What do you do with power?

Character is revealed not only by how we treat people above us. It is revealed by how we treat people beneath us. Give a person authority and you may discover who they really are. Some people become arrogant. Some become controlling. Some become impatient. Some begin believing they are more important than everyone else. Others use authority to serve.

Jesus completely overturned the world’s concept of greatness:

You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant. And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.

The King came to serve. That tells us something about the character of heaven.

Rehoboam: power that listened to the wrong voices

When Solomon died, the people came to his son Rehoboam and asked him to lighten the load that had been placed on them. The older advisers told him to serve the people and speak good words to them. The young men who had grown up with him told him to show strength. He chose them:

Then the king answered the people roughly, and rejected the advice which the elders had given him; and he spoke to them according to the counsel of the young men, saying, “My father made your yoke heavy, but I will add to your yoke; my father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scourges!”

Within a few verses, ten of the twelve tribes had left him (1 Kings 12:16-20). He had the authority, and he lost most of what he had been given. Power does not create character. It reveals it, and sometimes it magnifies what was already there.

Nehemiah: “but because of the fear of God I did not do so”

Nehemiah shows what the opposite looks like. As governor of Judah, he was entitled to a food allowance from the people. The governors before him had taken that allowance and more, and their servants had also ruled over the people harshly. Nehemiah writes:

Moreover from the time that I was appointed to be their governor in the land of Judah, from the twentieth year until the thirty-second year of King Artaxerxes, twelve years, neither I nor my brothers ate the governor’s provisions. But the former governors who were before me laid burdens on the people, and took from them bread and wine, besides forty shekels of silver. Yes, even their servants bore rule over the people, but because of the fear of God I did not do so.

Nobody would have stopped him from taking what was his due. But his reason was not public opinion or law. It was “the fear of God.” He used his office for twelve years to carry the burden of the people instead of adding to it. This is the character of the One who took the towel and the basin.

The test of how we treat those who cannot benefit us

Here is a revealing question: how do you treat someone who cannot do anything for you? A waiter. A cleaner. A cashier. An elderly person. A child. A struggling person. A stranger. Someone with no influence. Someone who cannot advance your career. Someone who cannot improve your reputation. These situations reveal whether our kindness is genuine. It is easy to be respectful toward someone important. Christlike character respects the person who appears unimportant. Jesus said:

Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.

David gives us a picture of power used this way. After he became king, he asked, “Is there not still someone of the house of Saul, to whom I may show the kindness of God?” (2 Samuel 9:3). The only one left was Mephibosheth, the son of David’s friend Jonathan, who was lame in both feet and lived in obscurity. Mephibosheth could do nothing for the king. David said to him:

Do not fear, for I will surely show you kindness for Jonathan your father’s sake, and will restore to you all the land of Saul your grandfather; and you shall eat bread at my table continually.

The king had everything to give and nothing to gain, and he gave. That is power under the government of grace.