Redemptive Leadership: Jesus as Servant, Jesus as Ransom

The ‘Jesus-as-servant’ motif of leadership undeniably takes us beyond a secular, humanistic perspective on relationships and social structure.

We have to go further still.

You will be hard-pressed to find a “Christian model” or view of leadership that gives serious attention to the REST of the passage about Jesus coming to serve rather than be served.

“AND to give his life as a ransom for all” (Mark 10:45b).

His orientation was not merely service, but redemption. He wasn’t merely a servant who used humble posturing and lowly demeanor to get people to do what he wanted; he was the sacrifice that would ultimately set people free.

It is time for those of us in contemporary Christian leadership to rediscover a theological rigor that interprets Jesus in light of his redemptive and atoning work, the incarnation and the image of God, and the re-creating of that image through the Holy Spirit. A fascination with Jesus as servant without these other core facets leaves us lopsided and in danger of making Jesus as a servant in our own image.

To paraphrase Iranaeus, the Bishop of Lyon and early church father, in Jesus, God came to be one of us in order to make us one with him. What does that fundamental reality suggest for how we think about leading as Jesus did?

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