ery shep­herd who seeks to en­ter the fold with­out me shall fail, and the sheep will not hear his voice. I, with those who min­is­ter with me, am the door. Ev­ery soul who en­ters upon the eter­nal way by the means I have cre­ated and or­dained shall be saved and will be able to go on to the at­tain­ment of the eter­nal pas­tures of Par­a­dise.

165:2.8“But I also am the true shep­herd who is will­ing even to lay down his life for the sheep. The thief breaks into the fold only to steal, and to kill, and to de­stroy; but I have come that you all may have life and have it more abun­dantly. He who is a hire­ling, when dan­ger arises, will flee and al­low the sheep to be scat­tered and de­stroyed; but the true shep­herd will not flee when the wolf comes; he will pro­tect his flock and, if nec­es­sary, lay down his life for his sheep. Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you, friends and en­e­mies, I am the true shep­herd; I know my own and my own know me. I will not flee in the face of dan­ger. I will fin­ish this ser­vice of the com­ple­tion of my Fa­ther’s will, and I will not for­sake the flock which the Fa­ther has in­trusted to my keep­ing.

165:2.9“But I have many other sheep not of this fold, and these words are true not only of this world. These other sheep also hear and know my voice, and I have prom­ised the Fa­ther that they shall all be brought into one fold, one broth­er­hood of the sons of God. And then shall you all know the voice of one shep­herd, the true shep­herd, and shall all ac­knowl­edge the fa­ther­hood of God.

165:2.10“And so shall you know why the Fa­ther loves me and has put all of his flocks in this do­main in my hands for keep­ing; it is be­cause the Fa­ther knows that I will not fal­ter in the safe­guard­ing of the sheep­fold, that I will not desert my sheep, and that, if it shall be re­quired, I will not hes­i­tate to lay down my life in the ser­vice of his man­i­fold flocks. But, mind you, if I lay down my life, I will take it up again. No man nor any other crea­ture can take away my life. I have the right and the power to lay down my life, and I have the same power and right to take it up again. You can­not un­der­stand this, but I re­ceived such au­thor­ity from my Fa­ther even be­fore this world was.”

165:2.11When they heard these words, his apos­tles were con­fused, his dis­ci­ples were amazed, while the Phar­isees from Je­ru­sa­lem and around about went out into the night, say­ing, “He is ei­ther mad or has a devil.” But even some of the Je­ru­sa­lem teach­ers said: “He speaks like one hav­ing au­thor­ity; be­sides, who ever saw one hav­ing a devil open the eyes of a man born blind and do all of the won­der­ful things which this man has done?”

165:2.12On the mor­row about half of these Jew­ish teach­ers pro­fessed be­lief in Je­sus, and the other half in dis­may re­turned to Je­ru­sa­lem and their homes.

• parables about service › good shepherd

169:1.2“You have been ad­mon­ished by the proph­ets from Samuel to John that you should seek for God—search for truth. Al­ways have they said, ‘Seek the Lord while he may be found.’ And all such teach­ing should be taken to heart. But I have come to show you that, while you are seek­ing to find God, God is like­wise seek­ing to find you. Many times have I told you the story of the good shep­herd who left the ninety and nine sheep in the fold while he went forth search­ing for the one that was lost, and how, when he had found the stray­ing sheep, he laid it over his shoul­der and ten­derly car­ried it back to the fold. And when the lost sheep had been re­stored to the fold, you re­mem­ber that the good shep­herd called in his friends and bade them re­joice with him over the find­ing of the sheep that had been lost. Again I say there is more joy in heaven over one sin­ner who re­pents than over the ninety and nine just per­sons who need no re­pen­tance. The fact that souls are lost only in­creases the in­ter­est of the heav­enly Fa­ther. I have come to this world to do my Fa­ther’s bid­ding, and it has truly been said of the Son of Man that he is a friend of pub­li­cans and sin­ners.

• motivations for service › true religion unfailingly manifests itself in s.

170:3.8It there­fore is ev­i­dent that the true and in­ner re­li­gion of the king­dom un­fail­ingly and in­creas­ingly tends to man­i­fest it­self in prac­ti­cal av­enues of so­cial ser­vice. Je­sus taught a liv­ing re­li­gion that im­pelled its be­liev­ers to en­gage in the do­ing of lov­ing ser­vice. But Je­sus did not put ethics in the place of re­li­gion. He taught re­li­gion as a cause and ethics as a re­sult.

• motivations for service › true religion unfailingly manifests itself in s.

170:3.9The righ­teous­ness of any act must be mea­sured by the mo­tive; the high­est forms of good are there­fore un­con­scious. Je­sus was never con­cerned with morals or ethics as such. He was wholly con­cerned with that in­ward and spir­i­tual fel­low­ship with God the Fa­ther which so cer­tainly and di­rectly man­i­fests it­self as out­ward and lov­ing ser­vice for man. He taught that the re­li­gion of the king­dom is a gen­uine per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence which no man can con­tain within him­self; that the con­scious­ness of be­ing a mem­ber of the fam­ily of be­liev­ers leads in­evitably to the prac­tice of the pre­cepts of the fam­ily con­duct, the ser­vice of one’s broth­ers and sis­ters in the ef­fort to en­hance and en­large the broth­er­hood.

