“Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you. Verily, verily, I say unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him. If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.” John 13:13-17

He is Lord and Master but He has given us an example. The famous quote by Lord Acton “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.” did not apply to our Lord. I am sure that you have watched power and authority make seemingly decent people “bad”. Jesus Christ was the greatest, yet He was good personified. Power makes men proud and heavy-handed. Christ was perfectly humble.

Our Lord told His disciples, “whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister: And whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all.”

Matthew Henry in his commentary stated, “We must learn of our Master to be lowly in heart (Matt. 11:29), and walk with all lowliness; we must think meanly {lowly} of ourselves and respectfully of our brethren, and deem nothing below us but sin…Christ had often taught his disciples humility, and they had forgotten the lesson; but now he teaches them in such a way as surely they could never forget.”

“If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.” May our Lord knock the pride out of us.

“Every Christian has a choice between being humble or being humbled.” – C. H. Spurgeon

Shawn