We’ve all done it. We hold the door for a stranger, they walk through without a word, and something petty inside us mutters, “You’re WELCOME.” That may slide at a gas station, but it loses its humor when it follows us into church.
Who is this for? We find out the moment nobody notices. If we quit the minute we go unthanked, we were never serving Jesus. We were serving our need to be seen, and Jesus happened to be nearby. If we only show up for the people we like, we’ve made ourselves the head and asked Him to bless our guest list. And if we’ll only serve where there’s a microphone, a title, or a shout-out in the announcements, we’re not offering Him anything. We’re auditioning.
The church already has a head, and the position is filled. “He is also the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything” (Colossians 1:18, CSB). First place in everything. Not first place after the pastor’s approval, our own preferences, and whether anybody said thank you.
Serving Him frees us from all of that. “For God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you demonstrated for his name by serving the saints—and by continuing to serve them” (Hebrews 6:10, CSB). The love is for His name. The saints are just where it lands. Nobody saw us stack the chairs? He did. Nobody noticed the meal we dropped off? He did. No one saw us get to church early to put out parking signs? He did. And He keeps better records than the church office, I promise.
Which makes the least glamorous jobs in the church some of the purest. Nobody gets famous holding a door. There’s no fan club for the person who shows up with a box of muffins, and nobody livestreams the handful of people praying over an empty room before the first song. Those jobs come with almost no applause, so they’re very hard to do for the wrong reasons. All that’s left is doing them for Him.
He takes every one personally, in the best way. “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40, CSB). The door held, the muffins delivered, the prayer nobody else heard. Jesus doesn’t count those as “close enough.” He counts them as done for Him.
So Paul’s ask makes sense. “Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship” (Romans 12:1, CSB). A living sacrifice doesn’t check the room for applause first. It’s already been given away, and it knows to Whom.
So we serve. Thanked or unthanked, noticed or invisible, for the people we like and the ones who make us mutter at gas stations. It’s for Him. Jesus is the head of His church, He sees every bit of it, and He is worth it.