Mark 10:43-45

CHRISTIAN SERVICE

‘Whosoever would become great among you, shall be your minister: and whosoever would be first among you, shall be servant of all. For verily the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.’

Mark 10:43 (R.V.)

So our Lord sums up for us the secret of His sway over our hearts.

I. The authority of influence.—We remember that our Master, albeit to the innermost circle of the disciples He spoke with joy of His commission from the Father, yet in His public teaching appealed in proof of His message to the conviction it inspired in the conscience of His hearers. To the simple and sincere the teaching commended itself; it went home to heart and will, and rekindled the flame of faith in God. ‘Lord,’ they said, ‘Thou hast words of eternal life’; that is, ‘You have given us by your teaching a spring of living faith in the living God.’ ‘Never man,’ they said, ‘spake like this Man’; that is, with such compelling authority upon the conscience. Our Lord’s authority, then, was an authority to which the honest heart could not but respond; it was the authority of influence.

II. Christ gave Himself.—The Son of Man came to minister, and what He ministered was Himself. He gave His life a ransom for many. And all true rulers of His Church must in like manner give themselves; and their success will, under God’s blessing, be proportioned, first, to the whole-heartedness of their devotion, and, secondly, to the breadth and depth of the manhood which they have to give.

III. Qualities of leadership.

(a) Goodness. ‘The grace of God was with Him,’ and grace, as we know, is God’s answer to human faith. Human goodness then means the heart right with God, ‘the conscience as the noonday clear,’ the desire lifted upward, the life lived from day to day in communion with the Father.

(b) Wisdom. We speak less often of the wisdom of the Master than of His holiness; but if we turn over the Gospel pages with this thought in our mind, we are met with abundant evidence of it.

(c) Courage. Every leader of men must be bold to take his own line in many things, following his own conviction. He will take counsel with those best fitted to advise; but in the end he will accept his own responsibility and follow his own judgment.

Goodness, wisdom, courage—the high virtues of redeemed humanity—all working by love, and all sustained by communion with God, these are the powers in the life which the servants of Jesus Christ—just because they are His servants—are called to minister to His flock

—Rev. Canon Beeching.