To Be Great… | Sunday, March 22, 2026

Then a dispute arose among them, as to which of them would be the greatest. And Jesus, perceiving the thought of their heart, took a little child and set the child by him and said to them, "Whoever receives this little child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. For he who is least among you will be great." Now John answered and said, "Master, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we forbade him because he does not follow us." Jesus said to him, "Do not forbid him, for he who is not against us is on our side." (Luke 9:46–50)

Jesus doesn't crush our hunger to be great—He redefines where greatness is actually found.

Status Anxiety Is Not New

There was a time before social media—before endless scrolling, swiping, likes, shares, retweets, and selfies. There are people, like my kids' generation, who don't remember it at all. The concept of the "status update" is interesting, because it hints at something very real: status anxiety. Even if you never plug into Instagram, Snap, or X, you still wrestle with it. It isn't new. Every culture, going back millennia, has mechanisms for determining where we fit in the social structure. We are social beings, so we are always negotiating where we land in the hierarchy.

The way we measure social status in 2026 might be new—achievement, influence, platform size, follower counts, likes, subscribes—but the desire to find our worth within society is ancient. Even in older generations, there were markers: a specific school, a person to study under, a degree, the right internship at the right time. A friend's son got an internship at Apple last summer, and it's now paved the way to a career. Every generation has its variables for establishing where you fit.

The First-Century Pecking Order

This was true in the time of Christ. There were complex matrices by which people established their place. One of the most important for the Jewish people was lineage. You could trace your line back to Abraham, through Isaac, Jacob, and Jacob's twelve sons, and your standing depended on your tribe. In Genesis 49, the tribe of Judah was identified as the important one, because they believed their Messiah would come through Judah. People established who they were by tribe, clan, and family.

Occupation mattered too, and it was usually determined by your father and grandfather. When we read that Peter, Andrew, James, and John were fishermen in Galilee, you can guess what their fathers and grandfathers did. There wasn't the upward mobility we have today; you found your lot in life. But there was one avenue you could choose: religious purification and ritual practice. You could be more pious than the next person and gain greater social honor.

Paul highlights this in Philippians 3. "Though I also might have confidence in the flesh... if anyone thinks that they have confidence in the flesh, I more so." He lists it: circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews—no Gentiles in his family tree—a Pharisee, blameless concerning the righteousness in the law. These cultural realities are deeply ingrained in us. Eventually Paul came to count all those things as loss for Christ, that he might gain and apprehend Him.

Status Anxiety Even in Ministry

These cultural realities don't vanish when we follow Jesus. In some ways they worsen, because we start ascribing spiritual significance to them. This is even true for people "in the ministry." What ministry, what group, what denomination, what church? Who's the head pastor, and is he a person of influence? People gauge themselves by the size of the church, the impact, the influence.

I know people who pastor churches of 10,000 or more. I sat in a meeting recently with a man whose church had 48,000 people at their Easter service—that's like half of Escondido. How is that not heady? Add a million social media subscribers, and what they say carries weight. People assume, "Well, clearly they must be anointed; they have the Spirit, because they have the status, the bestseller, the big ministry."

Some of you think this doesn't happen in ministry. But people in the church often say, "It must be so glorious to be in the ministry—you just pray and read the Bible." Au contraire. It's no different from the corporate structures where people establish status by deliverables and the size of their following. That's why books like Paul Tripp's Dangerous Calling and R. Kent Hughes's Liberating Ministry from the Success Syndrome become bestsellers—because it's a real problem. At pastors' conferences, within five minutes of meeting someone, the question comes: "So how big is your church?" Underneath it is the quiet comparison game: my church is bigger than your church, so I must be a better leader, more talented, more full of the Spirit. It sounds carnal—and it is—but it's part of who we are.

A Need, Not Just a Desire

This comparison game happens everywhere—in boardrooms judged by KPIs and contracts, on ball fields and in gyms judged by who's biggest and fastest, on social media judged by likes and shares. And sadly, it happens in families. If you're a parent of more than one child, you've heard the argument about who's the favorite. If you had only one, you could just say, "You're my favorite." I have four—they're all my favorite. But they've certainly talked about it.

The text before us is one of the most personally revealing and challenging in the Gospels. I've looked forward to it for a long time. It exposes something that is not only a desire but a need—something tied to the very thing that makes us human. Your dogs don't fight about who's the favorite, but we argue about who's the greatest. There's something deep in our soul here. And the amazing thing is that Jesus doesn't rebuke the inclination. He reframes it—and the reframe has profound implications for the weird world we live in. WEIRD is an acronym: the Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, and Democratic world—and we may be going through the most radical transformation of culture anyone has ever seen.