• result of service › develop character by unselfish

170:3.10The re­li­gion of the king­dom is per­sonal, in­di­vid­ual; the fruits, the re­sults, are fa­mil­ial, so­cial. Je­sus never failed to ex­alt the sa­cred­ness of the in­di­vid­ual as con­trasted with the com­mu­nity. But he also rec­og­nized that man de­vel­ops his char­ac­ter by un­selfish ser­vice; that he un­folds his moral na­ture in lov­ing re­la­tions with his fel­lows.

• Jesus › requires life of loving s.

170:4.124. The su­preme sat­is­fac­tions of the lov­ing ser­vice of man.

• result of service › greatest is he who serves

171:0.6By this time some­one had car­ried word of this con­fer­ence to Pe­ter and the other apos­tles, and they were highly in­dig­nant that James and John would seek to be pre­ferred be­fore them, and that they would se­cretly go with their mother to make such a re­quest. When they fell to ar­gu­ing among them­selves, Je­sus called them all to­gether and said: “You well un­der­stand how the rulers of the gen­tiles lord it over their sub­jects, and how those who are great ex­er­cise au­thor­ity. But it shall not be so in the king­dom of heaven. Whoso­ever would be great among you, let him first be­come your ser­vant. He who would be first in the king­dom, let him be­come your min­is­ter. I de­clare to you that the Son of Man came not to be min­is­tered to but to min­is­ter; and I now go up to Je­ru­sa­lem to lay down my life in the do­ing of the Fa­ther’s will and in the ser­vice of my breth­ren.” When the apos­tles heard these words, they with­drew by them­selves to pray. That evening, in re­sponse to the labors of Pe­ter, James and John made suit­able apolo­gies to the ten and were re­stored to the good graces of their breth­ren.

173:3.1As the cav­il­ing Phar­isees stood there in si­lence be­fore Je­sus, he looked down on them and said: “Since you are in doubt about John’s mis­sion and ar­rayed in en­mity against the teach­ing and the works of the Son of Man, give ear while I tell you a para­ble: A cer­tain great and re­spected land­holder had two sons, and de­sir­ing the help of his sons in the man­age­ment of his large es­tates, he came to one of them, say­ing, ‘Son, go work to­day in my vine­yard.’ And this un­think­ing son an­swered his fa­ther, say­ing, ‘I will not go’; but af­ter­ward he re­pented and went. When he had found his older son, like­wise he said to him, ‘Son, go work in my vine­yard.’ And this hyp­o­crit­i­cal and un­faith­ful son an­swered, ‘Yes, my fa­ther, I will go.’ But when his fa­ther had de­parted, he went not. Let me ask you, which of these sons re­ally did his fa­ther’s will?”

173:3.2And the peo­ple spoke with one ac­cord, say­ing, “The first son.” And then said Je­sus: “Even so; and now do I de­clare that the pub­li­cans and har­lots, even though they ap­pear to refuse the call to re­pen­tance, shall see the er­ror of their way and go on into the king­dom of God be­fore you, who make great pre­ten­sions of serv­ing the Fa­ther in heaven while you refuse to do the works of the Fa­ther. It was not you, the Phar­isees and scribes, who be­lieved John, but rather the pub­li­cans and sin­ners; nei­ther do you be­lieve my teach­ing, but the com­mon peo­ple hear my words gladly.”

173:3.3Je­sus did not de­spise the Phar­isees and Sad­ducees per­son­ally. It was their sys­tems of teach­ing and prac­tice which he sought to dis­credit. He was hos­tile to no man, but here was oc­cur­ring the in­ev­i­ta­ble clash be­tween a new and liv­ing re­li­gion of the spirit and the older re­li­gion of cer­e­mony, tra­di­tion, and au­thor­ity.

173:3.4All this time the twelve apos­tles stood near the Mas­ter, but they did not in any man­ner par­tic­i­pate in these trans­ac­tions. Each one of the twelve was re­act­ing in his own pe­cu­liar way to the events of these clos­ing days of Je­sus’ min­istry in the flesh, and each one like­wise re­mained obe­di­ent to the Mas­ter’s in­junc­tion to re­frain from all pub­lic teach­ing and preach­ing dur­ing this Pass­over week.

• result of service › greatest is he who serves

175:1.10“While you should honor your rulers and rev­er­ence your teach­ers, you should call no man Fa­ther in the spir­i­tual sense, for there is one who is your Fa­ther, even God. Nei­ther should you seek to lord it over your breth­ren in the king­dom. Re­mem­ber, I have taught you that he who would be great­est among you should be­come the server of all. If you pre­sume to ex­alt your­selves be­fore God, you will cer­tainly be hum­bled; but whoso truly hum­bles him­self will surely be ex­alted. Seek in your daily lives, not self-glo­ri­fi­ca­tion, but the glory of God. In­tel­li­gently sub­or­di­nate your own wills to the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.

