Relinquishing Power

I am being immensely blessed through reading Glen Stassen's recent work, 'A Thicker Jesus'. Glen is a man of mature years, and Incarnate wisdom, like good wine, often does improve with age.

And I am hugely challenged by Glen's invitation to the disavowment and relinquishing of power. When I look at all social structures, I see people exercise power, in many different ways. In fact, that includes you, my reader. For we learn to survive by managing the power of others and using our own, albeit subversively.

But, as Glen points out, Jesus' counter-intuitive disavowment and relinquishing of power, as a manipulative or controlling force, is central to His exercise of ministry and teaching. Paul grasps this too, as witnessed in Philippians 2.5ff.

Wouldn't it be fitting if we grasped and embraced this the more as well?