The Way of the Warrior

by Erwin Raphael McManus

  It’s somewhat ironic that these words from Solomon are almost exclusively quoted at weddings, when the actual context for saying these words has nothing to do with marriage. The context is actually about a man who has gained immeasurable wealth but finds himself without either a son or brother. He comes to the end of his life and realizes that his wealth is of no value because he has lived his life alone, disconnected from others. Life, Solomon reminds us, is filled with unexpected twists and turns. And with all we do not know about the future, what we can be certain of is that there will be struggles, challenges, and battles ahead. Life is a great quest, but even the hero knows it should not be faced alone.

  While the warrior is invisible, they know that in the eyes of those that matter, they are fully seen. Fame’s great illusion is that you are known by the masses.

  Fame’s great danger is to be known by no one. The warrior does not need a crowd; they need a tribe. Though the warrior seeks to be invisible, they know that in the eyes of those that matter, they are fully seen. The warrior knows that wisdom gives them the power of invisibility.

  CODE 3

  The Warrior Finds Honor in Service

  The warrior lives in the paradox between service and greatness. The warrior is always first a servant. Contrary to popular perception, a life of service does not diminish the pursuit of greatness. The warrior must learn to walk with both humility and ambition. The warrior does not serve because they cannot lead; they know that a person cannot lead if they do not serve. Every day for the warrior is a pursuit of excellence. In the warrior there can be no hint of apathy or complacency. The warrior has too much honor to give anything less than their very best to their master. Every day is a competition against who they were yesterday.

  The warrior is indifferent to fame while at the same time is relentlessly pursuing greatness. They see fame as what you do for yourself and greatness as what you do for others. Greatness is not the absence of humility; it is the absence of apathy. Just as you can be famous and not be great, you can be great and not famous. Although the warrior may gain great fame, it is never their ambition. Let fame be the food of lesser men.

  The warrior pursues their legend. The warrior pursues the life they must live, the battle they must fight, the sacrifice they must make. To the warrior, greatness is not the product of ego but of service. If you live for yourself, you can settle for less. If you live for others, it requires all of who you are. This is why the warrior never envies the greatness of others but in fact honors and admires it. The life of the warrior is defined by the pursuit of greatness. This is their greatest act of service.

  There is a young man at Mosaic, our church here in Los Angeles, whom I have known almost all his life. I have worked with his father and have watched him grow into an extraordinary individual. Even as a young boy, he would come to ask me questions that would always amaze me. His inquiries were deep, thoughtful, and even provocative. So I was not surprised when he came to me again, now as a man, asking one more profound question. I expected it to be about the meaning of life or the nature of our existence. However, the question he chose to ask did catch me by surprise: “Is it wrong to be competitive?”

  Honestly, this question really threw me off, as I didn’t think that anyone at Mosaic would have to ask this question. But I understand why this was a struggle for him. Shane is extremely competitive. In fact, by his own description, he loves assessing the room, figuring out who is the best, and then determining how to outdo that person. What I thought was interesting was that I had, in more than twenty years of teaching, never even implied that it was wrong to be competitive. Where did this tension come from for him?

  The reality is that we live in a time in history in which competition is seen as something that needs to be eliminated. Our schools are not only eliminating the designation of winners and losers, but they have actually gone as far as to eliminate scoring altogether so no one knows who is ahead and who is behind.

  We are far more comfortable with the language of cooperation and collaboration than we are with the language of competition. Our negative view of competition is often put on hold when we watch such events as the Olympics, the World Cup, the Super Bowl, and the NBA Finals. But as a whole, we have adopted a framework that suggests that competition is archaic and antiquated and must be eliminated from the human story. Yet without competition, we lack the necessary context to push ourselves beyond our own capacities.

  Competition, when understood properly, makes you better, makes you more, makes you stronger. My response to Shane was that it is not wrong to be competitive, an answer he wasn’t expecting to hear.

  He said, “So is it okay for me to look around the room and compare myself to others?”

  I responded to him, “I thought you wanted to be the best?”

  A little bit insulted, he responded immediately, “I do want to be the best.”

  I said, “Well, when you are the best, there is no one to compare yourself to. So rather than comparing yourself to others, why don’t you compete against you, who you are today. That way when you are the best, you’re still competing against the same person: who you were yesterday.”

  Roger Bannister was the first person to break the four-minute mile. He didn’t have to break the four-minute mile to be the best in comparison to others. In fact, no one in the world ever expected him to break the four-minute mile. That barrier was perceived as impossible to cross. If he had measured what it meant to be best against others, he never would have accomplished the “impossible.”

