Pastor John, you recently tweeted this, "Serving is the measure of greatness," Matthew 20, 26, "because it takes greater power to conquer selfishness than to command service." Take a moment to explain that tweet for us today. What I had in mind was that the normal view of power is that it includes the ability to command somebody, to get your way.

If somebody has power, they can tell others what to do, and then that serves them. And that's what Jesus had in mind. He refers to it in Luke 22, "The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors." He knows what the normal, on-the-street meaning of power is, and of course, in one sense, that's true.

But what makes it not power is that we're just born this way. Children are born demanding. They want mama to do for them right away, and we stay like that unless we're converted. We're very demanding people. We have a sense of entitlement. And so in one sense, it takes as much power to command people as it does to fall off a cliff.

It's like falling off a log. It doesn't take any effort at all to be selfish and have power in that way. So Jesus comes along and he says, "Now whoever would be great among you must be your servant." So he reverses that, and as I look at my own heart, and as I look at the history of the world, it takes a huge power to not act powerfully.

Proverbs 16, "Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty. He who rules his spirit is more powerful than he who takes the city." So the proverb and Jesus are thinking of another kind of power that is power over your selfish love of power that is rare, and therefore Jesus wants it to happen for his glory.

I was just reading—no, I was just looking at the trailer of J.I. Packer's new book, "Weakness is the Way," and what struck me about it in this regard is that the subtitle of the book is "Life with Christ, Our Strength." And I think that gets at the key to what Jesus is really after, what's really new with Jesus.

Jesus isn't just resurrecting a proverb and saying, "I'm your new wise man, and I have more proverbs to tell you." He was saying, "I intend to be your strength now. I've come to die for your sins, to sever the root of the control of the love of selfishness in your life, and to be for you what you thought you had to be for yourself." And so when you read commands from Paul, he says things like, "Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might." And I toil, struggling with all the energy that he powerfully works within me.

And the one that I love the most is 1 Peter 4, 11, where Peter says, "Let him who serves serve in the strength that God supplies, so that in everything God will get the glory through Jesus Christ. To him belong the glory." And so when Jesus is calling us to be servants, contrary to the world's way of thinking about power, he means he's going to sever that horrible love of demanding selfish entitlement, and he's going to be our portion, and he's going to give us strength so that when we act against those natural inclinations by faith in him, he gets the glory, not us.

And so that's what I meant when I said there is a kind of greatness and a kind of power that is much greater than the power to command service. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. Please email your questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org. At DesiringGod.org you'll find thousands of other free resources from John Piper.

I'm your host, Tony Ranke. Thanks for listening. (end) (music) (music)