What thoughts raced through the angels’ minds as they beheld their Creator stoop down to wash human feet? How much those burning seraphim must have wondered. They themselves blushed to expose such creatureliness before their King — worshiping the Son around the throne with feet wing-covered (Isaiah 6:2). What did they think now to watch the Holy One take water and clean those calloused, sweaty, unbeautiful toes?

Did they sing with the psalmist, “What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” (Psalm 8:4). Did they sympathize with Peter’s astonished “Lord, do you wash my feet?” Did they see something right in Peter’s insistent “You shall never wash my feet” (John 13:6, 8)?

From heaven’s view, this moment must have outstripped Jesus’s many signs and wonders thus far. The angels had stood by when the Son created the world, when “the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy” (Job 38:7). What was multiplying bread compared to speaking the land and wheat into existence? The calming of a storm to the very creation of seas and wind and waves with a mere word? They already knew their God had power to raise the dead; they knew him as the God of all life.

But this sight was different. The King of kings played the part of slave of slaves. Had their eyes seen anything like it since he took on human flesh? Armies of angels watched their Captain — the eternal God from the Father’s right hand — bend before his creatures to wash their feet, hours before those feet fled in fear. Here bowed an act beyond omnipotence, an act Matthew Henry named a “miracle in humility.” Former wonders proved he was God; this proved what kind of God he was.

Psychology of Service

Oh, to see this act as angels did. Or better, to see this act as God does. Thankfully, the Holy Spirit moved John’s pen to capture it. Contained within his account are two utterly profound, God-revealed details that I too often have read past.

For years, this is how I (and perhaps you) recalled the spectacle:

Jesus . . . rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him. (John 13:3–5)

We remember merely the external act. Jesus washed feet, and so should we. But how much better is the Bible’s telling than our remembering. Two discreet phrases get omitted:

During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper . . . and began to wash his disciples’ feet. (John 13:2–5)

The Holy Spirit, who searches even the mind of God (1 Corinthians 2:10), gives John insight into the very thoughts of Christ just before he bent low to serve. We get an open window into Jesus’s meditations of soul. These cannot be irrelevant details. John will not allow Jesus’s hands to wash until we know what sceptered him for service. The Spirit gifts us with the psychology of Jesus’s heavenly servanthood as he foreshadowed the coming cross.

So let us think after his two thoughts before he rose from dinner. And may what we see animate a lifetime of lowly service.

1. I am rich in God.

Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands . . . rose from supper . . . and began to wash the disciple’s feet. (John 13:3–5)

That the Father had placed “all things” into Christ’s hands was no new thought for him. He felt the fullness from the beginning of his ministry: “The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand” (John 3:35).

Christ’s service, here and from the beginning, was not an impoverished service. He did not consider that he had nothing in his hands, or had nothing better to fill them with than human feet. He never needed from his disciples; thus, he could give richly to his disciples. A rich King condescended.

By the Spirit, John makes known that Jesus again deliberates upon all that God had given him. He felt the treasures over in his mind and heart. What golden coins did he feel?

He felt the work, so far accomplished, that the Father gave him to do (John 17:4) — the teachings, the perfect acts of righteousness, the mighty works that a world full of books could not contain (John 21:25) — with the chief jewel now before him. Perhaps he felt the life surging in himself or pondered his authority over all flesh (John 5:25–27; 17:2). No doubt he felt the diamonds and rubies of the glory given him and the glory to be his again, now to be exalted as the God-man, in the Father’s presence (John 17:5). But most often in John, Jesus speaks of the Father having given him a people (John 6:35–40; 10:28–29; 17:1–3, 6–9, 11–15, 22–25).

That night he prays “for those whom you have given me” (John 17:9):

I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. (John 17:11–12)

“Jesus went low to his knees to wash his Bride’s feet — and down into the depths to raise her to himself.”

The Father had given him a people. Later that evening, he steps in front of them at his arrest to fulfill his promise: “Of those whom you gave me I have lost not one” (John 18:9). Death, Satan’s accusations, the Father’s just wrath pursued them. He was no hired hand — he laid down his life for his sheep. He had to, if they would be saved. He went low to his knees to wash his Bride’s feet — and down into the depths to raise her to himself and to the Father in heaven. “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end” (John 13:1).

2. I am going home to my Father.

Jesus, knowing that . . . he had come from God and was going back to God . . . began to wash the disciples’ feet. (John 13:3, 5)

We are not from the Father in the same way Jesus was. He is the Son, fully God, eternally existent “in the beginning” with God, in the beginning as God (John 1:1–2). The Father sent the Son from eternity past (John 7:29). The Son took on flesh and tabernacled among us (John 1:14); God entered his own story.

