The Call To Wholehearted Service In Christ

Well, what does wholehearted service look like? When I think of wholehearted service, I think of Lester.

Uh, Lester is, uh, the bloke on the left of that picture.

He works at Oporto in The Plaza food court, and every time Lester sees a customer, his face lights up.

Uh, when he, uh, serves people, he, he remembers them, um, even regulars like me.

He remembers their orders and starts entering them in just casually while he's chatting with them about whatever they wanna talk about.

Um, Lester even rem- recommends cheaper options to help people.

That's Lester, and that's wholehearted service.

Now, the passage in Colossians that we're looking at today is a call to wholehearted service.

Not service of customers, but service in Christ.

And this is the call that Paul shares with us in, uh, chapter 3, verse 17.

Colossians 3:17.

"And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." And we see the same call expressed a few verses later in verse 23, "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord.

It is the Lord Christ you are serving." Paul is talking about our life in Christ, our life under the lordship of Christ, where everything we say and do is said and done in wholehearted service of Jesus.

And before we look at the rest of the passage and see the settings where this call is lived out, uh, we can see this call has been coming since the start of this letter.

Back in chapter 1, we were shown the supremacy of God's Son, where the Son is the one all things have been created through and for, the one who is head over every power and authority, the one who has all the fullness of the deity dwelling in him.

And the supremacy, the supremacy of God's Son is what we've seen in Jesus.

It's what we've recognized about Jesus as we've come to know him and trust him.

But when we hear about someone having this kind of power and authority, it makes us a bit nervous, doesn't it? We wanna know what Jesus does with it.

In Colossians, we've been shown that Jesus has used his power and authority to save us.

He's lovingly laid down his life.

He's paid the price to rescue us from the dominion of darkness, to bring us into his kingdom.

And Jesus does this so that we'll have new life, full life, life in relationship with God, his Father, forever.

Knowing this, knowing Jesus' supremacy, his power, his authority, and how he uses it, leads us to keep trusting him, to willingly live under his lordship, to do everything in wholehearted service of Jesus.

In the rest of our passage today, we are taught what this looks like in real life, what it looks like in two settings where the Christian life is lived, where our hearts and our words and our works are, are witnessed.