“Not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved, specially to me, but how much more unto thee, both in the flesh, and in the Lord?” (Philemon 1: 16). Paul describes Onesimus as “above a servant, a brother beloved.” Being a servant is the first step, but it is not the last. King Benjamin taught “that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God.” It is not always easy for us to treat everyone around us as part of our family. Many people may give us good reason to distrust, dislike and even hate them. It may be such a struggle sometimes to serve others that the best that we can do is consider them as fellow beings and try to remember that however little love we may have for those we serve, we do love our Heavenly Father and we are going to grin and bear it and serve with as little complaining and murmuring as we can manage. But God does not want us to consider the people around us as merely “fellow beings.” He may appreciate that we are providing service, and He may accept that we are serving in His name and ultimately for what we believe to be His benefit, but this will not be enough. The Law of Moses teaches that we should love our neighbor as ourselves (Leviticus 19:18). Neighbor is certainly a step up from fellow being. We may be more inclined to help our neighbor out than we would a complete stranger or especially an enemy. But we can see that loving and treating and serving others as we would a neighbor is another step in the right direction, but it too is not enough. When a certain lawyer tried to nail down the specifics of who counted as a neighbor and asked Jesus to weigh in on the matter, the Savior gave us the parable of The Good Samaritan. He taught us that we have to serve and to love those around us to a much deeper and higher and fuller degree than any of us might be imagining. For the man left for dead on the road to Jericho, one who was in the service of his fellow beings might have called for help. One who was trying to love his neighbor might make sure he got to the hospital. But one who was above a servant, even a brother beloved would not only get their brother to the hospital, but they would pay for his care and then come back to check on him. We talk often about service in the gospel and it is good and righteous and a necessary first step in our transformation from selfish, slow to trust, in it for ourselves jaded kind of folks into beings of pure love like our Father in Heaven. But we have to reach above and beyond service. We have to keep exercising faith and descending deeper and deeper into humility and praying with all of the energy of our souls to be filled with the pure love of Christ so that we can leave service and servants and fellow beings and neighbors behind and look out at the whole human race through God’s eyes as our brothers and sisters whom we love unconditionally and for whom we would do anything. I know that every single person alive today, and all of those who have gone before, and all of those who have yet to be born are my brothers and sisters and I pray that someday we will all ascend to the level of love for each of them that we can leave the idea of service behind and become above a servant and instead be beloved brothers and sisters.