  When you’re the best, you don’t compare yourself against others; you compare yourself against the impossible. After Bannister broke the four-minute mile, it changed the standard for every athlete that followed him. He changed the meaning of what it meant to be the best, and, ironically, his accomplishment made everyone in his field better. Today, breaking a four-minute mile is routinely done by world-class athletes.

  I think part of the unease we feel about the idea of being competitive, especially for followers of Jesus, is that we also want to be people of humility and reflect the character of Christ. I’m convinced that a great part of our discomfort with the language of pursuing greatness centers around Jesus’s conversations with his disciples. On one occasion Jesus and his disciples were traveling to Capernaum. When they had arrived and were resting in a house, Jesus asked the others what they had been arguing about on the road. They kept quiet and did not want to disclose to him that their conversation had focused on who was the greatest.28

  I don’t have to eavesdrop on that conversation to know what they didn’t say. I know they didn’t say that Jesus was the greatest. After all, if the Twelve were talking about who was the greatest and their immediate response was “Jesus,” they would have eagerly revealed to him what they had been talking about when he asked.

  It’s kind of strange, if you think about it, that they were traveling with Jesus and when they began talking about who was the greatest, Jesus himself did not immediately come to mind. It would be like me and my team at Mosaic arguing about who is the best three-point shooter and walking with Steph Curry and not even mentioning him. Or what if you and a group of your friends were with Albert Einstein and you asked, “Who is the best at math?” It would be strange if “Einstein” wasn’t everyone’s immediate response.

  How is it possible that Jesus’s twelve disciples would throw out any options other than him as being the greatest among them? But they hadn’t, and that’s exactly why they stayed quiet. It shouldn’t surprise us that a natural conversation about greatness emerged. The disciples were walking with greatness. If you were traveling with Mozart, you would inevitably talk about music. If you were traveling with Picasso, you would most certainly begin talking about art. Jesus, though, didn’t inspire a conversation about a particular application of greatness but about the essence of greatness itself. The disciples were not asking who was the greatest at
a particular feat; they were asking who was the greatest in the eyes of God.

  This is a question only Jesus could inspire. His greatness was not the outcome of his talent or a particular ability; his greatness was about the totality of who he was as a person. Jesus epitomized what it meant to be human. He was the sum total of everything the disciples aspired to be. One of the particularly beautiful things about true greatness is that it leaves no room for envy. Jesus did not come to diminish the greatness in others; he came to awaken it. Even when he confronted the disciples about their conversation and their desire to take the seat of honor, he did not tell them to stop aspiring to be great; he simply redirected them so that they might succeed in their pursuit of greatness.

  Keeping First Things Last

  Then Jesus confounded them with words that have become well known across the world: “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.”29 I am convinced that these words of Jesus have been terribly misunderstood. They have been heard over and over again as an admonition against the desire to be first. But in actuality he never discouraged the disciples from wanting to be first; he just told them what first looks like in his economy: If you want to be first, then you must be last. If you want to be first, you must become the servant of all. He didn’t try to diminish their ambition; he tried to redirect their intention. Jesus wasn’t trying to replace greatness with servanthood; he was trying to give us a new definition of greatness, which is servanthood.

  On another occasion, the mother of John and James came to Jesus and asked him for a favor. He knew she had come with a question and asked her what she wanted as she was kneeling down in front of him, ready to make her petition on her sons’ behalf. Her request was not for herself but rather for her two sons. She hoped they would sit at the right and left hands of Jesus in his kingdom.30

  I don’t know if you have a mom like that, but for me this would be an incredibly embarrassing moment. John and James were known as the “sons of thunder.”31 These two were rough-and-tough manly men, but they had their mom go on their behalf to ask for positions of honor that they did not deserve. It would be bad enough if your mother went to ask of Jesus something like this without letting you know, but what we discover is that her two sons were standing right behind her. I can’t even imagine walking into the room behind my mom so she could ask on my behalf for the highest honors Jesus could give.

  Jesus’s response had a bit of a comedic element to it. He didn’t answer her. He looked right at them and said, “You don’t know what you are asking.”32 He forced them to step up and speak for themselves, and then the other disciples realized what was happening and became indignant with the two brothers. In my experience we become indignant when someone else asks for what we wanted.

  So Jesus called them all together. At first he pointed to the examples that had influenced their perception of greatness. He said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you.”33 Jesus wanted them to know that the most common examples of greatness in their day were being wrongly measured. Rather, he suggested, “Instead, whoever wants to be become great among you must be your servant.”34

  Jesus’s words are so powerful and so well known that we often miss the significance of his entire statement. No one had ever called their leaders to serve. All of the disciples saw the greatness in Jesus and assumed that his posture of servanthood was a short-term strategy. Yet this call to servanthood is not for everyone. It’s actually very specific: it’s a callout to whoever wants to become great. The call to servanthood finds its power only when it is received by those who are on the pursuit of greatness.

