Jesus the Greatest

We’ve heard of Abbas the Great, Yu the Great, Cyrus the Great, Darius the Great, Alexander the Great, Antiochus the Great, Herod the Great, Charlemagne the Great, Constantine the Great, Akbar the Great, Alfred the Great, Wilhelm the Great, Louis the Great, Catherine the Great, etc. Over 90 “greats,” including Christian figures like Babai the Great (an Assyrian church leader), Bruno the Great (an Archbishop of Cologne), Joannicus the Great (a Byzantine monk and hermit), Michael the Great (Patriarch of the Syrian Orthodox Church), etc. But no one calls Jesus the Great, although, by his definition, he would be the only “great.”

He said to the disciples on the road to Jerusalem,

“If anyone wants to be great (mega), that person should be a servant (diakonos).” (Mark 10:43)

A few years later, the disciples looked back at Jesus’s life and summarized it:

“He didn’t come to be served (diakoneo) but to serve (diakoneo).” (10:45a)

This verb, diakoneo, occurs only four times in Mark’s Gospel, two times besides this verse. In his wilderness temptation, the angels served (diakoneo) him (1:13). After Jesus healed her from high fever, Peter’s mother-in-law got up and served (diakoneo) them, the disciples (1:31). The other Gospels agree with one exception: Martha who fussed with Jesus about her sister, Mary, not helping her serve (diakoneo) (Luke 10:40). To the recollection of the disciples, no one served Jesus.

On the other hand, he served many by healing them, feeding them, freeing them from demonic oppressions, raising them from the dead, turning their shame into glory (as he did at the wedding in Cana), sheltering them (as he did the woman they wanted to stone or the man they chained in a graveyard), and loving them – even a man who walked away from following him. He didn’t come to be served but to serve.

He wasn’t like the rulers who lorded over people or the greats who exercised authority over them (Mark 10:42). He was a diakonos (servant) who served (diakoneo) them. By his definition – “If anyone wants to be great (mega), that person should be a servant (diakonos).” (10:43) – he alone was qualified to be called “Jesus the Great,” not all the historical “greats.”

But he did one more service:

“He gave his soul a death payment (lutron) for many.” (10:45b)

This noun, lutron, was pregnant with meaning for the Hebrews, as it occurs in several Mosaic laws. For example,

“If a bull gores and kills a man or a woman, that bull must be stoned to death. No one may eat its meat. By its death, his owner is innocent of the death. If that bull gored three days earlier, the previous day, and this day and the master witnessed it and did not kill it, and it kills a man or a woman, that bull and its master must be stoned to death. But if the deceased person’s family decided to impose a lutron (death payment) on the head of the master, instead of death, the master must pay all of it without exception.” (Exod 21:28–30)

Elsewhere, Moses said,

“When you count the children of Israel in their districts, each one must give a lutron (death payment) for his/her soul to the Lord. If not, a plague will come on that district and destroy them all.” (Exod 30:12)

The disciples understood that Jesus wasn’t a servant alone; he voluntarily offered his soul as payment for the impending deaths of many. He was a servant par excellence! The truly Greatest.