Mark 9:35 Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, "Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all."
At the beginning of this verse, “sitting down” indicates what a Rabbi would do when teaching; he would typically sit down. Jesus did this because He was about to teach His apostles something that would seem very foreign to them. The apostles had been arguing on the way there about who was the greatest among themselves. Jesus knew their hearts and was aware of this debate among his Apostles.
The
question at hand was, who was the greatest? Jesus could have told them what was
true, that He was the greatest, but did not focus on Himself. For an
illustration of the greatest, Jesus used the terms “very last” and “Servant of
all,” he, of course, was speaking of himself. Jesus was the greatest in the
Kingdom, so the last and servant of all was describing Himself. Jesus was
indeed first, but He took on Himself the last and servant to all.
No
one wants to be last; we find it difficult enough just to settle for second
place. The one that is the most important in God’s eyes is not the one that is
out to gain the most fame and status. The most important person in the Kingdom
of God is the one, that is like Jesus, willing to sacrifice position and
prominence and put themselves last and become a servant to all. Consequently,
Jesus was saying that last means first in God’s eyes, and this was not only
foreign to the followers of Jesus that day, but it is also still foreign to a
mass majority of people today.
The
desire of the heart of our Lord and Savior, Christ Jesus, is that we as His
believers and followers have a heart’s desire to be last and a servant to all.
To the world, the greatness of a person is gauged by how many people they have
serving them. In some ancient societies, it was stylish and trendy to allow
one’s fingernails to grow to great lengths to show that their hands could not
do basic tasks. This way, everyone knew that someone else was waiting on them,
hand and foot. This way of living is how the world sees greatness in a person,
but it is not how God sees greatness in His children. Jesus said that day, and
it applies to us today, that a true sense of greatness is not shown by how many
servants a person has but how many people we are serving.
Jesus
was not obliterating or eradicating any form of ambition; He encouraged us to
replace the aspiration to be served and dedicate our lives to serving others.
We all want to repay any debt for someone that has done a great service to us,
and no one has done a greater service than the one that sacrificed His life on
the Cross of Calvary, to pay a sin debt that we owed, that we could never pay.
God does not expect us to repay that debt, but the best way for us to show our
appreciation is to be of service and show kindness to all those around us. We
should pray and ask God to help us to see the ones around us as He sees them,
not as we view them. Furthermore, we should ask Christ Jesus to help us value
people the way He values them, and again not as we value them. In the heart of
our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus, last means first to serve, and first in the
eyes of God.
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