A sermon preached at Covenant Presbyterian Church of Fort Smith, Arkansas on July 13, 2025.
“An argument arose among them as to which of them was the greatest. But Jesus, knowing the reasoning of their hearts, took a child and put him by his side and said to them, “Whoever receives this child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. For he who is least among you all is the one who is great” (Luke 9:46–48).[1]
When faced with a life-threatening storm, Jesus’ disciples were faithless.[2] When needed to help a suffering little boy and his desperate father, they were useless.[3] When Jesus revealed the imminence of his suffering, rejection, death, and resurrection, they were clueless.[4] And yet, despite being faithless, useless, and clueless, consider the irony of this scene: they began to quarrel about who among them was the greatest. Proof positive of human depravity, indeed, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? (Jer. 17:9)
I wonder how the argument began. Did Peter leak the secret of Jesus’ mountaintop transfiguration? Did James and John begin to bicker as brothers do about who was the best? And who first asserted himself as the greatest, and how could he defend such a claim? What is even meant by “greatness”? How were they defining it? How do you?
We typically think of greatness in terms of accomplishment. We may hear of the first woman to become governor of a state or the richest man in the world. We gauge greatness relatively based on what someone has done. Perhaps this was part of the disciples’ argument: running through all they had done for Jesus. But is that the definition of greatness? What we have done and do for Jesus? According to the Bible what you and I accomplish does not define greatness. God does. He is the standard of greatness, and who we are and what we do falls far short of it.
Unlike our paltry claims of greatness, God’s greatness is infinite. This, of course, presents a problem for us as humans, because we think of greatness according to our finite reality, captive to time and space. For this reason, knowing our frame and remembering we are but dust,[5] God reveals his greatness to us by way of analogy. For example, we read in Isaiah,
Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand
and marked off the heavens with a span,
enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure
and weighed the mountains in scales
and the hills in a balance?
Who has measured the Spirit of the LORD,
or what man shows him his counsel?
Whom did he consult,
and who made him understand?
Who taught him the path of justice,
and taught him knowledge,
and showed him the way of understanding?
Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket,
and are accounted as the dust on the scales . . .
All the nations are as nothing before him,
they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.
Isaiah rightly concludes, “To whom then will you liken God,
or what likeness compare with him?” (Isa. 40:12-18)
Answer? In the words of the Cowardly Lion, “Not nobody! Not nohow!”[6]
The problem is, Jerry Bridges says, “we tend to think God is like us—or perhaps like us, only more so. We have some power, but we know God has more. We have some wisdom, but God has more. We can handle some circumstances, but we hope God can handle more. We thus limit God to what we can imagine as possibilities.”[7] In Psalm 50:21, God says directly, “you thought that I was one like yourself.” This is our tendency, but God is not like us only greater. Though we are made in his image, God is what we are not “a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth.” Rightly does the psalmist sing, “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable” (Ps. 145:3).
Arguing then for greatness as created beings is certainly a futile endeavor of ignorance and arrogance. Genuine humility is our proper response when we consider God’s greatness, which is precisely why Jesus, knowing the reasoning of his disciples’ hearts, took a child and put him by his side.
Like a Child
Jesus did not take the child by his side to teach his disciples to become a child or to behave like a child. “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child,” the sage says, “but the rod of discipline drives it far from him” (Prov. 22:15). Behaving like a child isn’t a characteristic of greatness, but it may deserve a good old-fashioned spanking. No, the child serves as an analogy, not to the fool’s errand of finding your “inner child” but humility. For his very existence, a child is dependent upon extensive parental care for an extended period of time. The hungry infant does not argue for greatness but cries for his mother’s milk.
This truth, I think, is one of the things that makes an infant baptism so beautiful. As the baptismal water is sprinkled upon his head and the triune name of the Lord our God pronounced, the child contributes nothing but his innate sin nature. Yet, in receiving the sign of the Covenant of Grace, we trust that the Holy Spirit will indeed work in his heart one day, bringing to fulfillment what the baptism itself signifies. So it is with us all. Not one of us contributed anything to our salvation, nor could we, but we were saved according to God’s mercy by his grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Like a child, we are utterly dependent in our salvation and have nothing to boast about but the grace of God alone! So, greatness is defined first as like a child and second according to the gospel.
According to the Gospel
Jesus said, “Whoever receives this child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me” (Luke 9:48a). By “in my name,” Jesus meant “for my sake” or “as my disciple,”[8] and to “receive” is to acknowledge and accept. In other words, we are to receive a fellow-Christian, no matter how lowly, just as we would receive Jesus himself. Such a reception eliminates comparison or arguments for greatness, outward or inward. After all, who would argue with Jesus over individual greatness?
