Greatness God's Way Works Every Single Time

Is it acceptable for Christians, first of all, to want things — to desire to have things that they do not really need for life? Is it acceptable? Secondly, is it acceptable for a Christian to desire to be great — great in relation to other men? And furthermore, is it acceptable not just to desire to be great, but to desire to be preeminent?

Here is how Jesus deals with that question. It was initiated by James and John asking to sit at the right hand of God in the kingdom. But Jesus called them to himself and said — Mark 10:42 onwards:

“You know that those who are considered rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you. But whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant. And whoever of you desires to be first shall be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.”

Desire Is Not the Problem

Notice first what Jesus does not do. He does not say stop desiring. He does not say quash that desire. He does not say never desire anything beyond the basic necessities of life. He emphatically does not rebuke them for wanting greatness.

Now there is a religion that sees salvation as the end of all desiring — just stop wanting things. But that is Buddhism. Are we Christians Buddhists? Absolutely not. Jesus says: okay, you want this? Great. Here is how to get it. But whoever desires to become great, and whoever of you desires to be first — he does not say no, desiring is wrong.

And that is interesting, because the word translated as lust is otherwise translated as strong desire when it is directed toward something good. So no, we are not Buddhists, although too often evangelicals have a Buddhist mindset that says wanting things beyond the bare minimum is sin, is wrong, is pride, is selfish ambition. But are we wiser than the Lord Jesus? Do we have a better idea of what the Christian faith is than the Lord Jesus himself? Well, that would be called blasphemy.

Is it legitimate for a Christian to desire to be great? James and John said: I want to sit by your right hand in the kingdom when the kingdom comes. The other ten were furious at these upstarts. But does Jesus rebuke them? No, he does not. The desire for greatness — does he quash it? Does he call it sin? Does he label it pride? Does he say desire comes before a fall? Does he say this is covetousness and you are breaking my commandments? He does none of those things. There is no rebuke, no chastisement, no tutting, no shaking of the head, no rolling of the eyes. He simply outlines the terms and conditions.

Paul confirms this in 1 Corinthians 12:31: “Earnestly desire the higher gifts.” That is not just an open door — it is an exhortation to pursue something greater than what you already have. And again, speaking about leadership in the church in 1 Timothy 3:1: “If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble thing.” So it is not a mean thing to desire to become great. It is a noble thing, according to the Word of God.

Maybe you have been told that desire beyond the basics of life is wrong, that ambition is evil. Well, there is at least one religion which says that any kind of ambition is always wrong — Buddhism. To be truly spiritual is to be free from desire. Christians do not follow Buddha. We follow God’s Word. You are free in Christ to pursue your godly ambitions. “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.”

The Path to Greatness: Service

So Jesus says: you want to be great. Okay. Here is the way. Mark 10:43: “But whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant.”

It does not matter if you are a pastor, a builder, a livestock man, an arable farmer, a quail expert, or a MacBook Pro ninja — whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant. The universal path to greatness is becoming a servant. It is service. And this is a door that is permanently open. Christ has opened it and said: this is the way. We can depend upon that.

Now, the word for great here is megas — literally megas in the Greek. It is okay to want to be megas. Our Lord says again in Matthew 23:11-12: “The greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” So this is the divinely guaranteed path to become great. James 4:10: “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.”

You might have to, like Joseph, humble yourself for a long time in service. Jacob was 71 when he left home with nothing. He was 91 when he came back out of the land of Laban. Moses was 80 before God called him again. None of them knew when their time of exaltation would come. But they served. And God honoured his promise.

Who Can Pursue This?

Jesus says whoever. So if you are young — congratulations, the path is open. If you are middle-aged, it is open to whoever. It is a legitimate goal, and the path to greatness is paved with service.

Now, what does a servant do? Does a servant do whatever they want to do? No. A servant serves a definite person or group of people. 1 Peter 4:10: “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God’s very grace.” Ephesians 2:10: “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”

So the works of service are all mapped out for us. We just have to walk in them. Greatness is not just for the elite. You do not have to know Hebrew or Greek. You do not have to wear glasses. You do not have to be a professor or a minister of religion. Whoever, whoever of you desires to be great.

It is interesting that he says: whoever desires to become great among you — shall be your servant. He does not say shall be my servant. Does that mean we do not serve God? Of course we serve God. We are by nature God’s servants. But what does God, our master, tell us to do in order to be great? We serve our people. We serve the people that God has put in front of us to serve — those who we are uniquely equipped to serve.