• parables about service › talents

176:3.4“As in­di­vid­u­als, and as a gen­er­a­tion of be­liev­ers, hear me while I speak a para­ble: There was a cer­tain great man who, be­fore start­ing out on a long jour­ney to an­other coun­try, called all his trusted ser­vants be­fore him and de­liv­ered into their hands all his goods. To one he gave five tal­ents, to an­other two, and to an­other one. And so on down through the en­tire group of hon­ored stew­ards, to each he in­trusted his goods ac­cord­ing to their sev­eral abil­i­ties; and then he set out on his jour­ney. When their lord had de­parted, his ser­vants set them­selves at work to gain prof­its from the wealth in­trusted to them. Im­me­di­ately he who had re­ceived five tal­ents be­gan to trade with them and very soon had made a profit of an­other five tal­ents. In like man­ner he who had re­ceived two tal­ents soon had gained two more. And so did all of these ser­vants make gains for their mas­ter ex­cept him who re­ceived but one tal­ent. He went away by him­self and dug a hole in the earth where he hid his lord’s money. Pres­ently the lord of those ser­vants un­ex­pect­edly re­turned and called upon his stew­ards for a reck­on­ing. And when they had all been called be­fore their mas­ter, he who had re­ceived the five tal­ents came for­ward with the money which had been in­trusted to him and brought five ad­di­tional tal­ents, say­ing, ‘Lord, you gave me five tal­ents to in­vest, and I am glad to pre­sent five other tal­ents as my gain.’ And then his lord said to him: ‘Well done, good and faith­ful ser­vant, you have been faith­ful over a few things; I will now set you as stew­ard over many; en­ter forth­with into the joy of your lord.’ And then he who had re­ceived the two tal­ents came for­ward, say­ing: ‘Lord, you de­liv­ered into my hands two tal­ents; be­hold, I have gained these other two tal­ents.’ And his lord then said to him: ‘Well done, good and faith­ful stew­ard; you also have been faith­ful over a few things, and I will now set you over many; en­ter you into the joy of your lord.’ And then there came to the ac­count­ing he who had re­ceived the one tal­ent. This ser­vant came for­ward, say­ing, ‘Lord, I knew you and re­al­ized that you were a shrewd man in that you ex­pected gains where you had not per­son­ally la­bored; there­fore was I afraid to risk aught of that which was in­trusted to me. I safely hid your tal­ent in the earth; here it is; you now have what be­longs to you.’ But his lord an­swered: ‘You are an in­do­lent and sloth­ful stew­ard. By your own words you con­fess that you knew I would re­quire of you an ac­count­ing with rea­son­able profit, such as your dili­gent fel­low ser­vants have this day ren­dered. Know­ing this, you ought, there­fore, to have at least put my money into the hands of the bankers that on my re­turn I might have re­ceived my own with in­ter­est.’ And then to the chief stew­ard this lord said: ‘Take away this one tal­ent from this un­prof­itable ser­vant and give it to him who has the ten tal­ents.’

• Jesus › s. to least is s. to Jesus

176:3.5“To ev­ery one who has, more shall be given, and he shall have abun­dance; but from him who has not, even that which he has shall be taken away. You can­not stand still in the af­fairs of the eter­nal king­dom. My Fa­ther re­quires all his chil­dren to grow in grace and in a knowl­edge of the truth. You who know these truths must yield the in­crease of the fruits of the spirit and man­i­fest a grow­ing de­vo­tion to the un­selfish ser­vice of your fel­low ser­vants. And re­mem­ber that, inas­much as you min­is­ter to one of the least of my breth­ren, you have done this ser­vice to me.

• draw very near with unselfish

178:1.4Son­ship in the king­dom, from the stand­point of ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion, should as­sist you in be­com­ing the ideal cit­i­zens of the king­doms of this world since broth­er­hood and ser­vice are the cor­ner­stones of the gospel of the king­dom. The love call of the spir­i­tual king­dom should prove to be the ef­fec­tive de­stroyer of the hate urge of the un­be­liev­ing and war-minded cit­i­zens of the earthly king­doms. But these ma­te­rial-minded sons in dark­ness will never know of your spir­i­tual light of truth un­less you draw very near them with that un­selfish so­cial ser­vice which is the nat­u­ral out­growth of the bear­ing of the fruits of the spirit in the life ex­pe­ri­ence of each in­di­vid­ual be­liever.

• nature of service › serve believers and unbelievers alike
• Spirit of Truth is power-multiplying fulcrum for

178:1.6You may not wor­ship your tem­po­ral rulers, and you should not em­ploy tem­po­ral power in the fur­ther­ance of the spir­i­tual king­dom; but you should man­i­fest the righ­teous min­istry of lov­ing ser­vice to be­liev­ers and un­be­liev­ers alike. In the gospel of the king­dom there re­sides the mighty Spirit of Truth, and pres­ently I will pour out this same spirit upon all flesh. The fruits of the spirit, your sin­cere and lov­ing ser­vice, are the mighty so­cial lever to up­lift the races of dark­ness, and this Spirit of Truth will be­come your power-mul­ti­ply­ing ful­crum.

