"If we are not careful, serving can become a way we try to earn the love we've already received from God, to 'pay Jesus back' for His generous grace. While churches preaching the grace of god would never suggest that serving or volunteering contributes anything to a person's salvation, a subtle tendency among us leads us to believe that serving is a way to stay 'in good' with God. therefore, unless serving is continually and unapologetically connected to the gospel, it can become a burden, a manipulator, a guilt reliever, or a back-handed method we employ to just keep serving ourselves...."
"...Serving as an attempt to pay God back for His grace is futile - not only because our best efforts would prove woefully inadequate in paying Him back- but because there is nothing to pay back. the gospel reminds us that the debt of our sin has already been paid in full..."
-Matt Chandler, Creature of the Word: The Jesus Centered Church, pages 68-69 (italics in the original)
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