IBS Application for Matthew 20:26-28

“It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.”

This is the great difference between leadership in the world and leadership in God’s Kingdom: That leaders in the world exercise their authority and their position to exploit the people subject to them, while leaders in the Kingdom use their authority and position to serve their people.

Jesus states in this very passage that He came to give up His own life that many might be purchased out of their bondage. He came to serve as the ultimate authority over all creation and to be a servant to that creation. He is the greatest and the first among us all, and He was here with us to serve us.

And He served us by laying down His life and what He wanted. We see His willingness to be a servant several times throughout each of the Gospel accounts, but the one moment that I find is extremely relevant to this topic is the moment when He was in the Garden of Gethsemane praying. When He asked if there was any way other to accomplish His task, He demonstrated that He had a human desire to not have to endure suffering; however, He was still obedient to the will of the Father, which is why He still concluded His prayer by saying, “nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.”

Had Christ acted upon this desire, He would have abandoned His duty and He would have been like every other ruler of the world. But He didn’t. He showed greater integrity than the world’s leaders do, and He went on to carry out the greatest act of service the world will ever see: dying for the sake of the entire world, that all might not perish eternally, but so that all might have salvation from death and live eternally with God.

I find the message in this passage is still relevant to one of my previous IBS’s, particularly the same one I spoke of in my application for John 12:26, which was that I would lay down my own desires in order to better serve my team. But again, I feel as though God is challenging me in a different way this time. I feel that He is compelling me to step up more in our team meetings and not be afraid to mediate and offer input, especially when I feel like an idea for a group project is one coming from Him and not me. I feel like He’s calling me to grow as a servant leader.


In order to better grasp what that looks like practically, my application for this next week will be to examine the moments of service in Christ’s life, and seek to glean practical applications from these examples that I might serve my team in the same ways He did, always keeping in mind that leading in this manner means looking to the interests of the group rather than to my own interests, and that I don’t always have to be the one to lead, because God has placed other leaders in my team as well, and they need a chance to grow as well.

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