When Jesus came as the long awaited Messiah, He did not play it out according to the anticipated script. Of course, He fulfilled the prophecies that had been given about Him, but over the centuries those prophecies had been gradually turned into something consistent with something that the religious heart of man dearly loves—straight-line power and control.
And what we see, early in the ministry of Christ, is that vision of messiahship set forth powerfully—by the devil in his temptation of Christ. “Here are the kingdoms of men. You may have them all now. Just say the word, and You can walk right in and assume control.”
But Jesus shook His head. No. He did not refuse because He did not want those kingdoms—they were the reason He had come. But He refused to have them that way.
He did not intend to conquer by killing, but rather by dying. He did not intend to seize authority, but rather to bestow authority, thereby receiving it back again. He did not come to triumph, but rather to kneel. He did not come to boss the disciples around, but rather to wash their feet. He did not come to be the first, but rather the last. And He did not come to be the last, if by last we mean self-absorbed, whining victimhood. Because in God’s economy, the last shall be first, the servant assumes the throne, the sacrificial lamb conquers the world, and the elder shall serve the younger.
But where does this leave us? We are the servants of this Jesus. We are His disciples, and Jesus taught us explicitly that we were to be like Him. But we do not become like Him so that we might have fellowship with Him. Rather, we have fellowship with Him and in this fellowship we become like Him. Another way of putting this is that we are transformed by grace, and not by works. But in any case, we are transformed.
This is not an exhortation to you to make sure the job gets done. It is a statement of the job already accomplished, and which you may have wondered about.