The Servant's Heart

The Servant’s Heart:

Right now I’m in not-so-sunny Southern California. A group from our home church in Forney, TX came out here to Torrance, CA for a conference with smallgroupnetwork.com, which is affiliated with Saddleback church.

The key speaker last night prefaced the discussion with Mark 10:42-44, “Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.”

The speaker’s point was something incredibly counter intuitive and counter-culture, i.e. leadership is typically a form of manipulation rather than extravagant service.

A common thread that you might pick-up throughout my blog posts is the idea of altruistic service. Because our God is a God of commUNITY and love - altruistic service is the most natural expression of God’s inherent, essential, and eternal character.

Going all the way back to Genesis 1:26-27 we see that humanity was created by God in the image (community) and likeness (altruistic servants) of our Trinity Creator.

We quickly find out in Genesis 3 that our bent, inclination, predilection, and knack is for autonomy and that which is self-serving - NOT - that which is altruistic and “others-minded.” We know based on two observations:

First, Adam failed in his God-ordained ministry “to cultivate her and watch over her” (See Gen 2:15). When you read that passage of Scripture your translation might read something like, “to work it and take care of it” as if referring to the Garden of Eden. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The pronoun used here is feminine - not neuter. God was referring to the woman He was about to create from Adam’s body. Working the ground/soil was a consequence of sin - not God’s ordained purpose for humanity/men (See 3:17).

Adam failed in his altruistic service/ministry to cultivate his wife -AND- he failed to watch over her. We know this because when Eve eventually eats from the forbidden fruit we then read, “She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it” (3:6). The only reason we fail at altruistic service is because it gets trumped by selfishness. The woman ate, but the man had already failed in his altruistic service/ministry by neither cultivating nor guarding his God-ordained gift from God, i.e. his wife, Eve. That’s why we read in Romans 5:12, “sin entered the world through one man,” not that it entered through one woman.

Secondly, because Adam failed we find the woman getting sucked into a theological debate with the crafty, wily, underhanded, scheming serpent. What begins as an apparently “innocent” discussion quickly terminates in full-blown rebellion. Eve’s relationship with her husband was neither cultivated nor protected by Adam. The enemy pointed out the remedy for this malady, and the woman had full-on buy-in; “the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.”

So back to Mark 10:42-44, Jesus is pointing out not merely that there is a problem with the way “the Gentiles” lead, but is rather pointing out that there are only two styles of leadership: 1) God’s intended way, which is altruistic service within the context of loving community, and 2) Our way: self-serving, power-hoarding, manipulative, oppressive, coercion, and extortion.

We are broken before we ever enter into this world (See Ps 51:5), and while our relationship with God is redeemed in Christ there is still this fleshy “old-self” than refuses to go gently into that good night. Even in our relationship with Christ we are frequently selfish, self-serving, consumers of grace rather than transformed children of God.

If we truly are being conformed (Rom 8:29) and transformed (2 Cor 3:18) into the image of Christ then Jesus is saying that the way we live is diametrically opposed to the pattern and wisdom of the world.

The trend in Christian circles today is to create servant-leaders, which is utter poppycock. Jesus didn’t tell His disciples to consider leadership at all. Jesus told those men, “whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant.” Our LORD was not talking about feigning humility and washing feet in order to manipulate our way into positions of authority and power - NOT AT ALL!

Service is not the natural overflow of leadership - selfishness and corruption are.

Leadership is the God-ordained overflow of altruistic service.

Matthew is explicit in telling us that Jesus didn’t come to earth to lead or to be served, but to serve, “the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Your goal can be to become a better leader, but it will invariably fail due to our “old self” twisting and perverting things to a self-serving end. Or your goal can be conformed and transformed into the image (inherent commUNITY) and likeness (altruistic service) of Christ our LORD.

In serving we jars of clay become wonderfully broken so that we never need consciously consider being poured out; rather we have no recourse but to spill the water of life God supernaturally causes to well-up within.

Blessings,

-Kevin