The Carpenter and the Crown: The Greatness of Those Who Serve

Almost everyone has felt the question, even without saying it aloud: who is in charge here, and who serves? At work, in the family, in a church, in a group of friends. Getting ahead, most of the time, means reaching a point where other people work for us.

Now imagine someone who has every right to that and chooses the opposite road. Someone who spends his life as a craftsman in a small village, who kneels with a towel before the people who followed him, and who accepts a crown of thorns from those who wanted to mock him. Christians say this is the truest portrait of God there is. This essay looks at that portrait calmly, through one of the oldest texts of the faith about him.

A Carpenter from Nazareth

When Jesus returned to his hometown and taught in the synagogue, the people were astonished, and not only with admiration. Mark tells us they asked: isn't this the carpenter, the son of Mary? (Mark 6:3). Matthew, telling the same scene, says "the carpenter's son" (Matthew 13:55). The Greek word, tekton, means someone who worked with his hands, usually in wood but also in stone and other building materials. The text says what matters: to his neighbors he was one of them, from a known family, with no title at all. Mark says they took offense at him: they could not see beyond what they already knew.

Another scene shows the same shape. John tells us that Jesus knew the Father had put everything into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God (John 13:3). Knowing this, he rose from the table, took a towel, and began to wash the disciples' feet (John 13:1–17). Washing the feet of people arriving from a dusty road was the job of a household servant, not of the one presiding at the meal. Peter resisted. Jesus explained that he had given an example, so that they would do for one another what he had done for them (John 13:15).

Two pictures, one idea: the one who has everything gives what he has. Paul says it even more directly in a letter to the Christians of Philippi.

The Passage: The Hymn of Philippians 2

What the text says. Paul writes from prison (Philippians 1:7, 13). Where, scholars debate, with Rome the most common proposal; the date falls somewhere between the 50s and 60s of the first century. He writes to the Christians of Philippi, a city Acts 16:12 calls a Roman colony, where he had founded the community. The letter is warm, but it shows tensions: the pull of rivalry and vanity, and two women, Euodia and Syntyche, who disagreed (Philippians 2:3; 4:2).

In that climate, Paul asks them to think of one another with humility and to look also to the interests of others (Philippians 2:1–4). Then he points to Jesus (Philippians 2:5–11). He existed "in the form of God" and did not treat equality with God as something to be grasped. Instead he emptied himself: he took the form of a servant and became like human beings. He humbled himself and obeyed to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God raised him high and gave him the name above every name. Every knee will bow before him, and every tongue will say that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

What it means. Many scholars believe this passage is a hymn Christians were already singing, and that Paul quotes it. Others think he composed it himself. The text does not say. Its two-part shape helps in reading: first Jesus goes down, step by step, to the lowest point possible; then God raises him up.

First, "something to be grasped." The difficult Greek word is harpagmos, and scholars debate whether it means "something to seize" or "something to use for his own advantage." Many today, like N. T. Wright in a 1986 article, prefer the second: Jesus already had equality with God and did not use it for his own gain. He lived it by giving, not taking.

Second, "emptied himself." The text does not say emptied of what. Christian tradition usually understands that he did not stop being God, but took on the whole of human life, with its limits; churches explain this in different ways. What the text states clearly is the manner: taking the form of a servant.

Third, the ending. "Lord" was the word the Greek Bible used to translate God's name, and the line about every knee bowing echoes Isaiah 45:23, where the speaker is God himself. By applying these words to Jesus, the hymn gives him the honor the Old Testament reserves for God. The humbled servant and the exalted Lord are the same person.

What changes in life. Here the application comes in, which Paul himself opens in verse 5: have among yourselves the same attitude that was in Jesus. A person can read this as an invitation to a new question in each situation. Not "what do I get?" but "what can I give here?" It applies to the one who leads and to the one who leads no one, to the one who feels big and to the one who feels small. The hymn does not ask anyone to disappear. It changes the measure of greatness.

The Crown of Thorns and the Scandal of the Cross

Today the cross has become decoration and jewelry. In Paul's world it was something else: a humiliating Roman punishment, used mostly on enslaved people and rebellious foreigners. The historian Martin Hengel, in a classic study of crucifixion, shows how educated people avoided even saying the word. Cicero, in the first century BC, said the cross should stay far away not only from the body of a Roman citizen but from his thoughts, eyes, and ears. That matters in Philippi, a colony with many Roman citizens: saying that the Lord was someone executed like this sounded, to many, absurd.

Against this background we read the crown of thorns. The Gospels say the Roman guards, mocking a man who called himself king, put a purple robe, the color of kings, and a crown of thorns on him and saluted him with false reverence (Mark 15:17–19; John 19:2). It was a parody of royalty. The Christian text turns the joke around: what was mockery becomes the deepest truth about who he is. He reigns, and he reigns by serving. Mark keeps a saying of Jesus that puts it plainly: the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45).

It is fair to ask: did this really happen? Outside the Bible, the Roman historian Tacitus, in the early second century, wrote in his Annals that Christ was executed under Tiberius by the governor Pontius Pilate. He does not describe how the execution was carried out, but, as someone who was not a Christian, he confirms the fact the Gospels narrate. What it means, the hymn and the Christian faith explain; Tacitus does not.

Questions That Arise

Does serving mean accepting anything? No. Jesus washed the disciples' feet by choice, knowing who he was. The hymn speaks of someone who gives himself freely, not of someone whose right to say no is taken away. The Gospels show Jesus speaking firmly and confronting those who abused others. Serving here comes from freedom, not fear. No one is called to stay where they are being harmed; asking for help is also a way forward.

Is Jesus only a model to imitate? The hymn begins with what he did, and only then, in verse 5, applies it to the reader's life. Scholars such as Gordon Fee and Michael Gorman understand Paul as joining the two: what Christ did for us and the way of life that opens up. Christian traditions stress one side more than the other, but most keep both.

Why does the exaltation come after the cross? The text says "therefore" God raised him. It is the sign that the self-giving did not end in loss. The Bible does not promise readers the same rise in this life; Paul himself writes from a cell. What the text offers is hope, not a guarantee of success.

One Small Step

The search usually begins with a small gesture. In an ordinary task, it is worth asking: where is the towel here? It might be a favor no one will notice, a conversation where we let the other person speak first, work done without expecting credit.

And for anyone who does not yet see God's face in this portrait, there is the invitation to read the Gospels of Mark and John slowly, and to see whether this figure, a carpenter, a foot-washer, a man crowned with thorns, makes sense.

Further Reading

• Hengel, Martin. Crucifixion in the Ancient World and the Folly of the Message of the Cross. Fortress Press, 1977.
• Fee, Gordon D. Paul's Letter to the Philippians. Eerdmans (New International Commentary on the New Testament), 1995.
• Gorman, Michael J. Cruciformity: Paul's Narrative Spirituality of the Cross. Eerdmans, 2001.
• Wright, N. T. "Harpagmos and the Meaning of Philippians 2:5–11". Journal of Theological Studies 37, 1986, pp. 321–352.
• Tacitus. Annals, book 15, chapter 44.
• Cicero. In Defense of Rabirius (Pro Rabirio perduellionis reo), 5.16.