Simply Good News: The Welcome Announcement of Jesus the KingНамуна

Day Four: The Son of Man Came to Serve

The Good News that the early church announced represents a reversal of power. Ordinary rulers do things in ordinary ways by using power, force, or threats. Jesus taught his disciples, We’re going to do power another way: through humility, weakness, and service to others in love. He insisted that whoever wanted to be first must be last (Mark 10.44).Indeed, when Peter tried to force his will by striking the high priest’s servant, Jesus not only healed Malchus, he also reprimanded Peter, telling him to sheath his sword. He asked rhetorically, ‘Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me?’ (John 18.11). 

We hear in Jesus’ words echoes of the prophets Daniel and Isaiah, who envisaged that God’s plan to become King would be accomplished through a Servant, one like a Son of Man. His is a different kind of power that the Gospel announces and wields. This is not brute force or superior argument, but something that goes deeply and intimately into every area of life: the power of love. God’s kingship would be a different sort of rule and reign altogether, with Jesus as the Servant King, the one who came to serve and redeem (Mark 10:45).

Jesus of Nazareth went to his death believing that this would be the ultimate Good News moment. This was when the Creator’s plan to rescue Israel and the whole world would at last arrive at its strange, dark conclusion. This was the climax of the Good News that Jesus embodied. As the early Christians looked back with the hindsight of resurrection and the new understanding which came with the gift of the Spirit, they came to see Jesus crucifixion not as a defeat, but as a victory.

The power of the world looks like cruelty, violence, and the threat of pain and death. The world’s rulers abuse their power and rely on malice and manipulation when there should be gentleness, kindness, and wisdom. Jesus’ power is a totally different sort that centers on truth which justly judges, and grace that powerfully loves. We really only know who God is when we take the risk of looking at Jesus and reconfigure our ideas about God around him, seeing ourselves as objects in his world and agents infused with his Spirit of self-giving and other-focused love.  

Question to consider:

How does putting the victory of God into practice differ from other forms of power in the world?

Living it out: 

Identify an area of unresolved tension in your life and how the transformative power of the Gospel might apply.