One of my earliest memories of interacting with Scripture comes from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. I must have been in third grade. I still remember sitting outside during recess on the concrete pad beside a flower bed, looking out from the gym while the other kids played.
I cannot remember what had happened. I cannot remember who had excluded me, or whether anyone actually had. But I remember the feeling.
I felt alone.
And somewhere in the little collection of Bible verses already rattling around in my head, I found one of Jesus’ opening lines: “Blessed are the persecuted. (Matthew 5:10–12)”
Now, I was not being persecuted. Not by any reasonable definition of the word. Jesus was talking about people who suffer because of righteousness and because of their allegiance to him. I was a third grader sitting by a flower bed feeling left out.
But I did not know that distinction yet. What I knew was that something hurt. Something I thought should have been mine—friendship, inclusion, a place in the game—felt as though it had been taken from me.
And somehow that verse gave the hurt meaning. More than meaning, perhaps. For a few minutes, it made being on the outside feel almost like being on the right side.
THE POWER OF BEING WRONGED
There is something deeply human in that little third-grade calculation. When someone hurts us, something changes in the moral landscape. They did something. We suffered something.
Often that distinction matters enormously. Scripture gives us language for injustice, betrayal, abuse, false accusation, exploitation and sin. Sometimes one person really has harmed another. Sometimes repentance, protection, restitution or justice is required.
But there is a subtle leap we can make from there: I was wronged, therefore I am right.
Not simply right about what happened. Right. My suffering can begin to authorize me.
A recent study examined something psychologists call competitive victimhood: the tendency, particularly in conflict, for people to compete over who has suffered more. Researchers expected moral reputation to matter—we want to establish that our side is the good side. But the desire for power was actually a stronger predictor of competitive victimhood.
That deserves care. It does not mean reported harm is manipulation. Wounds can be real. Wrong can be real.
But it exposes an uncomfortable possibility: power does not belong only to the person at the top. There can also be power in being the one who was wronged—authority in grievance, protection from criticism, the ability to define the moral terms of the conversation, even insulation from the possibility that I too may need correction, repentance, forgiveness or change.
Suffering can tell the truth about what someone did to me. It cannot, by itself, tell the whole truth about me.
A VERY STRANGE HOUSEHOLD
This makes 1 Peter 5 rather surprising. Peter is writing to Christians who know suffering. As the letter nears its end, he turns toward life inside the church. If suffering automatically gave someone moral authority, this would be a natural place to flatten every distinction.
He does not. There are elders. They are given real responsibility. Peter tells them to shepherd God’s flock and exercise oversight. Then he tells younger Christians to submit to the elders. There is structure here. There is authority. There are different roles.
But almost as soon as Peter acknowledges authority, he strips it of rank. Elders are not to pursue dishonest gain or lord it over the people entrusted to them. They lead by example. And they are not the highest shepherd in the room anyway. Jesus is the Chief Shepherd.
Even Peter introduces himself not by pulling rank as the Apostle Peter, but as a fellow elder. Then he turns toward everybody else: submit to the elders, and all of you—elders included—clothe yourselves with humility toward one another.
Then Peter places the entire church in the same location: under the mighty hand of God.
That is an extraordinarily strange social arrangement: role without rank, but not without authority.
The elder really leads. The younger Christian really submits. But neither role establishes who matters more. The elder stands beneath the Chief Shepherd. The younger Christian stands beside the elder as a recipient of the same grace. The person who has suffered is not ignored—but suffering does not make that person sovereign.
Everyone is under the mighty hand of God.
ROLE WITHOUT RANK
Jesus had already described his community this way. The rulers of the Gentiles “lord it over” others. “Not so with you,” he says. The great become servants, and even the Son of Man “did not come to be served, but to serve. (Mark 10:42–45)”
Jesus does not abolish authority. He abolishes authority as a ladder of human importance.
That distinction matters. We often imagine equality by eliminating authority: nobody gets to tell anybody anything. Or we imagine authority by creating rank: the person with greater responsibility must somehow be the more important person.
Peter gives us neither.
Authority remains, but as responsibility rather than elevation. Submission remains, but without inferiority. And everybody is told to surrender the project of establishing their own importance.
“Humble yourselves…under God’s mighty hand,” Peter says. God will lift you up when the time comes.
In other words: you do not have to do it.
You do not have to climb high enough to prove that you matter. You do not have to win every disagreement to prove that you matter. You do not have to make your suffering the most important suffering in the room to prove that you matter. You do not have to turn authority into dominance or pain into moral supremacy.
God has already made this house (Ephesians 2:19–22). Jesus is already its Chief Shepherd. And you already have a place inside it.
WHAT THE CHURCH DOES TO POWER
That brings us back to the question underneath this whole study. If the church is something God has made—his dwelling place, a gift we receive before we calculate its usefulness—what happens to us when we live faithfully inside it?
Among other things, it does something to our relationship with power.
Give a power-hungry person genuine responsibility in the church, and Jesus begins asking uncomfortable questions. Will you use this to become important? Will you need to be listened to? Will you lord it over people? Or can you carry real authority while remembering that the flock is God’s, not yours?
But the church presses just as hard from the other direction. Bring your wounds into a community long enough and Jesus begins asking different uncomfortable questions. Can what happened to you be true without becoming the truest thing about you? Can you receive care without needing your pain to give you rank? Can someone genuinely have wronged you while you remain open to the possibility that Jesus still has things to expose, forgive and change in you? Can you surrender even your vindication to the mighty hand of God?
That is not silence. It is not pretending harm does not matter. And it certainly does not mean protecting leaders who misuse authority. Peter’s first command to leaders is that they must not dominate the people entrusted to them.
It means something much more demanding: nobody gets a throne. Not the leader. Not the strongest personality. Not the most gifted person. Not the person who has suffered most.
There is already a Chief Shepherd.
BROTHERS AND SISTERS UNDER CHRIST
Perhaps that is one of the unexpected gifts hidden inside faithfulness to the church. We discover a place where we do not have to spend our lives negotiating our importance.
The world gives us endless ways of doing that. Climb. Achieve. Control. Win. Be indispensable.
Or, from the opposite direction: keep score. Hold the grievance. Establish who hurt whom. Make sure everyone knows which side of the moral ledger you occupy.
Peter offers something stranger. Shepherd. Submit. Serve. Tell the truth. Receive care. Clothe yourself with humility. Cast your anxiety on God because he cares for you. Trust the mighty hand of God with where you stand.
That kind of community cannot be manufactured simply by arranging the right personalities in a room. It begins with God’s faithfulness. He has made this household and placed all of us under Christ.
And perhaps, over time, living faithfully inside it produces people who can do something increasingly rare: carry authority without turning it into rank, and carry wounds without needing them to become identity.
Jesus does not create a community without power. He creates a community in which power no longer determines status.
And if we stay inside that strange household long enough, perhaps we discover that we no longer need power to determine ours either.
If this raised a question or something you’d like to talk through, I’d be glad to continue the conversation. Email Pastor John.
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