Answering this question can get us a ways toward where we want to go. But it’s not nearly so straightforward as it might seem. For as we should have come to expect, the Son of God is not easily cornered.
Understanding Jesus’ Unambitious Ambition
Let’s start with his name. The angel of the Lord tells Joseph in a dream, “You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (Mt 1:21). Jesus, Yeshu’a: literally, “YHWH saves.” Right out of the gate there’s a tall task, to put it mildly. But it’s also one that, as he grows up, Jesus doesn’t shy away from.
Where to begin?
Ambition Defined: The “I Came” Statements
Commonly we’ll look to Jesus’ “I am” statements: I am the light of the world, the bread of life, the good shepherd, or simply I am—the naked assertion of identification with the God of Israel who revealed himself to Moses in the burning bush (Ex 3:14). These statements undoubtedly speak to Jesus’ awareness of his divine identity. Less often attended to, but perhaps more pertinent for our purposes, are Jesus’ “I came” statements: his expressions of personal mission and aim. Which is to say, his ambition.
“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy,” he says. “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (Jn 10:10). He tells the grumbling Pharisees, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mt 9:13). He says, “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me” (Jn 6:38). And again, laying it out plainly, “I did not come to judge the world but to save the world” (Jn 12:47). To say that Jesus is ambitious is like saying the universe is pretty big; it understates the case by exponential orders of magnitude. For his aim is nothing less than the restoration of the cosmos: “Behold, I am making all things new” (Rev 21:5).
Given these cosmically grand ambitions, then, how would you expect him to carry them out? Perhaps there would be a celestial message campaign: notes from on high, written in the sky. Or if not composed in the clouds, then at least by means of mass media: a flood of letters, drafted by the Savior and sent to each doorstep—divine direct mail. Or a worldwide speaking tour: a globe-trotting, whistle-stop campaign that would make the indefatigable Teddy Roosevelt look like a puttering homebody. Or at the very least, the establishment of a prominent platform in Rome or Alexandria—some ancient metroplex, from which he could propagate his teaching and catalyze a movement. Any and all of these tactics would befit the grand ambitions of one who claims he came to save the world.
And yet Jesus eschews it all. He wrote nothing, in the sky or otherwise. He came from a town so tiny and backward that it elicited the derisive question from one of his future disciples, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” When crowds grew and fame loomed, he retreated to desolate places—or, alternatively, unleashed decidedly unpopular teachings, like, “If anyone doesn’t hate his family he can’t be my disciple.” (Where’s the PR team
when you need them?) And given the opportunity to shortcut his mission and lay claim to “all the kingdoms of the world and their glory” by simply offering his obeisance to the tempter, Jesus emphatically declines. For someone who supposedly has such exalted aims, he sure has a strange way of pursuing them.
Ambition Reversed: Humility as Kingdom Strategy
When we zoom out and see the whole heavenly picture, though, ministry backwaters, difficult sermons, and diabolical temptations aren’t the half of it. In Philippians 2, Paul paints a picture of downward mobility that takes your breath away:
[Christ Jesus], though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Phil 2:6-8)
This is almost an exact inversion of Babel. Rather than greedily grasping for security, Jesus generously surrenders divine equality. Instead of scaling the heights of heaven, he willingly descends into the depths. He passes ambitious humanity on the way down the ladder. It makes no earthly sense.
And why does he do it? Jesus bottoms out to lift us up. Out of love for the honor of the Father and his fallen creatures, he dove down into the quicksand of desperation and climbed into the maw of death in order to rescue us from its dread clutches. As the beloved hymn “What Wondrous Love Is This?” puts it, with repetition that can only be called profound,
When I was sinking down,
sinking down, sinking down,
when I was sinking down,
sinking down—
when I was sinking down
beneath God’s righteous frown,
Christ laid aside his crown
for my soul, for my soul,
Christ laid aside his crown
for my soul.
So that we would not sink down eternally, Jesus was willingly swallowed by the quicksand, drowned in the flood.
But then a remarkable thing happens:
From Descent to Exaltation: The Paradox of Christian Ambition
God . . . highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phil 2:9-11)
God did not leave his Son to languish in the prison house of death. The Father vindicates Jesus’ faithful obedience, his downward mobility, by raising him from the dead. As Christ speaks through the voice of the psalmist, “[The Lord] drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure” (Ps 40:2). And what is more: Jesus did not seek to make a name himself. Instead, the Father bestowed on him “the name that is above every name.” In Christ, the way of the world is utterly upended.
Living with Unambitious Ambition Today
So was Jesus ambitious or unambitious? We have to say that the answer is . . . yes. He is the paragon of unambitious ambition.
This makes all the difference as we seek to lead lives that count, that make a mark for the kingdom. We do not need to make a name for ourselves. Jesus has made a name for us and bestows it on us. Recall his last word spoken in Matthew’s Gospel, the so-called Great Commission: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” When we are baptized, we’re given the name of God almighty. We don’t need to climb up the ladder to make our lives matter. Jesus climbed down it to ensure that they already do, more than we could ever know.
Adapted from The Quiet Ambition by Ryan Tinetti. ©2025 by Ryan Tinetti. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press. www.ivpress.com.
Ryan P. Tinetti is a pastor who now serves as a professor of practical theology at Concordia Seminary (Saint Louis). He is the author of Preaching by Heart and writes the regular column “The Preacher’s Toolbox” on 1517.org. Prior to his call to Concordia Seminary, Ryan served for fourteen years in parish ministry. Ryan lives with his wife, Anne, and their four children in St. Louis on the campus of the seminary.
