“Whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister,” said our Lord—(Matt. 20:20–28), and from these words we may properly conclude (and the context strongly supports the conclusion) that there is nothing wrong with the desire to be great provided (1) we seek the right kind of greatness; (2) we allow God to decide what is greatness; (3) we are willing to pay the full price that greatness demands, and (4) we are content to wait for the judgment of God to settle the whole matter of who is great at last.…
No one whose heart has had a vision of God, however brief or imperfect that vision may have been, will ever consent to think of himself or anyone else as being great. The sight of God, when He appears in awesome majesty to the wondering eyes of the soul, will bring the worshiper to his knees in fear and gladness and fill him with such an overwhelming sense of divine greatness that he must spontaneously cry “Only God is great!”…
Obviously there are two kinds of greatness recognized in the Scriptures—an absolute, uncreated greatness belonging to God alone, and a relative and finite greatness achieved by or bestowed upon certain friends of God and sons of faith who by obedience and self-denial sought to become as much like God as possible.
Deuteronomy 3:24; 1 Chronicles 29:11–13; Matthew 20:20–28
Born After Midnight, 48, 49.