“Even as the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
– Matthew 20:28
Matthew 20:28 is one of my favorite verses, along with Mark’s account of it in Mark Chapter 10, Verse 45, one of my favorite verses in all of the Bible. Just listen to it one more time and let it soak in what Jesus is saying here. “The Son of Man, the Son of God, He came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.”
Now obviously we know from the rest of Scripture that followers of Christ are servants of Christ. This is one of Paul’s favorite descriptions of himself. He’s a bond servant, even a slave of Christ and he’s glad to be that way because he wants Christ to rule every single facet of his life, and he wants to serve Christ, his very identity. So yes, there is a sense in which we are servants of Christ as followers of Christ, but don’t miss the breathtaking reality that Jesus just expressed.
Be in awe of the ways Christ serves us. He came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.
Jesus came to serve you. He came to serve you, not to be served by you. This is what is revolutionary about Christianity. Christianity is not a list of things you need to do for God in order to earn your way to Him, in order to earn His, favor in order to earn His approval. The beauty of the gospel is that the God of the universe chose to come to serve us, to do what we could never do for Him, to save us from our sins, to bring us into relationship with Him and to enable us by the power of his spirit inside of us, to live the full abundant life that God has designed for us to live.
So let this transform your life. From the moment you wake up in the morning, just realize you wake up in the morning, Jesus says to you, “I’m here to serve you today. I’m here to serve you. I’m here to help you in everything you walk through today. I am your servant. I will give you strength where strength is needed, and I’ll give you wisdom where wisdom is needed.
Matthew 20:28 Reveals Jesus Incredible Posture Toward Us
I’ll give you peace where peace is needed. I’ll give you joy. And I’ll give you comfort when you need comfort. I’m going to serve you with my presence and my power and my grace and my mercy all day long. In fact, while you were sleeping last night, I was serving you. When you were unconscious, I was giving you breath and I was causing your heart to breathe, and I see myself …” this is Jesus. His posture towards you. He says, “I see myself as your servant.”
So Lord Jesus. I’m just meditating on Matthew 20:28, and I praise you, we praise you for coming, not ultimately to be served, but to serve, and to give your life as a rest for us, to pay the price for our sins on a cross, to make the way for us to be reconciled to God, for us to be in relationship right now with You as our servant, and Jesus, we need you. We just confess. I was pleading before you earlier today, I’m going to need You to serve. I need Your help. Jesus, I need Your help in so many ways.
We Need Jesus
I need Your help as a man, as a husband, as a dad. And I need Your help as a pastor. I need Your help. I can’t do it. And I can’t do it on my own. I can’t do anything on my own. I’m the most needy person on the planet. I am so high maintenance in this way. I am so needy and I praise You Jesus, for serving me with Your mercy, serving You with Your strings, serving me with Your promises, serving me with Your presence, and not just me, but to all who know You, to all who trusted in You.
We praise You as a servant and we pray You help us to live, realizing this, knowing that You serve us in all the ways that we need, but it sounds almost wrong to say that to You, the God of the universe, but we praise You that it’s real. This is Your grace. This is Your mercy. All glory be to Your name for being our servant. We praise You. We exalt You as Your servant and we pray for Your help in every facet of our lives. And we pray that You would use us to spread this breathtaking reality to more and more people. We praise You, Jesus, our servant, and we pray these things in Your name. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
