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Jesus came to save small people, because that’s the only size people come in. The fact that he came to the lowest and smallest of humanity is stunning, but not as stunning as the fact that he came to humanity in the first place. The biggest step down for Jesus was leaving heaven. After that giant leap, the steps between human social classes were tiny. The best of our palaces wouldn’t be that impressive to a man who is at home on heaven’s throne. Nothing we have on our tiny speck of dust in the stars could compare to where he came from.
From his vantage point, it was easy to see through the pretension of human power and privilege, the lie that somehow collecting piles of rare and beautiful things around us makes us more valuable, the fiction that somehow getting other people to serve us makes us more worthy of being served. When Jesus came, he came all the way down to the bottom rung of humanity’s ladder of success. He didn’t play the Game of Life by our rules. His journey of humiliation went against our normal assumptions about what power is for and contradicted our normal priorities for what life is about.
He came as Lord, and yet washed dirty feet like the lowest of servants. He took our ladders of success and purposefully flipped them over.
No wonder God said in Isaiah that “my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways” (55:8). He came as Lord, and yet washed dirty feet like the lowest of servants. He took our ladders of success and purposefully flipped them over. Then he said, “Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them” (John 13:17).
You will be blessed if you use the ladders of success to go down in service, instead of up in personal ambition.
You will be blessed if you give yourself to serve others, instead of using others to serve yourself.
You will be blessed if you use your leg up over others as leverage for your arm, reaching down to lift them.
In God’s kingdom, “the last will be first, and the first will be last” (Matthew 20:16). In his hierarchy, “the greatest among you will be your servant. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted” (23:11-12). Read that again. Can you believe it?
In God’s kingdom, greatness is measured in service, and honour is measured in humility. The path up to glory is sloped down. As humanity sweats and climbs and searches the high places for blessing and joy and satisfaction, Jesus tells us that all of these things and more are waiting, right under our feet, in common things like the mud between the toes of fishermen.
This feels backwards. Heaven’s hierarchy looks upside down. The reality, though, is that our world is upside down, and God’s kingdom is right side up. Jesus’ seemingly topsy-turvy way of life was exactly the way we were all intended to live. The reason it looks so strange to us now is because our rebellion against God has led us so far from his good plan for us. We’re the ones that tipped the world over, with all of its ladders and dreams. Jesus is the one that sets it right again.
If you let him reshape your perspective, you’ll begin to see the reality that honour in God’s kingdom is far more valuable than any amount of human status or influence. You’ll begin to recognise the humility of your smallness, and the exaltation of being loved by God and gifted a role in his unfolding epic of history. You’ll begin to appreciate the value that God has placed on the humans around you, and you’ll stop measuring that value by the greatness of their dreams or successes on Earth. You’ll begin to see that every single human you ever meet is specially created to be a living picture of God himself, with an eternal soul that will continue long after the greatest of human accomplishments is forgotten. When you see these things, your priorities change. When you know these things, your dreams change.
In God’s kingdom, greatness is measured in service, and honour is measured in humility. The path up to glory is sloped down.
Your approach changes, too. Think about what rooms you’ll be in this week. Who will be there with you? When you walk in and see them there, what will your goal be? The answer to that question is more important than the room itself, or your position in it. It doesn’t matter if it’s a boardroom or a classroom or a warehouse or a house party. It could be the gardening club or the Garden City Rugby Club—if there are people, there are ways you could work to impress them. There are things you could do that might get their attention. There are conversations you could have that might increase your status, especially if you can have them with the right people.
If you focus your dreams and your energy on your own advancement, you really can get ahead of others. And you can run ahead of God’s plans for you, ahead of people he loves, ahead of the joy of giving, and ahead of the honour he gives to those who humble themselves in service like his. “The greatest among you will be your servant.” A servant should not enter the room to advance themselves. A servant should enter the room to serve. How will you serve the people in the rooms you spend time in this week?
This is an extract from Dream Small by Seth Lewis. This encouraging book reminds us that when we know Jesus, we are free from the world’s definition of success. We can listen to God’s word and direct our dreams towards the things that he says matter most, even if they are small and unimpressive in the world’s eyes.
Seth Lewis is an elder at Midleton Baptist Church on the south coast of Ireland and is involved in a variety of ways in a partnership of local Irish churches who are working together to plant new churches, provide Bible training through Munster Bible College, and run youth camps through Munster Christian Camps. Seth and his wife, Jessica, have three children, a turtle and a small garden. Seth writes weekly at sethlewis.ie.
