The Horror Of Omitting A Phrase

As Jesus and His disciples near Jerusalem where He will be crucified, Jesus makes some very bold statements.  As his disciples argue about who is going to be the greatest, Jesus tells them that the one who exercises the greatest humble dependence upon God will be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 

Then, just after He foretells His death for the third time, in such a sad contrast, James and John get their mom to ask Jesus to give her sons the seats of prominence at His left and right hands.  In their quest for greatness, which Jesus never rebukes by the way, they haven’t really heard the words of their Master.  They are going about it the wrong way, and the way that they are pursuing greatness leads only to death. 

And before we look at Jesus’ response, let’s remember the indignant response of the other ten disciples.  This isn’t some righteous anger because they have grasped true greatness.  This is the anger of men who are vying for the very thing James and John have just requested from Jesus.  And Jesus confronts it. 

But Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them.  It shall not be so among you.  But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve…

Matthew 20:25-28

Jesus tells His disciples that they are not to desire greatness in order to exercise authority or to lord it over their subjects.  To follow Christ in greatness is to become a servant, better yet, a slave. 

Don’t we see a million and one examples of Jesus doing this in the gospels?  He stops to lay hands on little children.  He is exhausted and hungry and yet feeds 5000 with a few fish.  He’s headed to Jerusalem to endure horrendous agony, but He still takes the time to explain His mission to his disciples for the hundredth time even though they don’t get it. 

What an example we have in Jesus, the Greatest of all who are truly great! 

And I think it is right here that most of the preaching in churches today stops.  Be like Jesus: serve others.  Go ahead.  You can do it!  And then you’ll get to go to heaven because you changed your behavior and served other people.  And horror fills my heart. 

To omit the last phrase of Jesus’ words is to omit the greatest and only essential thing that each and every one of us needs to hear.  Jesus of course wanted His disciples and wants us to serve others, but He gives us both the reason and the source of power that is necessary…and I do mean necessary…in order for it to be true greatness. 

…even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.

If Jesus was just a good man who served a lot of people and performed a lot of miracles and walked on water and then was brutally murdered, why ought we to follow Him?  So, let me get this straight, if I serve other people and perform miracles, am I going to be slaughtered like Jesus? 

You can’t tell people to be like Jesus and serve others without giving them the opportunity to accept what Jesus Christ has done to ransom a people for His own possession. 

If all we do is say “What would Jesus Do?” and wander around telling other people to act like Jesus, we are speaking death to them.  Not just a slightly incomplete message, friends, but DEATH. 

The message of life is that Jesus Christ died for our sins.  He lived a perfect life, He became obedient to the point of death on a cross, and three days later He rose from the dead in victory over sin and death.  His mission was to seek lost sinners and set us free by paying the ransom for our sins by His own blood. 

To emphasize the wrong part of Jesus’s response is to miss life. 

Before we ever have the chance to become like Jesus, we have to confess the fact that we have fallen infinitely short of His servant heart and His God-honoring righteousness.  Liberation comes from accepting Christ’s payment as our ransom, not from trying really hard to be a servant like Jesus. 

I’m amazed at what the Bible teaches us.  It tells us that we must keep the commandments of God in order to get to heaven.  And then it tells us that we’ve all failed to keep the commandments and we are on a one way track to Hell.  Unlike all of the self help manuals and “your best life now” books and the folly of religion, the Bible doesn’t teach us to become moral in order to get heaven.  It doesn’t teach us that we have the power within to change our circumstances and live a vibrant life in the fullness of God’s blessing.  It tells us that we are totally depraved and corrupt in our inner person, our heart of hearts. 

We don’t dig ourselves out of this grave by changing our behavior.  In fact, the more we try and better our situation, the worse it gets because we prove to only be after God’s stuff rather than God.  That is how depraved we are.  That is how deep our sin goes.  We don’t lack motivation to change, we lack right motives.  We don’t lack will power, we lack ability.  We don’t need behavior modification, we need new hearts. 

So to omit the heart of Jesus’s message by preaching behavior modification is horrendous and deadly. 

Thanks be to God that Jesus doesn’t tell us to try harder.  He tells us to die to ourselves.  He tells us to give up trying to appease God.  He tells us that He has come to pay our ransom.  He has come to die in our place.  He has come to take away the sting of sin and death.  And we can bank on His effectiveness to accomplish the very thing we need most. 

This message is folly.  Paul calls it a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Gentiles. 

Doesn’t our heart instantly want to conclude that each of us are good people?  Don’t we want to start defending ourselves when we hear what the Bible teaches?  Don’t we want to deny it as foolishness?  As folly? 

Our natural inclination only further proves the Bible’s teaching. 

We stand condemned.  Jesus offers life.  Not by telling us to serve more and be other people’s slave, but by telling us the Good News that He came to pay our ransom and free us from slavery to sin. 

To omit this is to omit the possibility of life. 

The Son of Man came to give His life as a ransom for many. 

Glory be to God and to the Lamb, Christ Jesus.