Week 22: Jesus on Ambition

Jesus on Ambition | Mark 9:33-37 & 10:35-45
Series: A Year in the Life of Jesus

We often assume that Jesus was against ambition. Don’t try to be great. Don’t want to be first. Just be humble. Except Jesus never actually says that. When James and John approach him seeking the most prominent seats in his Kingdom, Jesus responds, “Whoever wants to become great among you will be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you will be a slave to all.” Jesus doesn’t condemn ambition; he reframes it and redirects it. The problem isn’t that the disciples want their lives to matter. The problem is what they have come to believe will make their lives matter.

There is something good underneath much of our ambition. We want our lives to matter, to make a difference, to contribute something meaningful. But sin disorders even our good desires. Sin takes the desire to do something meaningful and twists it into the need to be seen as somebody significant. This is where ambition becomes pride and where we begin constructing what Christian writers have called the false self—the version of ourselves we need others to see, admire, affirm, need, respect, or recognize so that we can feel okay about ourselves. Like the disciples arguing about who was greatest or James and John asking for the best seats, we are no longer content to be part of something meaningful; we need to be seen as meaningful.

Pride, however, rarely announces itself so obviously. It appears in our need to explain ourselves whenever we are criticized, our inability to celebrate another person’s success, our need to be needed, our reluctance to ask for help, our insistence that things be done our way, or our tendency to compare our lives with everyone around us. Pride can be loud or quiet. It can brag or put itself down. It can dominate people or please people. Beneath all these different expressions is the same preoccupation: me. Do they notice me? Do they need me? Do they respect me? Where do I rank? The false self is the exhausting work of trying to prove that I matter.

Jesus offers something radically different: “It is not so among you.” In the kingdoms of this world, power is often used for superiority; in the Kingdom of God, power is used for service. Jesus doesn’t eliminate the pursuit of greatness—he gives us an entirely different picture of it. Greatness looks like asking: Who can I serve? Who isn’t being noticed? Who cannot repay me? Where can I give myself away? And Jesus doesn’t merely command this kind of life. Through the gospel, he frees us to actually live it. We don’t have to get the best seat, win the argument, be indispensable, have the most successful kids, or make everyone understand us. In Christ, we are already known and loved by the Father. We can give away the seat because we no longer need worldly greatness to tell us what we are worth.

This is how the gospel begins healing the false self. What was empty becomes full, what was painful becomes healed, what was busy becomes rested, and what was fragile becomes secure. When our identity is received rather than achieved, success can be enjoyed without defining us, criticism can hurt without destroying us, and failure can disappoint us without becoming a verdict on who we are. The Holy Spirit lovingly exposes the places where pride has wounded us, not to shame us, but to heal us. The same Spirit who exposes our wounds also binds up our wounds, applying the healing truth of the gospel: You are known. You are loved. You are forgiven. You don’t have to prove yourself anymore.