Theological Commentary: Click Here
Discipleship Focus: Ambition
- Ambition: We all need a goal to which we can strive. When our ambition comes from God, we find fulfillment in our obedience into that for which we have been equipped because our Out is in proper focus. But when our ambition comes from ourselves, we find ourselves chasing after our own dreams and trying to find fulfillment in accomplishments of our own making.
I think
that it would be really easy to do a post for John 19 about the concepts of
authority or power. Jesus practically
lectures Pilate on these points!
Certainly it wouldn’t be a wrong discussion to have.
However,
today I feel like talking about ambition.
We have so many perspectives through which we can analyze the concept of
ambition. For example, take the crowd
and the religious elite. They just want
Jesus dead. They want to see Him
crucified. They want His version of
truth to be snuffed out. What is their
ambition? They want to rule. They want the power. They want to hold onto their status quo. They don’t want to change. They don’t want the kind of life that is
lived by having a relationship with the Father.
We can
also look at the ambition of Pilate.
From John’s perspective, I think Pilate is genuinely trying to do the
right thing. He seeks to save
Jesus. He seeks for a way to release
Him. He even dialogues with Jesus,
certainly something that didn’t have to be done. In the end – at least in this part of Pilate’s
life – I think Pilate’s ambition rests in his power and prestige of being a
Roman governor. While I think he desires
to do the right thing, his ambition of being in charge causes him to acquiesce
and le the religious elite win the day.
Finally,
we can see the ambition of Jesus. There
is no desire to save Himself. There is
no desire to avoid the cross. Jesus’
ambition is not on Himself. Jesus
aspires to what the Father has called Him to do. Jesus’ ambition is rooted in the Father, not
His own personal needs, desires, or wants.
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