“The greatest among you shall be your servant.”
– Matthew 23:11
Huh. Eight words that go together totally against the grain of the way the world thinks. Matthew 23:11 totally goes against the grain of the way our sinful hearts are wired. We think we’re wired to think that the greatest among you shall show him or herself superior, in this way or that way, but Jesus totally turns that on its side and says, “No. The greatest among you is the one who is serving, the one who is putting others’ interests above their own. The one who is laying down their life to help others, to care for others, to build up others.” “The one who is greatest among you,” Jesus says, “Shall be the one who is serving you.”
Lord, help us to lay down our lives today as servants of people all around us.
So just think about that today. What if we lived this way? What if our approach, when we got up in the morning… Now we saw in Matthew Chapter 20, Jesus is our servant, he came to serve us. So we wake up in the morning and Jesus says, “I’m here to serve you today”. And so then what if we lived out of the overflow of that, and we had the same posture toward the world around us. Toward the people in our homes, toward friends, neighbors, people we work with, and we just said, “I am their servant.” If we just see ourselves that way, with that kind of posture and perspective, it would change the way we live, if we looked at ourselves as servants of others.
Matthew 23:11 Reminds Us How to Be Great
So, Jesus, we pray, help us to live like this. We praise you all over again, for coming not to be served, but to serve, to give your life as a ransom for us, for the way you serve us with your mercy, and your grace, and your strength, and your peace, and everything we need, all day long as we look to you. And so, we pray that you would help us then in turn, to be a servant to others. God, help us to serve the people in our homes, our neighbors.
Help us to serve them well, and to love our neighbors as ourselves, just as we are focused on taking care of ourselves. God help us to be focused on taking care of people around us, on helping people around us, in our work that we’re doing, whether it’s in Zoom calls during these days, or just however we are working, help us to see ourselves as servants of others, help us to serve people with the gospel who don’t know it.
Living Like A Servant
So God, help us to lay down our lives, our pride, our reputation, to share the gospel with those who don’t know it. God, we pray that you’d help us to be servants of others. Give us this kind of heart, transform our hearts, our minds, our perspectives, we pray, that we might not think like the world thinks, and live like the world would encourage us to live. Help us to lay down our lives today as servants of people all around us. Jesus, we know this is your posture. This is Philippians 2, five through 11. So help us to have your attitude, your mind, your heart, the heart of a servant. We pray this 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.