The Disturbing Context

This isn't a long passage—just over a hundred words—but it's packed. As with every passage, context matters. Here, Jesus has just healed the son of a man who came pleading on behalf of his child, who had both an illness and a spiritual component. Verse 43 says they were all amazed at the majesty of God. But in the midst of the celebration, Jesus said to His disciples, "Let these words sink down into your ears, for the Son of Man is about to be betrayed into the hands of men." This is the point where He begins His long road toward Calvary. They did not understand, and they were afraid to ask Him.

Then a dispute arose among them as to which would be the greatest. Wait—what? How do you move from marveling at the glory of Jesus, and hearing Him say He'll be betrayed and killed, to immediately arguing about who's the greatest? Is there anything more inconsiderate? It would be like a close friend telling you, "It's stage four, terminal, six to eight weeks," and you responding, "That's terrible. Hey, after you die, could I have your truck?"

Point one: sometimes our worst traits show up at the worst times. In Mark's account, when Jesus asks what they were disputing, "they kept silent." You'd think they'd realize you can't snow Jesus—because verse 47 says He, perceiving the dispute of their heart, took a little child and set him by Him.

Jesus Reframes, He Doesn't Rebuke

In Mark, Jesus says, "If anyone desires to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all." In Matthew 18, He says, "Unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself as this little child is greatest in the kingdom of heaven."

Don't miss it: "If anyone desires to be first." Ask yourself this morning—do you desire to be great? I know the answer, because I know myself. There's something in us that desires greatness. We're social animals, and even Jesus' closest apostles wrestle with this, because they're human like us.

This exposes a deep need. Maslow's hierarchy of human needs—a five-layer pyramid—places near the top the need for esteem: achievement, reputation, respect, recognition, status, standing. These aren't just desires; something about how we were made makes us need them. The hierarchy also includes relationship, affection, membership, and belonging. When we're excluded, it doesn't bode well for our psyche. That's why it hurt when you weren't picked for the team as a kid, and why the sense that you weren't the favorite weighed on you.

Remarkably, this story shows up in all three synoptic Gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—which even the most skeptical textual critics admit means it definitely happened. Point two: Jesus doesn't rebuke our need for standing, status, and esteem—He reframes it. This seems like the perfect moment to chastise them. "Guys, really? I just told you I'm going to die, and you're trying to get the corner office?" But He doesn't. Perceiving the dispute, He took a child and said, "He who is least among you will be great."

The Child with No Standing

The phrase "little child" is one Greek word meaning the smallest of children—possibly an infant. In that society, this child had zero social standing. Children were nothing in first-century Judea or Galilee. So this was the least of those who could be considered great, because the child has nothing to put forward.

How were the disciples judging greatness? At the start of the chapter, the Twelve were given power to preach and perform miracles. So imagine the conversation: "John, how many came when you preached? Only twenty? I had forty." "Bartholomew, how many miracles? Three? I performed eight." Then they fed the multitudes: "I fed four groups of fifty." "I fed twelve groups of fifty—guess I'm just a better servant, Peter."

Take it further. Peter, James, and John got to be with Jesus when He raised Jairus's daughter and at the Transfiguration. So Andrew knows: "Peter's my brother, but he's obviously the favorite." Peter says to John, "Well, I walked on water." James says, "Didn't he sink?" "Yes, but I walked on water." And shortly after this, James and John come asking to sit on Jesus' right and left in His kingdom—and in Matthew's account, they get their mother involved. That's the trump card. If ever there were a time to rebuke them, this is it. And He doesn't, not in the way I'd expect. He reframes it with a child who had done nothing, could do nothing, had no standing—the perfect stand-in for an essential lesson. This is textbook visual persuasion.

Greatness Is Measured by Being, Not Achieving

Point three: kingdom greatness is measured by being, not achieving. The path to prominence, according to Jesus, is dramatically different from our culture's course. In the Greek, Jesus essentially says, "He who is mikros among you will be megas"—he who is micro will be mega. In Matthew, "Unless you become as a little child... whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest."

At the very least, this means God does not value your worth by your output. Your value, your worth, the dignity of who you are—these have everything to do with who you are as the One who made you made you. In Genesis 1:26–27, before humanity ever succeeded in doing anything, God granted us inherent dignity, value, and worth by the mere fact that we were made in His image. "Let us make man in our image... male and female He created them. And God blessed them and said... be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, have dominion."

