Grace & Truth Chapel
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Phone 201-327-6226 ~ E-mail gtchapel@juno.com

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"Motive for Christian Service" (posted October 1, 2008)

  A landowner... went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. Now when he had agreed with the laborers for a denarius (a Roman coin) a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And he went out about the third hour and saw others... and said to them, "You also go into the vineyard, and whatever is right I will give you." So they went.
   - Matthew 20:1-4

The parable of the laborers gives us a lesson in connection with our reward. The laborers who were first hired knew what their reward would be, but those hired later in the day worked only in the confidence that they would be given "whatever is right."

Our attitude toward our eternal reward makes all the difference. The moment I work for reward, it ceases to be Christian service. It is not that Christian service will not be rewarded; it most assuredly will be, but it will be apart from all thought of reward. It is "the love of Christ," not the hope of reward, that "compels us" (2 Corinthians 5:14).

It is the joy of the true Christian to be permitted to render any little service to the Lord whom he loves supremely. It will not be a question of the kind of service, the sphere in which it is rendered, or the amount of work done. What will matter is whether what we have done is done directly for Him, with the eye fixed on Him, and with the heart filled with Him!

But ah! the heart is so treacherous and so prone to mixed motives. May we have grace to remember that all that is not done directly for the Lord Himself is absolutely worthless, no matter how showy it may be in the eyes of man. May we also, on the other hand, remember that the smallest thing done in love to Jesus, and in singleness of heart to Him, will never be forgotten.

Charles H. Mackintosh



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