• do not allow social s. to divert from preaching gospel
• motivations for service › by-product of spiritual transformation

178:1.11Re­mem­ber that you are com­mis­sioned to preach this gospel of the king­dom—the su­preme de­sire to do the Fa­ther’s will cou­pled with the su­preme joy of the faith re­al­iza­tion of son­ship with God—and you must not al­low any­thing to di­vert your de­vo­tion to this one duty. Let all man­kind ben­e­fit from the over­flow of your lov­ing spir­i­tual min­istry, en­light­en­ing in­tel­lec­tual com­mu­nion, and up­lift­ing so­cial ser­vice; but none of these hu­man­i­tar­ian labors, nor all of them, should be per­mit­ted to take the place of pro­claim­ing the gospel. These mighty min­is­tra­tions are the so­cial by-prod­ucts of the still more mighty and sub­lime min­is­tra­tions and trans­for­ma­tions wrought in the heart of the king­dom be­liever by the liv­ing Spirit of Truth and by the per­sonal re­al­iza­tion that the faith of a spirit-born man con­fers the as­sur­ance of liv­ing fel­low­ship with the eter­nal God.

179:3.1Af­ter drink­ing the first cup of the Pass­over, it was the Jew­ish cus­tom for the host to arise from the ta­ble and wash his hands. Later on in the meal and af­ter the sec­ond cup, all of the guests like­wise rose up and washed their hands. Since the apos­tles knew that their Mas­ter never ob­served these rites of cer­e­mo­nial hand wash­ing, they were very cu­ri­ous to know what he in­tended to do when, af­ter they had par­taken of this first cup, he arose from the ta­ble and silently made his way over to near the door, where the wa­ter pitch­ers, basins, and tow­els had been placed. And their cu­rios­ity grew into as­ton­ish­ment as they saw the Mas­ter re­move his outer gar­ment, gird him­self with a towel, and be­gin to pour wa­ter into one of the foot basins. Imag­ine the amaze­ment of these twelve men, who had so re­cently re­fused to wash one an­other’s feet, and who had en­gaged in such un­seemly dis­putes about po­si­tions of honor at the ta­ble, when they saw him make his way around the un­oc­cu­pied end of the ta­ble to the low­est seat of the feast, where Si­mon Pe­ter re­clined, and, kneel­ing down in the at­ti­tude of a ser­vant, make ready to wash Si­mon’s feet. As the Mas­ter knelt, all twelve arose as one man to their feet; even the traitorous Ju­das so far for­got his in­famy for a mo­ment as to arise with his fel­low apos­tles in this ex­pres­sion of sur­prise, re­spect, and ut­ter amaze­ment.

179:3.2There stood Si­mon Pe­ter, look­ing down into the up­turned face of his Mas­ter. Je­sus said noth­ing; it was not nec­es­sary that he should speak. His at­ti­tude plainly re­vealed that he was minded to wash Si­mon Pe­ter’s feet. Not­with­stand­ing his frail­ties of the flesh, Pe­ter loved the Mas­ter. This Galilean fish­er­man was the first hu­man be­ing whole­heart­edly to be­lieve in the di­vin­ity of Je­sus and to make full and pub­lic con­fes­sion of that be­lief. And Pe­ter had never since re­ally doubted the di­vine na­ture of the Mas­ter. Since Pe­ter so revered and hon­ored Je­sus in his heart, it was not strange that his soul re­sented the thought of Je­sus’ kneel­ing there be­fore him in the at­ti­tude of a me­nial ser­vant and propos­ing to wash his feet as would a slave. When Pe­ter pres­ently col­lected his wits suf­fi­ciently to ad­dress the Mas­ter, he spoke the heart feel­ings of all his fel­low apos­tles.

179:3.3Af­ter a few mo­ments of this great em­bar­rass­ment, Pe­ter said, “Mas­ter, do you re­ally mean to wash my feet?” And then, look­ing up into Pe­ter’s face, Je­sus said: “You may not fully un­der­stand what I am about to do, but here­after you will know the mean­ing of all these things.” Then Si­mon Pe­ter, draw­ing a long breath, said, “Mas­ter, you shall never wash my feet!” And each of the apos­tles nod­ded their ap­proval of Pe­ter’s firm dec­la­ra­tion of re­fusal to al­low Je­sus thus to hum­ble him­self be­fore them.

179:3.4The dra­matic ap­peal of this un­usual scene at first touched the heart of even Ju­das Is­car­iot; but when his vain­glo­ri­ous in­tel­lect passed judg­ment upon the spec­ta­cle, he con­cluded that this ges­ture of hu­mil­ity was just one more episode which con­clu­sively proved that Je­sus would never qual­ify as Is­rael’s de­liv­erer, and that he had made no mis­take in the de­ci­sion to desert the Mas­ter’s cause.

179:3.5As they all stood there in breath­less amaze­ment, Je­sus said: “Pe­ter, I de­clare that, if I do not wash your feet, you will have no part with me in that which I am about to per­form.” When Pe­ter heard this dec­la­ra­tion, cou­pled with the fact that Je­sus con­tin­ued kneel­ing there at his feet, he made one of those de­ci­sions of blind ac­qui­es­cence in com­pli­ance with the wish of one whom he re­spected and loved. As it be­gan to dawn on Si­mon Pe­ter that there was at­tached to this pro­posed en­act­ment of ser­vice some sig­ni­fi­ca­tion that de­ter­mined one’s fu­ture con­nec­tion with the Mas­ter’s work, he not only be­came rec­on­ciled to the thought of al­low­ing Je­sus to wash his feet but, in his char­ac­ter­is­tic and im­petu­ous man­ner, said: “Then, Mas­ter, wash not my feet only but also my hands and my head.”

