HIS BROTHER had just been poisoned because he was Ha Christian chief.  The pagan tribe, with less than a dozen Christians, had learned by former experiences that Christian chiefs-well, there were none like them.
"Have you considered taking the position as chief of this pagan tribe?" asked the missionary.

"Yes, I have prayed about it and I believe I should accept the position."

"But do you realize all the risk it involves?  Your brother was poisoned just because he was a Christian."

"Yes, I know that.  I do not know what day I may be poisoned, but what a great opportunity for serving these people!"

Renouncing all that he had, even to life itself, he accepted the position as chief.  Jesus said: "Whosoever 'II be chief (or first) among, you, let him be your servant." Kingship is conditioned upon sacrificial service.  It springs from life sacrificed for others.

Homer, the poet, said: "All kings are shepherds of the people." How good!  The true Shepherd is indeed a King.  And no king is true who is not first a shepherd.  His authority to reign is based upon his care for the ,sheep.  His willingness to lay down his life for the sheep is the condition of his kingship.

The first Adam was created to have dominion.  He was commissioned a king.  In the single prohibition not to eat of the forbidden tree, man was reminded of the limitation of that kingship as properly under the government of God.  But man forfeited his regal power.  When he dethroned God from his heart and enthroned self, he was "sold under sin." Himself a slave, he has lost his fitness for kingship.  The thing man loves more than anything else is to have his own way.  Such is the supremacy of self.  Abdicate?  Never!  And until a Mightier shall dethrone self and reign supreme, man is an incurably selfish degenerate.  Dominated by self, he is up against a dead-end street.

How reinstate the divine rule?  How free man, the prisoner, from his self-centeredness?  How compel him to sever the tie and make an eternal break with the usurper?  In a word, how dispose man to die to self?  The more one grows in the grace of God, the more he learns that mere power and brute force are secondaries with God.  "He taketh up the isles as a very little thing." He speaks and worlds are flung out into space.  But how achieve an unforced, uncompelled victory over man--one that will "settle sin's accounts," and lead man to an eternal forsaking of his shameful folly and pride?  Man must be left free.  Where would be the moral glory to the Creator that men should be forced by the sheer weight of the Almighty to believe and submit and obey?

This new Adam came, a new Head of a new race.  He "came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." He came to die, to reconcile the rebel, to decenter man from himself and pivot him again on God.  All the way "from the throne of highest glory, to the Cross of deepest woe" He demonstrated how delightful is loving obedience to God.  In a perfectly selfless manhood, and by an infinite descent 'into the deeps of a voluntary death, He brought an end to the reign of pride.  When He set His face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem, He went forward to the Cross and "took it as it had been a crown." He had come