  It is not wrong to aspire to greatness. The warning here is to be careful to never confuse fame with greatness. Otherwise, you may be aspiring to what is not really greatness at all. Fame is what you do for yourself; greatness is what you do for others. Jesus has unveiled to us how greatness is achieved in his kingdom. To be great, you must serve. So don’t give up on your ambition to be great; instead, change your definition of what it means to be great and how greatness is achieved.

  Most important, though, we need to change the why behind our drive. The question is not whether we should be competitive; the question is not whether we should pursue excellence; the question is not whether we should pursue greatness. The question is why we are pursuing it.

  Paul told us, “Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.”35 If you are to do all things for the glory of God, then there is nothing you should do where you are not aspiring to do your best, be your best, and, yes, even be the best. It is in service that your greatness will be found.

  Jesus pressed further and once again reminded them, with even harsher language, that “whoever wants to be first must be your slave.”36

  Then he said, as the ultimate example of this paradox, “Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”37

  Jesus is not only the greatest man who ever lived but also the greatest servant who has ever lived. No one has ever served like Jesus, who gave his life as a ransom for us all, and no one will ever achieve his standard of greatness. Yet we too can be great if we will choose to serve and walk in the way of Jesus.

  Unwrapping Power

  It has always fascinated me that the words samurai and deacon have the same core meaning. They both mean “servant.” The samurai were known as the greatest of warriors, yet they did not live for themselves. Their highest honor was to live lives of service for the one who was their lord.

  Too often we have confused humility with powerlessness. Humility cannot be achieved from a posture of powerlessness. As long as we see ourselves as victims, humility does not come from a position of strength. True humility can be experienced only when we have come to know our power and use it for the good of others and not for ourselves.

  When Jesus was asked which was the greatest of all the commandments, he responded that we are to love the Lord our God with all our hearts, souls, minds, and strength.38

  We rarely focus on the last aspect of that commandment, to love God with all our strength. God assumes we have strength and that it will be used only for his ultimate good when that strength is fueled by God’s love.

  Maybe a good exercise would be to sit down and make a list of all your strengths. After all, you can’t take mastery over what you are unaware of. Your intellectual capacity is a strength. Your physical health is a strength. Your emotional intelligence is a strength. Your ability to influence is a strength. Your ability to create wealth is a strength. Your resilience and determination are strengths. And the list can go on and on and on.

  You need to know your power, and you need to take ownership of it, not to mention the power that has been placed within you because of the presence of God’s Spirit in your life. If the God who created the entire universe dwells in your heart, how could you ever consider yourself powerless?

  When Jesus walked among us, he emptied himself of all power and made himself to be nothing. He emptied himself of those divine attributes we admire the most. When God took on flesh and blood and entered this world as an infant, he relinquished the power that was rightfully his. In fact, Jesus once explained, “Apart from the Father I can do nothing.”39

  One evening Jesus gathered his disciples to eat together. At that time, he knew that Judas was already prepared to betray him.40 John tells us that on this night there was a significant shift in the journey of Jesus of Nazareth. He came into this world having emptied himself of all his divine power, but now “Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God.”41

  What would you do the moment you knew that God the Father had put all things under your power? What would you do with unlimited power? What woul
d your very first demonstration of your power be?

  This is what makes Jesus different than the rest of us. After Jesus knew he had all things under his power, he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with a towel that was wrapped around him.42

  I daresay, no master has ever chosen to serve his disciples like this. It seemed that nothing was beneath Jesus, no act of service too low or common. Peter was of course taken aback by Jesus’s attempt to wash his feet and did everything he could to refuse his kindness. Yet Jesus insisted, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.”43

  How strange that this would be the way of God: “Unless I wash you, unless you let me serve you, unless you allow me to do this that is beneath me, you will never know the full measure of my love for you.” We understand that Jesus came to save the world. I think it’s harder for us to accept that he came to serve the world. He is the Savior of all because he is the servant of all. This is the way of the warrior: to serve is to sacrifice. To serve is to give oneself for the good of others. Jesus used his power to serve, and in this moment of servanthood, we see his greatness.

  Choosing the Front Line

  Perhaps the most memorable moment in the life of David occurred when he, as a young man, offered to go to war against Goliath. Goliath was, of course, the giant who taunted both God and the armies of Israel, knowing there was not one warrior in all Israel with the courage to fight him. David was at the battlefield that day only to deliver cheese. He was an errand boy. No one thought of him as a warrior. When the people looked at David, they saw only a servant. When David offered his services to King Saul, the man tried to dissuade David, telling him, “You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you are only a young man, and he has been a warrior from his youth.”44