Jesus knew this. He incensed the Jews by claiming that before Abraham existed, he was (John 8:58). He would pray that evening, “Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed” (John 17:5). Jesus, in whom the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, came from the Father into the world to save his people from their sins.

During dinner, Jesus’s thoughts fed upon his future with his Father. A few verses earlier, John summarizes the whole brutal cross with a most beautiful phrase: “Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father” (John 13:1). Jesus viewed his coming death, even the most horrific, shameful death, as the ferry to bring him home to his Father.

The joy outweighed the anguish: for the joy set before him he endured the cross, despising the shame. For him (and for all his people), death does not submerge into the abyss; it carries the soul to the God it calls “Father.” Beyond the feet-washing and beyond the cross and beyond even his people and glory on the other side, Jesus reflected upon the one to whom he went: the Abba his soul loved.

No Service Too Low

The Master’s foot-washing foretold of his cleansing cross-work. And with it, he left us an example.

I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. (John 13:15–17)

Christ, our great Master and filth-washer, has left us an example — not just in his actions, but in his considerations. In the psychology of the God-man’s service, he shows us that we too must serve from knowing our fullness and our future in him.

“Born of God, our destiny is to be with God, forever. What service is too low when you consider a future so high?”

We often do not serve because we think ourselves wanting. To serve others, we believe, increases our deficits. Yet consider that in Christ, all things are yours. Remove your outer robe, and you have not removed God’s favor. Tie the servant’s towel around your waist, and you have not forfeited your room in your Father’s house. Take in your hands the mud-stained, smelly, unlovely feet of fellow saints and sinners, and you shall still take hold of your place next to the Son to reign. What can separate us from the love of Christ? While you and I are enveloped in such blessing — the least of which is experienced now — whose feet can we not wash?

Or consider that, like Christ, you sail upon a vessel heading to the Father. Jesus made it so. He went to Calvary to prepare a place for us in his Father’s house (John 14:2–3). Peter writes of the cross, “Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18). Born of God, our destiny is to be with God, forever. What service is too low when you consider a future so high?

You are rich in God now, and richer still as you head to God, your full inheritance. Whom can we not serve along the road to such a glory? The angels saw the Son wash human feet: may they see such beautiful service replicated by his people throughout this selfish world. May they see our satisfaction in God performed in our service of others.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15937528/christians-made-glorious-for-the-glory-of-christ

“God gave us plurality because he’s a big fan of humility.” I was struck by how often Dave Harvey mentions humility in his new book The Plurality Principle on building and maintaining church leadership teams.

It’s not a new thought that a plurality — a team of pastor-elders, as opposed to just one — both requires and encourages humility. But what I did not expect is how often Harvey would sound the refrain for the pride-crucifying, humility-cultivating power of team leadership.

Harvey, like many of us, has seen and heard a lifetime’s worth of pastoral shipwrecks in recent years. Some of these leaders were formally peerless in their churches and ministries, but many others had fellow pastor-elders in name, and functionally little accountability, operating with special privileges and a long leash. In the end, too often one man was at the helm, when it could have been a team, and in time, the church, its witness, and the pastor himself came to suffer because it.

“When difficulties arise, do the elders suspect themselves first, not others, and serve others first, not themselves?”

“All Christian community tests our humility,” Harvey writes, “but being part of a leadership team is like sitting for the bar exam” (127). Then he observes, “Humility must be learned over time as individuals both suspect themselves first, not others, and serve others first, not themselves.” Suspect self first. Serve others first. That’s insightful, and a watershed of good leadership in the church: When difficulties arise, do the elders suspect themselves first, not others, and serve others first, not themselves? And what will determine which way the pastors will go?

“Humility is the oil that lubricates the engine of plurality,” writes Harvey. “If you want to know the foundational secret that lies beneath great teams, meetings marked by unity, personal elder care, and lovingly accountable relationships, it’s this: humility” (98).

How Plurality Humbles

Unlike the world’s vision of leadership as self-actualization and the accrual of privilege, a Christian vision of leadership has God, not self, at the center. Pastor-elders are not in it to build their own sense of confidence and self-worth. Rather, their calling is to make additional sacrifices, to bear extra burdens and costs, to point our fellow church members Godward in Christ.

