Let it not be so between you!

[AI translation] Not long ago, I said in a sermon that there is a word that captures the whole essence of the Christian life. That word is joy. Well, I might as well say now that there is another word that also captures the whole essence of the Christian life, and that word is service. In this story that I have read, this is what the Lord Jesus teaches us: to serve! The climax of the whole passage is undoubtedly this instruction: 'He who desires to be great among you, let him be your servant. What is essentially new, what is qualitatively different, what Jesus Christ has brought into this world is precisely the spirit of service, the spirit of knowing how to serve others, the spirit of wanting to serve. This is what I want to talk about now. But in order to ensure that what the Word says does not remain just a moral teaching for us, we must begin where the passage begins.You remember, this is how it begins, the Lord Jesus and his disciples going to Jerusalem. On the way, Jesus Christ says stumbling, gruesome things to the twelve disciples, "Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man is delivered to the chief priests and the scribes, and they condemn Him to death, and deliver Him into the hands of the Gentiles; And they mock Him, and scourge Him, and spit on Him, and kill Him; but the third day He will rise again." (Mk 10:33-34) No wonder the disciples listened to this strange announcement with horror, fear and bewilderment. Of course, we already know that everything happened exactly as the Lord Jesus had foretold. The Son of Man was indeed handed over to His enemies, the chief priests and scribes, who did indeed condemn Him to death, took Him up into the temple and defeated Him, did indeed deliver Him into the hands of the Gentiles, handed Him over to the heartless, cruel Romans to be crucified on the cross. They actually managed to gang up against Him in such a way that they ended up killing Him! Yes, we already know this. But we also know something else. That, in spite of all this, it was not they, the enemies of the Lord Jesus, who were victorious, but there on Calvary Jesus Christ won a great victory of far greater significance and impact than His enemies could have imagined. For here divine love triumphed over the world of sin, here divine mercy and compassion broke the power of human hatred. Here something quite different from what usually happens in the world happened: that one did not strike back when beaten, did not curse when reviled, did not get angry when hated, did not defend and protest when crucified, asked for blessings from heaven when killed. What happened here is a turning point in the history of all humanity. For here the Son of Man, who is also the Son of God, took upon Himself all the sins that we human beings had accumulated before God, so that the way to God was completely blocked, that is, He took them all upon Himself there on Calvary and took them out of the way. And in doing so, he made the sad, hopeless situation between God and man very hopeful, that is, he did the greatest possible service for mankind that anyone could ever do for man: he reconciled us to God! He paid with His life and death for the debtors, for us!
For behold, therefore came the Son of Man to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many! Do you sense that there is some new law here, which is in stark contrast to the old? Indeed: in Jesus Christ a whole new world begins, a new order of life, the kingdom of God. In this kingdom of God, there are completely different and new laws from those of the world. Here it is obvious that the stronger is not the one who can hit harder, but the one who can love better. It is not the one who is powerful and saves the world, who is able to bully others, who can kill with more destructive weapons, but the one who can sacrifice himself for others. The law of the world is domination, Jesus Christ's is service. The instrument of the world is violence, power; Jesus Christ's is love, sacrifice. The world is a world of law, Jesus Christ is a world of grace. In the kingdoms of the world, people fight against each other, they want to dominate each other, to subjugate each other, to exploit each other, to take advantage of the weaker, but in the kingdom of God, people help each other, serve each other, sacrifice their lives for each other if necessary.
This spirit is so diametrically opposed to the spirit of the natural man that even the people living in the immediate vicinity of the Lord Jesus cannot understand it. What nonsense these disciples are talking... They have heard many times about the kingdom of God, and still they can only imagine in a worldly formula that what happens there will happen as in the earthly revolutions: what was below will finally be above. In this matter, "Grant us, that one of us may sit at your right hand, and another at your left, in your glory." (Mk 10,37) it says: "I have been going badly, I have suffered greatly, now I hope my time will come at last and I will be on top!" The desire to dominate is so inherent in the human instinct that it even wants to see in religion a new kind of means of gaining the upper hand over others. If he cannot by arms or otherwise, he wants at least to exercise power over souls in the name of Jesus Christ! Oh, how many sad examples of this in the two thousand years of the Church's history! From humble believer's pride, from silent contempt for non-believers, to the Inquisition! Nothing is further removed from the spirit of Jesus Christ than this very imperiousness, this will to rule. We read, The other disciples became angry with John and James because of this vain question. But this was not because they saw the anti-Christian animosity of this request, but because we men usually find it hardest to bear in others that sin which is in us in a strong degree. They were indignant against the two sons of Zebedee because they wanted to sit on those two seats, then there in the glory of Christ, and now behold, they want to overtake them!