The crucial question for this cultural moment is the one David asked in Psalm 8: "What is man?" It's an anthropological question. I'll talk about this more at the AI discussion next Sunday night, because it's the key question. Many people creating the technologies that will revolutionize the Western world answer it by saying man is just the current highest form of consciousness, arrived at by random chance over billions of years, who will be subdued by something greater—something we may have just created.

But Psalm 8 says, "What is man that You are mindful of him... You have made him a little lower than the angels, but You have crowned him with glory and honor, and You have made him to have dominion." Notice the progression: God made us in His image, crowned us with glory and honor, and then gave us a task. The doing comes after the being. Purpose follows ontology—what He made you as, created in His image. That's crucially important in the coming years.

When Status Is Our Priority, Exclusion Becomes Our Instinct

How did the disciples respond? It's John who answers—and it's significant, because John was believed to be the youngest, and by that fact the least. "Master, we saw someone casting out demons in Your name, and we forbade him because he does not follow us." John says it expecting a certain response: "Good job, John, keep those outsiders outside. You're my favorite."

John is doing what we do when we think we're part of the greatness team—we gatekeep. We set up boundaries: it's us four and no more. John was doing what insecure people always do when they're unsure of their standing—we police the boundaries harder. Point four: when status is our priority, exclusion becomes our instinct. Gatekeeping is a symptom of status and identity anxiety. These two images—Jesus drawing a little child near, and John pushing an outsider away—confront us.

On Our Side

Jesus said, "Do not forbid him, for he who is not against us is on our side." Never forget: how you treat others reflects how you see yourself in them. The disciples wanted to control who could legitimately serve. John says, "We saw some rando without the disciple card doing our thing, and we said no." Jesus says, "He who is not against us is on our side."

That's revolutionary—especially since elsewhere, in Matthew 12 and Luke 11, Jesus says, "He who is not with me is against me." But here He says the opposite. We judge greatness by comparison and position relative to others: they're not in our church, our denomination, our team, therefore they're against us. Jesus says no—if they're not explicitly against us, they're on our side. That's challenging, because it might mean God can still use Catholics. I don't agree with them on everything, but there are going to be an awful lot of Catholics in heaven, maybe surprised they didn't have to go to purgatory. We'll just say, "Welcome to the club. Glad you're here."

Greatness Is Closeness to Christ

Sometimes our worst traits show up at the worst times. But thankfully Jesus doesn't immediately rebuke our inclinations—He challenges them. Point five: greatness is not determined by our output or our team, but by our closeness and connection to Christ. He's the great one. He brought this little child near to Himself. We're not saved by works, lest anyone should boast, but by His grace toward us.

This reality is going to become increasingly important as we move into a radical reshuffling of society. I've been deep in this research for three years, and I don't think I'm overselling it. With the emergence of agentic artificial intelligence, the position you worked so hard for—the education, the internship, the decades of labor—is going to be exposed. If your work touches a computer in any way, it will be discovered very quickly that your job can be done faster, cheaper, and more efficiently by a computer without you.

The crisis of meaning about to hit people who don't know they were created in God's image is radical—and it's an evangelistic opportunity for the church, because we have a great message: your worth is not determined by your output. These technologies should be seen as tools that help us do tasks, not overlords that rule us. But in an economic system that values the shareholder over the worker, the temptation will be to choose servers over people: "Here's a nice severance, and you can keep your computer."

What's the answer? It's an anthropological question. "What is man that You are mindful of him?" He crowned you with glory and honor. We have the only true answer—and you need to know it, because you may be in the cubicle next to the person who just discovered that the worth they pinned to their output got replaced by a computer that learned to do it faster, cheaper, and more efficiently. What is greatness? It's being close to Christ.

Closing Prayer

God, I thank You for this challenging text, but it's such a good lesson. Success and greatness are not contingent on our output, our standing, our achievement. Our greatness is found in the fact that You made us in Your image, crowned us with glory and honor, and gave us a task to perform—but those tasks don't ultimately establish who we are, our true identity. Help us to learn that lesson, and not only to know it but to frame it for others, because many people are going to experience a crisis of meaning and will need to know the reality of who they are. Teach us, change us, and help us to be a light shining to those in darkness. We ask this in Jesus' name, and all those that agreed said, Amen.