179:3.6As the Mas­ter made ready to be­gin wash­ing Pe­ter’s feet, he said: “He who is al­ready clean needs only to have his feet washed. You who sit with me tonight are clean—but not all. But the dust of your feet should have been washed away be­fore you sat down at meat with me. And be­sides, I would per­form this ser­vice for you as a para­ble to il­lus­trate the mean­ing of a new com­mand­ment which I will pres­ently give you.”

179:3.7In like man­ner the Mas­ter went around the ta­ble, in si­lence, wash­ing the feet of his twelve apos­tles, not even pass­ing by Ju­das. When Je­sus had fin­ished wash­ing the feet of the twelve, he donned his cloak, re­turned to his place as host, and af­ter look­ing over his be­wil­dered apos­tles, said:

179:3.8“Do you re­ally un­der­stand what I have done to you? You call me Mas­ter, and you say well, for so I am. If, then, the Mas­ter has washed your feet, why was it that you were un­will­ing to wash one an­other’s feet? What les­son should you learn from this para­ble in which the Mas­ter so will­ingly does that ser­vice which his breth­ren were un­will­ing to do for one an­other? Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you: A ser­vant is not greater than his mas­ter; nei­ther is one who is sent greater than he who sends him. You have seen the way of ser­vice in my life among you, and blessed are you who will have the gra­cious cour­age so to serve. But why are you so slow to learn that the se­cret of great­ness in the spir­i­tual king­dom is not like the meth­ods of power in the ma­te­rial world?

• Jesus › came as one who served
• result of service › greatest is he who serves

179:3.9“When I came into this cham­ber tonight, you were not con­tent proudly to refuse to wash one an­other’s feet, but you must also fall to dis­put­ing among your­selves as to who should have the places of honor at my ta­ble. Such hon­ors the Phar­isees and the chil­dren of this world seek, but it should not be so among the am­bas­sadors of the heav­enly king­dom. Do you not know that there can be no place of prefer­ment at my ta­ble? Do you not un­der­stand that I love each of you as I do the oth­ers? Do you not know that the place near­est me, as men re­gard such hon­ors, can mean noth­ing con­cern­ing your stand­ing in the king­dom of heaven? You know that the kings of the gen­tiles have lord­ship over their sub­jects, while those who ex­er­cise this au­thor­ity are some­times called bene­fac­tors. But it shall not be so in the king­dom of heaven. He who would be great among you, let him be­come as the younger; while he who would be chief, let him be­come as one who serves. Who is the greater, he who sits at meat, or he who serves? Is it not com­monly re­garded that he who sits at meat is the greater? But you will ob­serve that I am among you as one who serves. If you are will­ing to be­come fel­low ser­vants with me in do­ing the Fa­ther’s will, in the king­dom to come you shall sit with me in power, still do­ing the Fa­ther’s will in fu­ture glory.”

179:3.10When Je­sus had fin­ished speak­ing, the Al­pheus twins brought on the bread and wine, with the bit­ter herbs and the paste of dried fruits, for the next course of the Last Sup­per.

• Jesus › serves with and through us

179:5.7Af­ter they had en­gaged in med­i­ta­tion for a few mo­ments, Je­sus con­tin­ued speak­ing: “When you do these things, re­call the life I have lived on earth among you and re­joice that I am to con­tinue to live on earth with you and to serve through you. As in­di­vid­u­als, con­tend not among your­selves as to who shall be great­est. Be you all as breth­ren. And when the king­dom grows to em­brace large groups of be­liev­ers, like­wise should you re­frain from con­tend­ing for great­ness or seek­ing prefer­ment be­tween such groups.”

• Jesus › serves with and through us

180:1.4“You have not merely cho­sen me, but I have also cho­sen you, and I have or­dained you to go forth into the world to yield the fruit of lov­ing ser­vice to your fel­lows even as I have lived among you and re­vealed the Fa­ther to you. The Fa­ther and I will both work with you, and you shall ex­pe­ri­ence the di­vine full­ness of joy if you will only obey my com­mand to love one an­other, even as I have loved you.”

• Jesus › no fruit of loving s. unless we abide in Jesus
• Jesus › requires life of loving s.

180:2.1Then Je­sus stood up again and con­tin­ued teach­ing his apos­tles: “I am the true vine, and my Fa­ther is the hus­band­man. I am the vine, and you are the branches. And the Fa­ther re­quires of me only that you shall bear much fruit. The vine is pruned only to in­crease the fruit­ful­ness of its branches. Ev­ery branch com­ing out of me which bears no fruit, the Fa­ther will take away. Ev­ery branch which bears fruit, the Fa­ther will cleanse that it may bear more fruit. Al­ready are you clean through the word I have spo­ken, but you must con­tinue to be clean. You must abide in me, and I in you; the branch will die if it is sep­a­rated from the vine. As the branch can­not bear fruit ex­cept it abides in the vine, so nei­ther can you yield the fruits of lov­ing ser­vice ex­cept you abide in me. Re­mem­ber: I am the real vine, and you are the liv­ing branches. He who lives in me, and I in him, will bear much fruit of the spirit and ex­pe­ri­ence the su­preme joy of yield­ing this spir­i­tual har­vest. If you will main­tain this liv­ing spir­i­tual con­nec­tion with me, you will bear abun­dant fruit. If you abide in me and my words live in you, you will be able to com­mune freely with me, and then can my liv­ing spirit so in­fuse you that you may ask what­so­ever my spirit wills and do all this with the as­sur­ance that the Fa­ther will grant us our pe­ti­tion. Herein is the Fa­ther glo­ri­fied: that the vine has many liv­ing branches, and that ev­ery branch bears much fruit. And when the world sees these fruit-bear­ing branches—my friends who love one an­other, even as I have loved them—all men will know that you are truly my dis­ci­ples.

