Serving God to the benefit of all, or serving one’s self to our own detriment
While there is occasionally a great leap forward in divine Love's unfoldment to mankind — such as came through Christ Jesus or Mary Baker Eddy — most often it is the faithful obedience of those who quietly serve God, and whose work steadily builds upon what has come before and lays the groundwork for what is coming next. This is the type of servitude I have learned in Christian Science, in which none are seeking great human accolades, but only to do each day as God directs and leave the rest to Him.
As Mary Baker Eddy wrote on page 111 of Collectanea:
“I cannot answer you as to the morrow. I am God's servant and know not what I shall be bidden to do in the future. Let us wait on Him, wait on divine Love that should direct all our ways and Love saith, 'Take no thought for the morrow. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.'
God moves in a mysterious way — to the human sense, but to the spiritual it is plainly Love that guides and directs in obedience to Love all that we commit unto Him.”
To those who may feel it is foolish to make ourselves a servant of God, Christ Jesus warned us in Matthew 6 : 24:
“No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.“
... to which Paul added the reward we can expect from each in Romans 6 : 16:
“Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?”
We can see that Judas' self-serving betrayal of Christ Jesus turned his name into a warning for all time, while the Master's “holy humility, unworldliness, and self-abandonment wrought infinite results.” (Ret., p. 91-92)
It becomes clear also that only through the faithful serving of God can we find ourselves elevated from servant to son of God, as promised in the Bible in Galatians 4 : 4-7:
“But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.”