Biblical servitude seeks what’s best for the other person over what the other person wants in the moment. To do this effectively, you need to be confident in your knowledge of God’s Word. You need to be seeking to daily grow in wisdom. It doesn’t need to be a “my will versus your will” situation. You can serve others well to the degree that you are personally submissive to God.

“How do you serve without becoming a doormat?” This question, posed to me during a marriage counseling session, gets to the heart of a common misunderstanding of the biblical call to serve others. The short answer is that Jesus’s call never entails allowing another person to assert their will over you as you passively obey. However, we often struggle to understand key distinctions due to our failure to properly define our words.

Part of the problem is that many of us have never seen biblical servitude modeled faithfully. We hear “serve others” and imagine “be a slave to others.” That misunderstanding is how we end up with Christian parents organizing their lives in obedience to the fickle will of their toddler. We’ve all witnessed the flustered mom desperately trying to placate the selfish desires of her ungrateful teenager as veteran parents from a previous generation look on shaking their heads.

To add to the confusion, trendy parenting philosophies like Gentle Parenting encourage parents to cater their nurturing style to the emotional lives of their children. The experts tell us to stop correcting bad behavior and instead to listen for clues indicating what’s going on in their inner lives. Christians hear “gentle” and immediately think of our gentle and lowly Savior. We fail to recognize that Gentle Parenting and Christianity may be operating under two different definitions of the word. Our Savior was gentle, but he also knew when to be confrontational. Clearly, it’s possible to be both.

Jesus is always the model.

In his excellent book, Authority: How Godly Rule Protects the Vulnerable, Strengthens Communities, and Promotes Human Flourishing, Jonathan Leeman writes, “Never does [Jesus] take orders, as would an actual servant—not even from his mother. Instead, he defied both the religious and civil authorities. He demonstrated authority over people, demons, sickness, the elements, and death.

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