It starts with the front seat.
Who sits there? Who gets the biggest slice? Who has the most to say, the most people listening, the most pull in the room? We laugh at children squabbling over car seat position — but we never really outgrow it. We just trade the car seat for bigger things: the title, the platform, the corner office, the follower count, the seat at the table.
Power is the oldest human obsession. And the gospel has something disruptive to say about it.
What the World Does With Power
Jesus watched his disciples argue about who would be greatest in his kingdom. This was not a subtle disagreement — Matthew 20 records the mother of James and John lobbying Jesus directly for the best seats. The others found out and were indignant, which tells you they were probably thinking the same thing.
Jesus called them together and 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. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave — 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.” — Matthew 20:25–28
He doesn’t condemn ambition. He redirects it. Greatness is not abolished — it is redefined. And the redefinition is so complete that it constitutes a total inversion of every power system the world had ever known.
Lord Acton famously observed that “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”1 History has confirmed him with depressing consistency. Empire after empire. Leader after leader. The pattern is almost mechanical: accumulate power, misuse power, become what you once opposed. The world’s story of power is, with rare exceptions, a story of domination — of those on top pressing down on those beneath.
Jesus looked at that system and said: Not so with you.
The Revolutionary Challenge to Power
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks observed that one of the most radical contributions of the Hebrew Bible to human civilisation was its unflinching challenge to power. In a world of god-kings and absolute rulers, the prophets of Israel alone dared to stand before the powerful and say: you are accountable to a law you did not make.
Nathan confronts David. Elijah confronts Ahab. Amos confronts the prosperity of the northern kingdom. The prophetic tradition, Sacks argued, was the world’s first systematic speaking of truth to power — and it was made possible by a conviction that the King of kings stands above every human throne.2
This is the tradition Jesus steps into and radicalises. In him, the prophetic challenge to power is not merely spoken — it is embodied. The one with all authority in heaven and earth picks up a towel.
The Kenosis: When Power Kneels
The Apostle Paul had seen enough of human power — Roman power, religious power, his own former power as a persecutor of the church — to know how it worked. And so his description of Jesus in Philippians 2 lands with the force of a quiet detonation:
“In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death — even death on a cross.” — Philippians 2:5–8
Theologians call this the kenosis — from the Greek word meaning to empty or pour out. Jesus, who possessed every conceivable form of power, chose not to use it for his own advantage. He did not leverage his divine authority to secure his position or protect his reputation. He poured himself out.
John 13 makes it visceral. Jesus — knowing that all authority had been given to him, knowing that Judas was about to betray him, knowing that the cross was hours away — got up from the table, wrapped a towel around his waist, and washed his disciples’ feet. The hands that formed the universe cleaned the dirt from between the toes of men who would abandon him before morning.
That is not weakness wearing the costume of humility. That is the most concentrated exercise of power in human history — and it looked nothing like anyone expected.
The Most Revolutionary Letter You’ve Never Read
One of the shortest books in the New Testament might be the most socially explosive.
Paul writes to Philemon — a wealthy, respected Roman citizen and slave-owner who is also a follower of Jesus. The subject is Onesimus, his runaway slave, who has encountered Paul in prison and become a believer. Under Roman law, Onesimus is property. A runaway slave could be executed. The power dynamic is entirely clear: Philemon at the top, Onesimus at the bottom, Paul a prisoner with no leverage.
And then Paul writes this:
“No longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother… welcome him as you would welcome me.” — Philemon 1:16–17
Rome said Onesimus was property. Paul said he was family. Rome said Philemon had all the power. Paul said: use it to lift, not to crush. And notice — Paul could have commanded. He had the apostolic authority to do so. Instead, he appeals “on the basis of love.” He models the very thing he is asking for: power used in the service of the other.
That single letter planted a seed that would eventually bring the entire institution of slavery under judgment. Disruption doesn’t always arrive with a fanfare. Sometimes it comes in a short letter from a prison cell.
Disruptive Power in Practice
When Nelson Mandela walked out of 27 years on Robben Island, he had every human reason to grasp for revenge. To crush his oppressors as they had crushed him. Instead, he invited his former prison guards to his presidential inauguration. He wore the Springbok jersey — long a symbol of apartheid — to unite a fractured nation. He chose forgiveness over vengeance, service over domination.
Mandela once said: “Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.”3 He understood something Jesus demonstrated: that the willingness to lay down power is not weakness — it is the most destabilising force on earth.
Will Guidara, who turned Eleven Madison Park into the world’s best restaurant, discovered the same principle in a secular context. His book Unreasonable Hospitality documents a culture built not around the prestige of the establishment but around the radical practice of seeing people.4 One of his team noticed tourists who had never tasted a New York hot dog. Someone went out, bought hot dogs from a street cart, and they were served on fine china at the world’s finest restaurant.
Guidara concludes: “The greatest luxury is making people feel seen.”5
That is a secular observation of a kingdom truth. Everywhere Jesus went, people felt seen — the woman at the well, the leper, the children the disciples tried to turn away, the thief on the cross. He used every encounter not to consolidate his position but to restore someone’s dignity.
Henri Nouwen captured the posture required of those who follow him:
“The way of the Christian leader is not the way of upward mobility in which our world has invested so much, but the way of downward mobility ending on the cross.”6
Three Marks of Disrupted Power
Use power to lift others
Wherever God has given you influence — in your family, your team, your workplace, your church — the question is not how do I consolidate this? but who can I use this to lift? Power is a stewardship, not a possession. Sacks put it well: the measure of a society is not the greatness of its powerful but the dignity it affords to those with none.7
See people differently
Paul told Philemon to look at Onesimus again — not as property, but as a brother. Who have you written off? A colleague, a family member, someone who has disappointed or frustrated you? The gospel calls us to look again, through the lens of what Christ has done for them, not what they have failed to do for us.
Live cross-shaped
Greatness, in the kingdom, looks like sacrifice. Influence looks like service. Power looks like picking up the towel.
Not so with you is not a call to abdicate leadership — it is a call to lead like Jesus, with basin and towel rather than sword and throne. The cross was Rome’s instrument of domination. God turned it into his demonstration of love.
That is the disruption of power. And we are invited to live it — every day, in every room, with every person who crosses our path.
Post 4 of 7 in the Disruption series. Next: the thing we work hardest to protect — and why the gospel has other ideas. The Disruption of Security.
Footnotes
- Lord Acton, letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, 5 April 1887. ↩
- Jonathan Sacks, The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations (Continuum, 2002), pp. 51–57. See also Jonathan Sacks, Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times (Hodder & Stoughton, 2020), pp. 180–185. ↩
- Nelson Mandela, attributed in multiple sources; widely cited from interviews and speeches, 1990s. ↩
- Will Guidara, Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect (Optimism Press, 2022). ↩
- Ibid., p. 147. ↩
- Henri Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership (Crossroad, 1989), p. 62. ↩
- Sacks, Morality, p. 231. ↩
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Paul Benger 