Matthew 20:28

Even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto.

A Divine mission

I. The son of man. Humility combined with dignity. Man was the offender, man must suffer the penalty. Not a fictitious manhood, but real like our own. This ought to attract us to Him, for He is akin in nature and sympathy.

II. He came. The errand unique as the Person who undertook it. He came voluntarily on an errand of mercy.

III. Not to be ministered unto, but to minister. He had not a selfish thought in His soul. Does He want servants? Thousands of angels are His chariot. He served in the workshop, home, amongst His disciples. As the Son of Man in heaven he continues a kind of service to His people.

IV. And to give his life. We have no lives to give. They are forfeited to Divine justice. His death was voluntary. Christ did not come into the world merely to be an example, or merely to reveal the Godhead. His sacrifice was substitutionary.

V. A ransom. Every male person among the Jews belonged to God, and must be redeemed. The price was the ransom. Jesus redeems us from the curse of the law.

VI. For many. The word “for” has a vicarious meaning. “He gave His life instead of many.”

1. Man is not redeemed from the bondage of his sins without a price. -No one goes free by the naked mercy of God.

2. That price must be a life. Not merely a character. The question has been asked, “Who receives the ransom?” Not Satan. Satan has no rights. It was paid to the Great Judge. This is a mystical way of speaking. The sufferings of Christ vindicate the law and render mercy possible.

3. What is the result of this? Man is redeemed. He is no longer a slave. Did Jesus Christ redeem you? (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The Saviour’s character, life, and death

I. His character Christ Divine. This being premised we can bring forward two satisfactory reasons why He called Himself the Son of Man.

1. Because He would gradually develop Himself.

2. Because our concern with Him principally lies in His assuming human nature.

II. His life. “Came not to be ministered unto,” etc. This fills us with astonishment, when we remember the place from which He descended. Our Saviour could derive nothing from external appendages.

1. Admire His condescension.

2. Resemble Him therein,

III. His death.

1. Consider Him as a ransom.

2. It was intentional.

3. It was voluntary.

4. It regards the personal esteem He has for His people.

5. We see here where a poor burdened conscience can alone find relief.

6. Let the love of Christ strike your minds.

7. If He has ransomed you, you are not your own. (W. Jay.)

A ministering Christ

I. The negative object of Christ’s coming-“Not to be ministered unto.”

II. The positive object of his coming-“To minister,” etc.

1. The scenes of His private life. Christ a carpenter.

2. The scenes of His public life. Wearisome toils. Lesson-

(1) Be clothed with humility;

(2) Gratitude to Christ for His love;

(3) Repentance. (H. L. Nicholson, B. A.)

Christ the servant and the Saviour of His people

I. The service he rendered to man by his life.

1. He came not to be ministered unto as regards His external authority. He might have excited the admiration of the world by His outward show; but He was poor.

2. He came to minister as regarded instruction.

II. The blessing he effected for man by his death.

1. The blessing procured.

2. The means by which this blessing was procured. “He gave His life,” etc.

3. The number for whom this blessing was procured. (J. Sibree.)

True greatness the result of personal service

The patriot is great, but he has served his country. The philosopher by the force of his genius has enlarged the sphere of human knowledge, thus of the greatest use to mankind. The same true in religion. Christ was not introducing a strange precept when He said that the men who are the most eminent in life are the most literally the servants of the public.

1. The greatness thus derived from usefulness may be augmented or decreased by the meanest of those you employ.

2. The touching reference of our Lord to His own case. (H. Melvill, B. D.)

Christian humility

He is the most lovely professor, who is the most lowly professor. As incense smells the sweetest when beaten the smallest, so saints look fairest when they lie lowest. Arrogance in the soul resembles the spleen in the body, which grows most, while other parts are decaying. God will not suffer such a weed to grow in His garden, without taking some course to root it up. (Archbishop Secker.)

Christ stooping to save

The mother, wan and pale with incessant vigils by the bedside of a sick child;-the fireman, maimed for life in bravely rescuing the inmates of a blazing house;-the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae;-Howard, dying of fever caught in dungeons where he was fulfilling his noble purpose of succouring the oppressed and remembering the forgotten;-the Moravian missionaries, who voluntarily incarcerated themselves in an African leper-house (from which regress into the healthy world was impossible, and escape only to be ejected through the gates of death), in order that they might preach the glad tidings to the lepers,-all these, and many other glorious instances of self-devotion, do but faintly shadow forth the love of Him who laid aside Divine glory, and humbled Himself to the death of the cross.