180:2.2“As the Fa­ther has loved me, so have I loved you. Live in my love even as I live in the Fa­ther’s love. If you do as I have taught you, you shall abide in my love even as I have kept the Fa­ther’s word and ev­er­more abide in his love.”

180:2.3The Jews had long taught that the Mes­siah would be “a stem aris­ing out of the vine” of David’s an­ces­tors, and in com­mem­o­ra­tion of this olden teach­ing a large em­blem of the grape and its at­tached vine dec­o­rated the en­trance to Herod’s tem­ple. The apos­tles all re­called these things while the Mas­ter talked to them this night in the up­per cham­ber.

180:2.4But great sor­row later at­tended the mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the Mas­ter’s in­fer­ences re­gard­ing prayer. There would have been lit­tle dif­fi­culty about these teach­ings if his ex­act words had been re­mem­bered and sub­se­quently truth­fully re­corded. But as the rec­ord was made, be­liev­ers even­tu­ally re­garded prayer in Je­sus’ name as a sort of su­preme magic, think­ing that they would re­ceive from the Fa­ther any­thing they asked for. For cen­turies hon­est souls have con­tin­ued to wreck their faith against this stum­bling block. How long will it take the world of be­liev­ers to un­der­stand that prayer is not a pro­cess of get­ting your way but rather a pro­gram of tak­ing God’s way, an ex­pe­ri­ence of learn­ing how to rec­og­nize and ex­e­cute the Fa­ther’s will? It is en­tirely true that, when your will has been truly aligned with his, you can ask any­thing con­ceived by that will-union, and it will be granted. And such a will-union is ef­fected by and through Je­sus even as the life of the vine flows into and through the liv­ing branches.

180:2.5When there ex­ists this liv­ing con­nec­tion be­tween di­vin­ity and hu­man­ity, if hu­man­ity should thought­lessly and ig­no­rantly pray for self­ish ease and vain­glo­ri­ous ac­com­plish­ments, there could be only one di­vine an­swer: more and in­creased bear­ing of the fruits of the spirit on the stems of the liv­ing branches. When the branch of the vine is alive, there can be only one an­swer to all its pe­ti­tions: in­creased grape bear­ing. In fact, the branch ex­ists only for, and can do noth­ing ex­cept, fruit bear­ing, yield­ing grapes. So does the true be­liever ex­ist only for the pur­pose of bear­ing the fruits of the spirit: to love man as he him­self has been loved by God—that we should love one an­other, even as Je­sus has loved us.

180:2.6And when the Fa­ther’s hand of dis­ci­pline is laid upon the vine, it is done in love, in or­der that the branches may bear much fruit. And a wise hus­band­man cuts away only the dead and fruit­less branches.

180:2.7Je­sus had great dif­fi­culty in lead­ing even his apos­tles to rec­og­nize that prayer is a func­tion of spirit-born be­liev­ers in the spirit-dom­i­nated king­dom.

• nature of service › highest concept of spirit brotherhood

188:4.9All this con­cept of atone­ment and sac­ri­fi­cial sal­va­tion is rooted and grounded in self­ish­ness. Je­sus taught that ser­vice to one’s fel­lows is the high­est con­cept of the broth­er­hood of spirit be­liev­ers. Sal­va­tion should be taken for granted by those who be­lieve in the fa­ther­hood of God. The be­liever’s chief con­cern should not be the self­ish de­sire for per­sonal sal­va­tion but rather the un­selfish urge to love and, there­fore, serve one’s fel­lows even as Je­sus loved and served mor­tal men.

• cross is symbol of sacred s.

188:5.9The cross is that high sym­bol of sa­cred ser­vice, the de­vo­tion of one’s life to the wel­fare and sal­va­tion of one’s fel­lows. The cross is not the sym­bol of the sac­ri­fice of the in­no­cent Son of God in the place of guilty sin­ners and in or­der to ap­pease the wrath of an of­fended God, but it does stand for­ever, on earth and through­out a vast uni­verse, as a sa­cred sym­bol of the good be­stow­ing them­selves upon the evil and thereby sav­ing them by this very de­vo­tion of love. The cross does stand as the to­ken of the high­est form of un­selfish ser­vice, the su­preme de­vo­tion of the full be­stowal of a righ­teous life in the ser­vice of whole­hearted min­istry, even in death, the death of the cross. And the very sight of this great sym­bol of the be­stowal life of Je­sus truly in­spires all of us to want to go and do like­wise.