The Lord Jesus sees this very well, and therefore he says not only to the two, but to all twelve, that is, to all Christendom, to all Christ-followers of all time: Look, this is the spirit of the world, this is not the law of the kingdom of God. Power, violence, dominion over others, these are all things that man is willing and able to do on his own. That's what the world does. That's why there are wars, that's why there is so much suffering, despair, misery among people! But not among you! You belong to a different world order, you have a different temperament, you react according to different laws, you already have that other world, the kingdom of God, present in you on this earth. And in the kingdom of God, violence, power, domination, command, weapons, can do nothing, can do nothing good, can do nothing to make people happy, content, peaceful, reconciled with each other. This world has already been bankrupted many times by this impulse, this lawfulness! Let it not be so among you, as in the world! The kingdom of God has a better law: 'But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your servant; and whosoever will be first among you, let him be servant to all'.
I call your attention to an interesting phenomenon. Twice the word "servant" occurs, in the original text there are two words here with different meanings. One word is diakonos: it means a person who does not undertake an obligatory service for the benefit of another, but only a service of kindness and love. The Greeks of the time of Jesus considered this service to be something inferior. Plato said, "How can a man be happy if he has to serve for the sake of someone else?" Jesus says: "Whoever wants to be great among you, let him be your servant" - your deacon. The depth of such service measures a man's true greatness! The other word is "doulos", the servant, the slave, the person who serves under compulsion, on command. More object than man. He cannot have a will of his own. For the Greek man, this was the most abominable, the most disgusting, the lowest, the lowest way of life. It was a dirty word! And so imagine what the disciples must have heard when the Lord Jesus said to them, "He who would be first among you must be a servant, a slave, a bond-servant, a bond-servant, a bond-servant to all! A scandalous expression indeed! But the Lord Jesus himself became one, a slave. In the words of the Scriptures, he "humbled himself, taking the form of a servant", becoming a trash, a scum, a rag on this earth! These are strong words, but listen for once to the way the Lord Jesus spoke these words and concepts! It is not a subtlety, but a very harsh, hard, often harsh, often painful reality. "But it shall not be so among you; but he that will be great among you shall be your servant; and he that will be first among you shall be servant to all." This is a very different law of the kingdom of God...
And ever since Jesus Christ walked this path before us, the light of the Lord's glory has shone on the lowliest of ministries. Since then, service has been the only truly Christ-like, and therefore highest, way of life. Since then, the true heights of human existence have been in the depths of self-denial and service in love: living for others, doing good to them in the name of Christ, sacrificing a piece of life. Because true service is always the sacrifice of a piece of life for the benefit of someone else. Don't sigh that your whole life is one big toil, chase, slave-robot! It can be done as Christ says: "...he who would be great among you, let him be your servant; and he who would be first among you, let him be servant to all". A disciple of Christ, even if he is not obliged to do a service, does it joyfully and out of love, and what he is obliged to do, he does joyfully and out of love, and therefore, in essence, voluntarily. A disciple of Christ can always say: I cannot be forced, because I do what I must do, I do it willingly, with love, and even more than that! He who makes you go one mile, go with him two! And then you have not done it by force, but voluntarily, freely!
Observe what a different air is suddenly breathed in the wake of such a service! If I do something like this for another person, even if it is only to give him my seat on the tram or to help him carry a parcel in the street: the distrustful face changes at once into a smile of amazement and friendship. Service out of love, however small, never repels, always attracts. The other becomes a servant through it. When I try to serve in a truly Christian way, to be of service to others, what happens is that the invisible iron curtain that every man has lowered in his heart is rolled up and disappears! And this certainly does not happen if I were to come at another with my fists or even a cannon. The violence of power distances, makes enemies: only service brings people into real communion with each other! Think of this in the days of the coming week, that you are where you are, not for domination, but for service. And if you are caught up in the old passion to rule, let the word of the Lord Jesus ring back to you: 'Not so among you! You there behind the counter, or behind the desk, or by the machine, or in the kitchen, or among your children, will not become great and first by being tyrannical, by making your power felt, by intimidating people, by humiliating others, by strangling, by exploiting those above and below you, but by undertaking your obligatory and non-obligatory service with joy and love! Believe me: we can only give something new, something better, something meaningful to this world and to our time, if we truly have the same zeal that was in the Lord Jesus Christ! If we truly have a Christ-like attitude towards our fellow human beings!
Do you feel how new and how different this temper is from the world? So new and different that it cannot be realized by human power. It is not enough to have good intentions, advice, determination. The secret of this life of service is in the One who says: "For the Son of man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many." (verse 45) He was indeed ever here to minister to others from morning till night, to reach out His hand, His word, His divine power to the poor, the sick, the erring, the sorrowful. He served not only with his life, but even more with his death. His death is a ransom, His blood is shed on the cross for the forgiveness of sins! He who accepts His greatest service: He frees him to be able to serve others willingly, out of love. Don't wait for others to become others: start for yourself, from now on, with Christ!
Amen
Date: 12 January 1959.