True Christian Leadership

J. Oswald Sanders’ book, Spiritual Leadership, is a gem. It’s a 22-chapter book full of challenging, convicting wisdom. In the first chapter, Chambers describes leadership:

“True greatness, true leadership, is found in giving yourself in service of others, not coaxing or inducing others to serve you. True service is never without cost. Often it comes with a bitter cup of challenges and a painful baptism of suffering. For genuine godly leadership weighs carefully Jesus’ question: ‘Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?’ (Mark 10:38b). The real spiritual leader is focused on the service he and she can render to God and other people, not on the residuals and perks of high office or holy title. We must aim to put more in life than we take out.” pp. 13-14.

True Christian leadership is fueled by a vision, a means, and an end. It’s unto something greater than a selfish pursuit of position. But if we are not careful, we will reduce it to that and what will result is a sad story of selfish ambition, lacking true glory. Even worse, we stand the chance of leading others astray, something for which we will be held accountable.

As Christian leaders, we must have a Biblical understanding of what leadership is, and the place to learn is the Bible.

Consider Jesus

Jesus is the perfect leader.

He, being fully God and fully man, not considering equality with God a thing to be grasped, left His perfect home in heaven where He had perfect fellowship in the Trinity. In so doing, He humbly came to earth in the form of a weak, helpless baby to grow up with earthly, sinful parents. He willingly endured reviling, rejection, misunderstanding, unfaithful friends, physical violence, and ultimately death.

Not once while He was on the earth did he throw his hands up in the air, stomp his foot and and yell that he was done because the people he interacted with just couldn’t get with the program of what He was trying to do for all of us.

No, He, in obedience to His Father and for the joy set before Him, went all the way to the cross and endured death. But not only death, he endured the torment of being forsaken by God as His wrath was poured out on Him as the atoning sacrifice for the sin of mankind.

And then, He was exalted. His Father gave Him the nations (Philippians 2:8-10).

Jesus’ life is an example of true leadership—leadership as God defines it. The life and death Jesus endured was indescribably worse than what likely awaits you and me. Why did He do it? And what does it mean for us?

The Vision for Leadership

Jesus endured death for joy. The vision for His leadership was the joy set before Him– our joy in Him,  His joy in us, and the Father’s joy in Him (Hebrews 12:2). When God made human beings, He delighted in His creation. The joy of fellowship shared between man and God was perfect, each delighting in the other.

But when sin entered the world, our fellowship with the Trinity was broken. We could no longer obey God because of sin in our hearts. Something was needed to restore relationship, making our obedience perfect. But not only something was needed—someone was needed to make a way for relationship to be restored to God. Someone perfect.

God alone could do this.

Jesus, perfect and fully God, and fully knowing the joy of the Trinity made a way for us to share in the rich fellowship He enjoyed with the Father and the Holy Spirit. He knew that this fellowship with the Trinity would bring His Father joy, and that it is the only thing that would bring us true joy. But He also knew that the only way this could happen would be through His death.

The Means of Leadership

So, Jesus, though He was God, did not count equality with His Father a thing to be grasped. He humbly emptied Himself, and took the form of a servant. He gave up His heavenly place of fellowship with His Father, co-reigning at His right hand, and came to sin-saturated earth so that He could die for God-haters and strangers. He wanted to please His Father.

He voluntarily laid His perfect life down so that we could love and obey God. He wanted us to obey God, so He obeyed God first.

There was no selfish ambition in him.

He was not ignorant of the cost. Jesus knew full well what He was walking into. But because He loved His Father, He was willing to lay down His will for His Father’s. His Father’s will was that a way be made for relationship with man to be restored through a perfect sacrifice. Through death.

This is the means of Jesus’ leadership. The laying down of His life for others. Jesus said, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work” (John 4:34).

No glorious exaltation on the earth during his 33 years. Only misunderstanding, reviling, betrayal—all while He sacrificially loved, taught, and gave His life so that others could live. We can only try to understand the emotional and physical pain He endured— and He was God enduring these things. Perfect, sinless, deserving none of it.

We want to help others to love and obey God. But first, we must love and obey Him. This means a laying down of our will for the sake of the Father’s. This means we will not live for our own selfish ambition, but for another’s life in Jesus.

It will mean we willingly endure misunderstanding, slander, betrayal as we labor to lead others to Jesus. We will not seek prestige, fame, or even recognition for our efforts.  Instead, our joy will be to see Christ exalted and made much of.

Our vision will fuel the means to the end.

The End

If our vision for leadership is the joy of Jesus in others, and the means is the laying down of our lives for others, what is the end? What is it all unto?

“Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen” (Ephesians 3:20-21).

The laying down of our life for another’s eternal joy in Jesus is unto the glory of God. God’s love is perfect—patient, kind, not envious or boastful, arrogant or rude, not selfish, irritable or resentful. God doesn’t rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. He suffers long, He gives belief and hope (1 Corinthians 13:4-7).

He is I Am.  He invites us into His love, which is generous and sacrificial. And invites us to generously and sacrificially lay our lives down to bring others into His love as well. When this happens, He will be known for Who He is—and He’ll be rightly glorified.

And this is the end of True Christian Leadership: that we lay down our lives as leaders to serve with joyful vision and give our all for the esteem of Jesus Christ in the hearts of others and in all the world.

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18-20).