The Ultimate Last and First.

Thursday August 28, 2025

Main idea: Jesus reveals the ultimate obedience fulfilling the first will be last.

Jesus is the ultimate last who would become first. He became low, the servant of all, and He obeyed His Father flawlessly. He fits His own description of “last” completely.

He gave us an example to follow (1Pe 2:21).

Text: Mat 20:17-19

Following His example we are to be as willing to sacrifice whatever it takes to fulfill the will of the Father for our own lives.

Natural Law of human spirit.

There is a commonality of morality among all peoples from ancient times to now.

For example: Confucianism's Ren is benevolence: cultivating compassion, empathy, and love for others, treating people with dignity and kindness.

It reveals what God has put into the conscience of every man.

Rom 2:14-15

For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, 15 in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them.

Rom 5:13

until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law.

Did Jesus only give us a higher ethic?

It has been easy for almost everyone to think that Jesus is a man of very high morals. Imagine if that’s what Jesus gave us and nothing else.

First, the law of God, which condemned every person, would only be made even more unattainable. All we would have received was more condemnation.

Second, there would have been no new life.

But this is where Jesus really differs from every moral teacher - and it is in His resurrection. He gave us new life, or new birth.

Rom 8:1-4

Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. 3 For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, 4 so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

Rom 8:4 is a reference to your new birth.

He came to make us new and give us eternal life, the life of the Son of God. That life follows the law of God.

Jesus is the beginning and the end, the Alpha and Omega. He is God. Jesus is the Creator of the world, the first born (preeminent one) of all creation and the first born from the dead (Col 1:15-20). He is also the ultimate last who would be, and now is, first.

The Last – a child submitting to the will of His Father.

In Mat 20:17-19 Jesus shows what is the will of the Father for Him.

Up to this time, Jesus is stating the cost of His own “lastness,” but not only in an ethical way.

The First – His reward is resurrection and His fruit (you).

Christianity is more than ethics and includes heaven’s ethics. It is the life of the new humanity in union with Christ.

Christ’s reward in this passage is resurrection and all the resurrection lives of all who the Father gives Him.

Joh 17:6. Joh 17:9; Joh 3:3-5; Eze 36:25-27.

Christianity is a new life, eternal life, and the ethics of heaven (1Pe 2:21-25).

This is the result of the ultimate last becoming the ultimate first.

Resurrection is real, historical, bodily, physical.

We don’t just believe in morals or a higher life. We believe in a new life that died and walks out of a grave brand new and imputed with the very righteousness of God.

The results of Christ’s last shall be first is the giving of a new eternal life to mankind by grace and with it the ethics of Christ for which that life lives.

Jesus obeys to the point of death, which others have done and can do, but only He could obey to the point of a death on the cross for the sins of the world.

What His last to first means to you:

The result was the first resurrection and subsequently, His first fruits (1Co 15:14, 20). As His first fruits you are to be just like Him.

You have the person, the divine power, all He could give to live just like Him (Phi 2:5; 4:13).

You have been born again of water and the Spirit (Joh 3:3-5; Eze 36:26-27). You are new in Him and this should give you great confidence.

You are indwelt by the Holy Spirit and sins removed (Jer 31:33-34; Heb 8:7-13; Heb 10:16-18). You are to live free and without condemnation.