And yet, how many of us are tempted to see ourselves as better (or worse) than others in Christ’s church? We may not openly argue about it, as Jesus’ first disciples did, but we may secretly size ourselves up against our brethren. Of course, we would never be so crass as to do it in worldly terms, or even say it out loud, and yet our wicked heart finds ways to compare, even through the righteous means of our sanctification. Do you read your Bible more often than I? Would you beat me in a game of Bible trivia? Or would I crush you? Can you quote more Scripture, reference more catechisms, school me with the Westminster standards? (Life’s a competition, isn’t it?) Do you make sure to be present when the Lord’s Supper is administered (and keep a mental note of who isn’t)? Do you consider your extemporaneous prayers superior to my written ones or are mine better crafted and yours a spontaneous mess? And what about your service in the church? Surely you know who is serving and who’s a slacker? You’d never say anything, would you? Why give up the upper hand? Better to keep secret safe in the confines of your hardened heart, and yet such a secret is a sinister sin against the peace and purity of Christ’s church. J.C. Ryle gets it right when he says,
Of all sins there is none against which we have such need to watch and pray, as pride. . . . No sin is so deeply rooted in our nature. It cleaves to us like our skin. Its roots never entirely die. They are ready, at any moment, to spring up, and exhibit a most pernicious vitality. . . . It can wear the garb of humility itself. It can lurk in the hearts of the ignorant, the ungifted, and the poor, as well as in the minds of the great, the learned, and the rich. . . . Of all creatures none has so little right to be proud as man, and of all men none ought to be so humble as the Christian.[9]
Jesus said, “Whoever receives this child in my name receives me,” and then adds “whoever receives me receives him who sent me” (Luke 9:48b). The “him who sent me” is key, because Scripture is clear: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). God sent his only Son, and so to receive his Son is to believe on him for salvation, a sovereign act of grace made possible only because God’s Son lived the life we could not live, died for our sin, and resurrected from the dead, conquering our unconquerable enemies, sin and death. Such is God’s love for us. Such must be our love for one another. As John writes to the church, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God” (1 John 4:7). Receiving one another as we receive Christ, that is in love, reveals that we have been truly “born of God,” but John says, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:20). Therefore, “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 John 4:8).
This means that we who have been saved must return again and again to the gospel. When we are tempted to compare ourselves with our brethren, when we are tempted to consider our superiority in the kingdom of God, let us remember that but for the mercy and grace of God we could have been left dead in the trespasses and sins in which we once walked, not children of God but by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.[10] When we are tempted to boast in our faithfulness, argue for the superiority of our discipleship, trumpet our Christian achievements, let us remember that we are saved only through faith in Christ, which is not our own doing but the gift of God, not a result of works or accomplishments, so not a single one of us can boast.[11] When we are tempted to argue for our greatness, whether inward or outward, let us remember the greatness of the gospel!
Greatness Defined
Greatness for the Christian then is defined as Christ-like humility, humbling ourselves before God and others. Jesus said, “he who is least among you all is the one who is great” (Luke 9:48c). And what he said he lived, that we might live through him. As the apostle Paul reminds the church,
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:5-8).
We look to Christ and find in him not only greatness defined but our greatest need fulfilled.
The outworking of this reality, Paul says, is witnessed in very practical ways. For example, we are to do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit. If you have an agenda, are into self-promotion, or consider yourself the answer to our problems, check it at the church door. You’ll become the problem, if you’re not it already. Instead, count others more significant than yourself, and look not only to your own interests but also the interests of others.[12]
I’m not greater in the kingdom of God than you are, and you’re not greater than I am, because we all are one in Christ Jesus.[13] This does not deny different levels of faithfulness, maturity, and service among us, but it reminds us that neither you nor I are the standard. Christ is, which should lead us to adopt John the Baptist’s dying mantra: “He must become greater; I must become less” (John 3:30 NIV). A great life is one in which Christ is the greatest.
Beloved, our great and awesome God has chosen to save the least, that he might be glorified through our salvation. Let us then humbly and gratefully rejoice in the greatness of our God, and his gracious provision for us in Christ: “Glory to God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine: Glory to him from generation to generation in the Church, and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever. Amen” (Eph. 3:20-21 BCP).[14]
[1] Unless referenced otherwise, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (Wheaton: Crossway Bibles, 2001).
[2] Luke 8:22-25
[3] Luke 9:37-43
[4] Luke 9:22, 44
[5] Ps. 103:14
[6] https://youtu.be/YQYttJaQbyQ?si=yHKRKruVXVEda48p
[7] Jerry Bridges, The Joy of Fearing God (Colorado Springs: WaterBrook Press, 1998), 58.
[8] Max Zerwick and Mary Grosvenor, A Grammatical Analysis of the Greek New Testament, 4th ed., quoted in Dale Ralph Davis, Luke: The Year of the Lord’s Favor (Fearn: Christian Focus Publications, 2021), 162.
[9] J.C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on Luke, Vol. 1 (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2012), 249-250.
[10] Eph. 2:1-3
[11] Eph. 2:8-9
[12] Phil. 2:3-4
[13] Gal. 3:28
[14] Anglican Church in North America, The Book of Common Prayer (Huntington Beach: Anglican Liturgy Press, 2019), 26.
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