Who Is The Greatest?

At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Matthew 18:1

We seem to have this indefatigable urge to rank ourselves from the greatest to the least. Lists abound ranking teams, players, people of influence, wealthy folks, rich companies, strongest men and most beautiful women. Yes, there does seem to be a limit there somewhere. No one wants to know who is the homeliest living garbage can washer, at least I didn't find a list of the candidates although Google did produce a bunch of images of garbage cans, which is very strange. Yeah, anyway, we always seem to want to know the best of the best. I suppose it all came to a peak when the 12 disciples, already a select group to be sure, approached the Master with that question: Who is the greatest?

Jesus would go on to give a couple of measures by which we can know the greatest: whoever humbles himself as this little child, and whoever is the servant of all. How well are we doing at attaining and maintaining those two lofty goals? I don't know about you, but if I were to ever see myself as say the servant of all, I would probably brag about it and immediately fall to the sin of pride. How are we to become the greatest without tumbling right down to the leastest?

That must be why the salvation of 'me' requires surrender to Him! I in my strength can neither attain nor maintain the humble state of the child nor become the servant of all without some self-serving motive behind it; that motivation would be to both save myself and become the greatest in the kingdom of Heaven by some sort of personal merit. It just won't work for poor fallen me; fallen imperfection just cannot reach out and grab perfection.

The One who saved me is the same one who humbled Himself from the throne in Heaven to be born as a little child. That same One died on the cross at Calvary as the servant of all. Hmm, guess I now have a couple of clues as to who is the greatest. He is!

Jesus is the greatest, and I am content to be chosen by Him,
Bucky