Our need for humility grows the more we are surrounded by other people, especially when yoked in a calling to lead together. While humility is first and foremost a creaturely virtue in relation to our Creator, many of the great texts on humility come in the context of community (Philippians 1:27–2:5; Ephesians 4:1–3; 1 Peter 5:5–7).

Consider four ways, among many others, that team leadership humbles us.

1. Teams expose selfish desires and unholy ambitions.

The apostles warn us of the dangers of “selfish ambition” (Greek eritheia). James writes, “Where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice” (James 3:16; also James 3:14). Paul lists selfish ambition as one of “the works of the flesh” alongside “sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, . . . dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these” (Galatians 5:19–21; also 2 Corinthians 12:20; Philippians 1:17; 2:3).

“Selfish ambition,” or “self-seeking” (Romans 2:8), is tragic in any human, and any Christian, and all the more in Christian leaders. And it is a special threat for lone rangers. Who will smell it out, and can challenge it, even in its subtle forms? Teammates. Men who are peers, of the same standing and similar perspective, and can tell when directions and decisions are self-seeking, rather than church-seeking.

There is often a fine line between putting self forward and the willingness to serve in visible, celebrated positions of leadership. Good pluralities (teams not just in name but in function) tend to expose such selfish desires and unholy ambitions and challenge them before they become deep-seated. As Harvey writes,

If you’re new to working with a team, you’ll soon see how often plurality uncovers and forces you to deal with the heroic dreams and fleshly desires you have for ministry. . . . To serve as part of a healthy elder plurality, a pastor must know his role, be willing to come under authority, learn humility, traffic in nuances that are neither black nor white, and be willing to think about his gifts and position through the lens of what serves the church rather than his personal agenda. Leading in community puts us under the spotlight. (29–30)

2. Teams encourage the right kind of disagreement.

Disagreements are inevitable in the church, and in every sphere of life. The question is not if they will come, but when and how. Healthy teams encourage the right kind of disagreements to happen early and often, in the context of trusting, regular relationships. Better to first hear the opposing perspective in private, from a brother and peer who manifestly loves you, than publicly, or from a tense call or letter, after a rash decision has been implemented.

It is humbling to hear a brother you admire and respect disagree with you. Then, it’s additionally humbling to realize you were short-sighted, or wrong, and to admit it. Leadership pluralities encourage healthy disagreement, in the right time and context.

3. Teams show us the joy of not doing it all.

It’s one thing to admit, as a leader, that you’re human and can’t do it all (in theory); it is another to go about your daily and weekly work as if you can indeed do it all. Teams play out that humbling truth before our eyes, moving it from theory to reality in our own heads and hearts.

For team leadership to thrive over time, writes Harvey, “Each man must believe that he needs the other men.” And seeing our need for each other, lived out before our own eyes, serves to dispel pretenses in us that we deserve the credit for ministry successes.

4. Teams try our patience, and produce better results.

Team leadership is typically not efficient, but it is effective — which is how God wants his church to be led.

“Team leadership is typically not efficient, but it is effective — which is how God wants his church to be led.”

When the “senior pastor” is essentially the church’s CEO, decisions and next actions can happen very fast. Teamwork, on the other hand, takes time. We need to synch schedules, have conversations, provide rationale, answer objections, write drafts, add appropriate nuances. Team leadership is typically not efficient.

But apparently, God isn’t all that interested in efficiency in local-church leadership. Which is worth pondering carefully in our day, when other organizations in society emphasize efficiency, not without good reasons. Yet not so with the church. The clear, unified testimony in the New Testament to plurality of leadership in the local church signals that Christ is more interested in effectiveness than efficiency in his body. Again, Harvey writes,

God loves unity, so he calls us to a team — a place where we must humbly persevere with one another to function effectively. God loves making us holy, so he unites us to men who will make us grow. God loves patience, so he imposes a way of governing that requires humble listening and a trust that he is working in the lives of others. God loves humility, so he gave us plurality. (99)

Harder, and Better

Teamwork in ministry is a precious gift. Surely, thousands of solo pastors around the world long for fellow elders and do not yet have them. May God be pleased to answer their prayers and steady their hands. There is grace too for a lonely calling.

Those of us who do enjoy the priceless gift of teammates, it can be all too easy to take them for granted. Team leadership is not always easy. Often it doesn’t feel efficient. Fellow leaders can feel inconvenient. At times, it may seem like leading alone would be better.

But leading together challenges and chastens our pride. It costs us personal comforts and convenience, but the gains for the church, and for our own long-term joy, far surpass the discomforts.