• Jesus › requires life of loving s.
• result of service › drawing close to fellows with s. destroys prejudice engendered by ignorance

191:5.3“Peace be upon you. For a full week have I tar­ried that I might ap­pear again when you were all pres­ent to hear once more the com­mis­sion to go into all the world and preach this gospel of the king­dom. Again I tell you: As the Fa­ther sent me into the world, so send I you. As I have re­vealed the Fa­ther, so shall you re­veal the di­vine love, not merely with words, but in your daily liv­ing. I send you forth, not to love the souls of men, but rather to love men. You are not merely to pro­claim the joys of heaven but also to ex­hibit in your daily ex­pe­ri­ence these spirit re­al­i­ties of the di­vine life since you al­ready have eter­nal life, as the gift of God, through faith. When you have faith, when power from on high, the Spirit of Truth, has come upon you, you will not hide your light here be­hind closed doors; you will make known the love and the mercy of God to all man­kind. Through fear you now flee from the facts of a dis­agree­able ex­pe­ri­ence, but when you shall have been bap­tized with the Spirit of Truth, you will bravely and joy­ously go forth to meet the new ex­pe­ri­ences of pro­claim­ing the good news of eter­nal life in the king­dom of God. You may tarry here and in Gal­i­lee for a short sea­son while you re­cover from the shock of the tran­si­tion from the false se­cu­rity of the au­thor­ity of tra­di­tion­al­ism to the new or­der of the au­thor­ity of facts, truth, and faith in the su­preme re­al­i­ties of liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. Your mis­sion to the world is founded on the fact that I lived a God-re­veal­ing life among you; on the truth that you and all other men are the sons of God; and it shall con­sist in the life which you will live among men—the ac­tual and liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of lov­ing men and serv­ing them, even as I have loved and served you. Let faith re­veal your light to the world; let the rev­e­la­tion of truth open the eyes blinded by tra­di­tion; let your lov­ing ser­vice ef­fec­tu­ally de­stroy the prej­u­dice en­gen­dered by ig­no­rance. By so draw­ing close to your fel­low men in un­der­stand­ing sym­pa­thy and with un­selfish de­vo­tion, you will lead them into a sav­ing knowl­edge of the Fa­ther’s love. The Jews have ex­tolled good­ness; the Greeks have ex­alted beauty; the Hin­dus preach de­vo­tion; the far­away as­cetics teach rev­er­ence; the Ro­mans de­mand loy­alty; but I re­quire of my dis­ci­ples life, even a life of lov­ing ser­vice for your broth­ers in the flesh.”

• serve with new and amazing devotion

191:6.2“Peace be upon you. That which my Fa­ther sent me into the world to es­tab­lish be­longs not to a race, a na­tion, nor to a spe­cial group of teach­ers or preach­ers. This gospel of the king­dom be­longs to both Jew and gen­tile, to rich and poor, to free and bond, to male and fe­male, even to the lit­tle chil­dren. And you are all to pro­claim this gospel of love and truth by the lives which you live in the flesh. You shall love one an­other with a new and startling af­fec­tion, even as I have loved you. You will serve man­kind with a new and amaz­ing de­vo­tion, even as I have served you. And when men see you so love them, and when they be­hold how fer­vently you serve them, they will per­ceive that you have be­come faith-fel­lows of the king­dom of heaven, and they will fol­low af­ter the Spirit of Truth which they see in your lives, to the find­ing of eter­nal sal­va­tion.

• nature of service › serve as for God

192:2.13Then he walked and talked with the Al­pheus twins, James and Ju­das, and speak­ing to both of them, he asked, “James and Ju­das, do you be­lieve in me?” And when they both an­swered, “Yes, Mas­ter, we do be­lieve,” he said: “I will soon leave you. You see that I have al­ready left you in the flesh. I tarry only a short time in this form be­fore I go to my Fa­ther. You be­lieve in me—you are my apos­tles, and you al­ways will be. Go on be­liev­ing and re­mem­ber­ing your as­so­ci­a­tion with me, when I am gone, and af­ter you have, per­chance, re­turned to the work you used to do be­fore you came to live with me. Never al­low a change in your out­ward work to in­flu­ence your al­le­giance. Have faith in God to the end of your days on earth. Never for­get that, when you are a faith son of God, all up­right work of the realm is sa­cred. Noth­ing which a son of God does can be com­mon. Do your work, there­fore, from this time on, as for God. And when you are through on this world, I have other and bet­ter worlds where you shall like­wise work for me. And in all of this work, on this world and on other worlds, I will work with you, and my spirit shall dwell within you.”

• nature of service › loving s. reveals God to fellows

193:0.5“Among your­selves, here, you share the knowl­edge that I have risen from the dead, but that is not strange. I have the power to lay down my life and to take it up again; the Fa­ther gives such power to his Par­a­dise Sons. You should the rather be stirred in your hearts by the knowl­edge that the dead of an age en­tered upon the eter­nal as­cent soon af­ter I left Joseph’s new tomb. I lived my life in the flesh to show how you can, through lov­ing ser­vice, be­come God-re­veal­ing to your fel­low men even as, by lov­ing you and serv­ing you, I have be­come God-re­veal­ing to you. I have lived among you as the Son of Man that you, and all other men, might know that you are all in­deed the sons of God. There­fore, go you now into all the world preach­ing this gospel of the king­dom of heaven to all men. Love all men as I have loved you; serve your fel­low mor­tals as I have served you. Freely you have re­ceived, freely give. Only tarry here in Je­ru­sa­lem while I go to the Fa­ther, and un­til I send you the Spirit of Truth. He shall lead you into the en­larged truth, and I will go with you into all the world. I am with you al­ways, and my peace I leave with you.”

