I just had a conversation with my oldest daughter, Meredith, that started with her question, “if God wants us to worship him, why did Jesus come to serve us, not for us to serve him?” Any one want to take that one on? :)
Meredith is a very perceptive and soulful little girl. Her waters run very deep, and I love it. Anyway, we looked for some scriptures that might help. First, we talked about how the Jews were also looking for a savior to worship, but they were expecting a king on a white horse who would throw off the Roman government and free them politically. Many of them stumbled over the fact that their savior was born as a normal, helpless, human being…they probably asked the same questions as Meredith.
Then, we went to Philippians 2, to get a sense of what Jesus actually did, coming from God-ness to lowly human-ness. We talked about how you know how valuable something is because of the price someone is willing to pay. Jesus came from the highest possible state of being, to the lowest, and even then, he gave the most one can possibly give, namely, his life. So with verses 6-9 we establish the infinite humility (service) in the work Jesus accomplished.
Next, verses 10-11 state that all of this happened, “so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” This “so that” means that we couldn’t do those things (kneel and confess) before Jesus did what he did for us.
Getting back to Meredith’s question, we can see that Jesus’ ultimate act of service became the ultimate object of our worship, and furthermore is the reason we can worship at all. The two concepts (God’s requirement of worship, and Jesus servant-humility) are not contradictory, but complimentary. The only way we *can* worship God is through his ultimate act of service, which is, in it’s own right, most worthy of our praise.
God gets the most glory when we worship him for making us able to worship him.
