The Encourager – March 28, 2024 – Maundy Thursday

What is Maundy Thursday? Maundy comes from the Latin for "mandate." On this day, stooping to wash His disciples' dirty feet, Jesus gave us the mandate to "love one another."

How do we love one another? I’m starting to see that love often involves sacrifice and service. My friend Gitta calls it “dying to self.”

I sometimes find that reading a different translation of the Bible makes a passage strike me in a new way. My devotional reading from the Living Bible this morning featured 2 Peter 1:6, 8. “Learn to put aside your own desires so that you will become patient and godly, gladly letting God have his way with you. The more you go on in this way, the more you will grow strong spiritually and become fruitful and useful to our Lord Jesus Christ.” The English Standard Version says the key traits we are to develop are “faith, virtue, knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly affection, and love.” One trait leads to the next, with love being preeminent. If we continue to grow in these attributes, we become “effective” and “fruitful” for Christ.

In other words, as we grow in love, we serve Christ, and thus bring Him honor.

Paul’s letter to the Philippians says, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

Jesus is the supreme example of humbly putting aside His own desires to give greater significance to others. Although He knew that the Cross would mean He must suffer great personal pain, He looked to “the interests of others” to accomplish our salvation. Jesus obeyed God’s mandate to love.

Lord Jesus, of all days, Maundy Thursday is about humbly putting other people before myself. How can I love others better today? I’m sure You will provide opportunities – You always do! By Your grace, please open my heart and mind to see these occasions for what they are: divine calls to love those around me, whether believers or unbelievers, and thereby love You more. May my first ambition not be to bring glory to myself, but to bring glory to God.

God is faithful,