Think of Jeff Bezos. Whatever you think of him, he is a tremendous servant in one sense. He asked: what do people want that I can give them? And first it was books, and then it was everything else. He became great by service. Sam Walton of Walmart figured out what people wanted and gave them it at scale. He was still found in his later years on his hands and knees with a measuring tape in foreign supermarkets, measuring how wide the aisles were, learning how to serve his customers better. He served the little people, giving them lower prices every day. And he became great.

We may not be in the retailing business. But we are in some sort of context where there is a group of people that only we can serve. I am trying to serve men who are stuck in life, because I am an expert at being stuck in life. And I have to do the work of figuring out what they want and trying to give it to them.

The Path to Preeminence: Bond-Service

But it gets more interesting still, because beyond greatness there is something else. Mark 10:44: “And whoever of you desires to be first shall be slave of all.”

The Lord has opened the door not just to greatness but to preeminence. This is tremendous. Do you want to be first? God says: okay, here is the path. And again, it is whoever — boys, girls, men, women, old, young, middle-aged, the door is open.

Now, the first word was diakonos — servant. A servant can go home at night. A servant can change employer. A servant can choose a different line of work. But the word used for first is doulos — slave, or more helpfully, bondservant. A bondservant is bound. During the time of their bond, they are much less free than a servant. They are committed.

So to be great, you serve. But to be at the pinnacle — to be first — you have to bind yourself. To whom? To the group you are trying to serve. Maybe you want to serve working mothers organising a busy day. Maybe you want to help, as I do, Christian men who feel stuck in life and are frustrated by false teaching. Whatever your field, if you want to be first in it, you have to be a bondservant. You cannot break away and say: well, I am bored of this, I am going to do something else. As soon as you say that, the path to preeminence is broken.

Paul said in 2 Timothy 2:4: “No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him.” And Luke 9: “No one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” If you really want to be preeminent, you plough a straight furrow. Once you are bound, you stay bound.

Christ is preeminent in all things — Colossians 1:18. We cannot be preeminent in all things, but we can be preeminent in something. Maybe the pond is very small in which you will be first. Maybe it is a niche that is very tight. Maybe it is a geographical area. But whoever of you desires to be first shall be slave of all.

The Example of Mary Steele

I want to tell you the story of Mary Steele. She is in heaven now, gone to her reward. Maybe fifty or sixty years ago, she went to Ghana as a very young woman, with another girl, to a tribe known for their powerful voodoo. People would come all the way from Accra, the capital, to get this powerful juju. She arrived there to learn the language and eventually to translate the Bible.

And they laughed at her. She was only a girl. But she persisted. Then the other girl left, and she was on her own. But she worked for thirty-plus years in that language. If you are a Bible translator, you cannot say: I am a year into this translation, and I am just going to move on. No. She stuck at it. She became a bondservant. She bound herself to those two tribes.

Did God make her great? Did God give her the preeminence? I saw her when she came to England when I was in the Wycliffe Centre. She was still working hard, even into her seventies. She got leukaemia, she recovered, and then she died. But even late into the night I would see her working. And in the end, they wanted desperately to make a statue of this woman, so great had she become through service. She had conquered that tribe by bringing the Word of God to them. Of course she said no, she did not want a statue — she wanted to make Christ great.

She was not rich. She never married. She bound herself. And she was made great and preeminent by God’s guaranteed path.

Wishing Is Not Working

There is a last thing I want to say. There is the world’s way to greatness — self-exaltation. There is the biblical way — service and bond-service. And there is a third way, which does not work at all: wishing.

I want to be great. I want to be number one. When I was a child, because I had heard strongmen talk on television, I said to myself: I am going to be the world’s strongest man one day. But of course I never picked up a weight. So we can wish to be great, but if we are not willing to pay the cost — and the cost is simply service — wishing will not get us there.

Maybe you have just been putting in your time at your work, thinking: I will just clock in, do the minimum, I know it is what God has put in front of me but I do not really like it. But knowing this fact — that God has opened a path to greatness, even preeminence, in a godly way through service or even bond-service — you can say to yourself: here is a path. Here is a guaranteed path, a well-worn path. It is as sure a guarantee of greatness as the prophecy given to Joseph was when he was younger.

Not that we will have our parents bow down before us — rather, that we will be exalted in due time if we humble ourselves.

So let us desire to be great — great in service. And let us desire even to be preeminent, to have that godly preeminence of bond-service. The Lord has not closed the door to desire. He has not closed the door to greatness. He has not even closed the door to preeminence. He has opened it and given you the path. And it is not even a path — it is the path. He is the Way, after all. The door is open. So if you want it — go get it.