• motivations for service › s. is fruit of the spirit
• parables about service › vine and branches

193:2.2“Peace be upon you. You re­joice to know that the Son of Man has risen from the dead be­cause you thereby know that you and your breth­ren shall also sur­vive mor­tal death. But such sur­vival is de­pen­dent on your hav­ing been pre­vi­ously born of the spirit of truth-seek­ing and God-find­ing. The bread of life and the wa­ter thereof are given only to those who hunger for truth and thirst for righ­teous­ness—for God. The fact that the dead rise is not the gospel of the king­dom. These great truths and these uni­verse facts are all re­lated to this gospel in that they are a part of the re­sult of be­liev­ing the good news and are em­braced in the sub­se­quent ex­pe­ri­ence of those who, by faith, be­come, in deed and in truth, the ev­er­last­ing sons of the eter­nal God. My Fa­ther sent me into the world to pro­claim this sal­va­tion of son­ship to all men. And so send I you abroad to preach this sal­va­tion of son­ship. Sal­va­tion is the free gift of God, but those who are born of the spirit will im­me­di­ately be­gin to show forth the fruits of the spirit in lov­ing ser­vice to their fel­low crea­tures. And the fruits of the di­vine spirit which are yielded in the lives of spirit-born and God-know­ing mor­tals are: lov­ing ser­vice, un­selfish de­vo­tion, coura­geous loy­alty, sin­cere fair­ness, en­light­ened hon­esty, undy­ing hope, con­fid­ing trust, mer­ci­ful min­istry, un­fail­ing good­ness, for­giv­ing tol­er­ance, and en­dur­ing peace. If pro­fessed be­liev­ers bear not these fruits of the di­vine spirit in their lives, they are dead; the Spirit of Truth is not in them; they are use­less branches on the liv­ing vine, and they soon will be taken away. My Fa­ther re­quires of the chil­dren of faith that they bear much spirit fruit. If, there­fore, you are not fruit­ful, he will dig about your roots and cut away your un­fruit­ful branches. In­creas­ingly, must you yield the fruits of the spirit as you pro­gress heav­en­ward in the king­dom of God. You may en­ter the king­dom as a child, but the Fa­ther re­quires that you grow up, by grace, to the full stature of spir­i­tual adult­hood. And when you go abroad to tell all na­tions the good news of this gospel, I will go be­fore you, and my Spirit of Truth shall abide in your hearts. My peace I leave with you.”

• do not allow social s. to divert from preaching gospel

195:9.4Re­li­gion does need new lead­ers, spir­i­tual men and women who will dare to de­pend solely on Je­sus and his in­com­pa­ra­ble teach­ings. If Chris­tian­ity per­sists in ne­glect­ing its spir­i­tual mis­sion while it con­tin­ues to busy it­self with so­cial and ma­te­rial prob­lems, the spir­i­tual re­nais­sance must await the com­ing of these new teach­ers of Je­sus’ re­li­gion who will be ex­clu­sively de­voted to the spir­i­tual re­gen­er­a­tion of men. And then will these spirit-born souls quickly sup­ply the lead­er­ship and in­spi­ra­tion req­ui­site for the so­cial, moral, eco­nomic, and po­lit­i­cal re­or­ga­ni­za­tion of the world.

• Jesus › requires life of loving s.

195:9.6Prim­i­tive man lived a life of su­per­sti­tious bond­age to re­li­gious fear. Mod­ern, civ­i­lized men dread the thought of falling un­der the dom­i­nance of strong re­li­gious con­vic­tions. Think­ing man has al­ways feared to be held by a re­li­gion. When a strong and mov­ing re­li­gion threat­ens to dom­i­nate him, he in­vari­ably tries to ra­tio­nal­ize, tra­di­tion­al­ize, and in­sti­tu­tion­al­ize it, thereby hop­ing to gain con­trol of it. By such pro­ce­dure, even a re­vealed re­li­gion be­comes man-made and man-dom­i­nated. Mod­ern men and women of in­tel­li­gence evade the re­li­gion of Je­sus be­cause of their fears of what it will do to them—and with them. And all such fears are well founded. The re­li­gion of Je­sus does, in­deed, dom­i­nate and trans­form its be­liev­ers, de­mand­ing that men ded­i­cate their lives to seek­ing for a knowl­edge of the will of the Fa­ther in heaven and re­quir­ing that the en­er­gies of liv­ing be con­se­crated to the un­selfish ser­vice of the broth­er­hood of man.

• nature of service › based on infinite worth of the finite

196:2.10He taught men to place a high value upon them­selves in time and in eter­nity. Be­cause of this high es­ti­mate which Je­sus placed upon men, he was will­ing to spend him­self in the un­remit­ting ser­vice of hu­mankind. And it was this in­fi­nite worth of the fi­nite that made the golden rule a vi­tal fac­tor in his re­li­gion. What mor­tal can fail to be up­lifted by the ex­traor­di­nary faith Je­sus has in him?