Greatness Through Service
Learning from the Lord how to carry responsibility
Begin by reading Luke 22:24–30 and John 13:1–17.
When we are entrusted with responsibility, whose good are we seeking?
A role can give us opportunities to help. It can also awaken a desire to be recognised, deferred to, or protected from ordinary work. We may want to contribute while hoping that contribution will establish our importance.
The disciples of Yeshua, also known as Jesus, bring that tension into view. Luke records their dispute over greatness. John shows their Lord taking a towel and washing their feet. Read each account in its own setting: His words and His example both teach us how responsibility is to be carried.
The disciples still need to learn
The Gospels are accounts of Yeshua’s life, teaching, death, and resurrection. These passages bring us to the period immediately before His arrest. The disciples have travelled with Him and heard His instruction.
In Luke, they are sharing the Passover meal, Israel’s remembrance of deliverance from Egypt. Within that gathering, a dispute arises about which of them should be considered greatest.
Their nearness to Him has not settled every desire within them. People can be involved in a faithful work and still need correction in the way they understand their place.
That makes the passage useful for examining our own participation. The question is more than whether we have joined a worthy undertaking. What do we want from our place within it? How do those desires affect the people serving beside us?
Yeshua changes the measure
Yeshua describes kings exercising lordship over the nations and people in authority being called benefactors. A benefactor is someone regarded as doing good for others.
Then He tells His disciples that their life together is to take a different shape. The greatest is to be as the younger, and the leader as one who serves.
The instruction reaches their use of position. A claim to benefit others cannot replace the actual care given through responsibility.
The title we hold may say something about our role. Our conduct shows how we carry it. Do we listen? Do we attend to needs? Do we make the work possible for others, or mainly expect them to support our standing?
Yeshua brings greatness into contact with service rather than leaving it within a competition for recognition.
The One among them serves
He asks who is normally considered greater: the person at the table or the person serving. Then He speaks about Himself:
“I am among you as he that serveth.” — Luke 22:27
His own presence becomes the measure placed before them. The Lord they follow is serving among them.
This gives their participation a relationship at its centre. They are learning how to carry responsibility from the One whose care they receive.
A desire to follow Him must therefore reach the way we treat those affected by our work. His service questions the assumption that prominence should free us from attention to another person’s needs.
The passage calls the disciples to learn His manner of being among them.
Kingdom responsibility remains in view
The following verses speak of the disciples continuing with Yeshua through His trials. He appoints a kingdom to them as the Father has appointed to Him and speaks of their place at His table and their responsibility concerning the twelve tribes of Israel.
These are particular words to His disciples. We should not turn their specific appointment into a promise that every reader will occupy the same position.
Notice, however, that the teaching about service is followed by language of kingdom responsibility. Yeshua is not making every role disappear. He is teaching the people who will receive responsibility how to carry it.
The Father’s appointment stands behind His own. Their future belongs within that relationship and purpose.
For our reflection, humility need not mean refusing every responsibility. It means receiving a role without making personal superiority the reason for exercising it.
Authority and a towel
John begins the footwashing account by describing Yeshua’s love for His own. He knows that He is returning to the Father and that the Father has given all things into His hands.
Then He rises, lays aside His garments, takes a towel, pours water, and washes the disciples’ feet.
Keep the opening beside the action. His knowledge of His authority accompanies His humble care. He does not need to conceal His place in order to serve.
The task is concrete. Feet are washed and dried. The people beside Him receive bodily care from the One they call Master and Lord.
We should allow the actual action to remain before us. Its meaning is not helped by treating every detail as a secret symbol or rushing past the work itself.
The Lord uses His hands to serve people whose feet need washing.
Peter must receive before responding
Peter initially refuses to let Yeshua wash his feet. Yeshua answers that without His washing Peter has no part with Him. Peter then asks for more to be washed, and Yeshua explains further.
The conversation shows that this is more than a courteous gesture. Receiving from Yeshua is necessary to Peter’s belonging with Him. The passage also distinguishes the one who will betray Him from those He describes as clean.
Before asking what the disciples should do, we must attend to what they receive from their Lord. Their participation is held within dependence upon Him.
For our reflection, service can become distorted when we are willing to give but refuse to acknowledge our own need. We may imagine that useful people must always occupy the place of provider.
Peter’s exchange calls us to listen when the Lord tells us that receiving from Him matters.
An example that reaches action
Afterward, Yeshua asks whether the disciples understand what He has done. He affirms that they rightly call Him Master and Lord. Then He tells them to wash one another’s feet, following His example.
The instruction preserves both His lordship and their practical response. Serving is not beneath the Lord; it must not be treated as beneath those who follow Him.
The words one another also matter. Care is to move between the disciples. It is not assigned permanently to whichever person has the least influence or finds it hardest to refuse.
We can consider that pattern within our own shared work. Who repeatedly prepares, cleans, follows up, or attends to the needs that others leave behind? Is that labour recognised and responsibly shared?
The question is not whether every person must perform every task. It is whether status has become an excuse to avoid the humble contribution genuinely within our responsibility.
Understanding becomes practice
Yeshua concludes this part of His teaching by connecting knowing with doing. The disciples are to practise what they have understood.
Admiring humble service is easier than offering it when nobody is impressed. An explanation of the example can remain incomplete in our lives if ordinary care is continually left to someone else.
Our response can begin with a real task. We may share necessary work, listen to someone affected by our decisions, acknowledge another person’s contribution, or receive correction about how we have used authority.
The Lord’s example gives these responses direction. His disciples are to practise humble care with one another.
Responsibility in the Lord’s company
Luke addresses the desire for greatness. John makes humble service visible. Both readings place the disciples before the Lord whose example shapes their participation.
Looking back, we have seen resources offered, burdens shared, and provision made available through everyday work. Here, the One we follow teaches us how to carry our own place within such work.
The question becomes personal: am I using responsibility to care for people, or using people to preserve my importance?
Bring that question honestly before the Father. Let Yeshua’s care teach us to receive, serve, and take our place with humility.
Search the passages yourself
- What are the disciples disputing in Luke?
- How does Yeshua describe the leader’s conduct among them?
- What does His statement about serving add to the instruction?
- What does John tell us about the Father and Yeshua before the footwashing?
- What does Peter need to receive from Him?
- How does Yeshua connect His example with what the disciples are to do?
Continue reading: Romans 12:1–13 and 1 Corinthians 12:4–27. Notice how lives offered to God, different gifts, and mutual belonging shape the service of the whole community.
Scripture quotations: King James Version.