In 2006, Hollywood released the movie The Devil Wears Prada.  Prada was a clothing label and the devil was Meryl Streep’s character as the editor of a fashion magazine.  Her co-star, Anne Hathaway, made for splendid casting.  “Miranda Presley” (Streep’s character) was the embodiment of a ruthless, abusive, tyrannical leader who relied upon impossible expectations and psychological warfare to control others and make for a harsh atmosphere.  The devil is now back in The Devil Wears Prada 2 that was released to theaters on May 1^st. 

Streep’s character is representative of the devil himself.  She is cunning, uncaring, insensitive and loves to lord her prominence over others.  The title is fitting.  It is a page out of the Devil’s playbook.  Has it ever dawned upon us that a lot of that playbook has found lodging in our own hearts?  Yes, the Devil wears prominence. 

Diotrephes wore Prada as well, sort of.  John the apostle wrote in 3 John 1:9, “I wrote to the church, but Diotrephes, who loves to have the preeminence among them, does not receive us.”  There is a human tendency in the hearts of Adam’s children to love preeminence.  The prized days for our grandchildren are to be found in the “leader” days at preschool.  They form all of the lines.  Lead in the pledge.  They are first…all day.  Early on, many fall in love with prominence.  But its lineage goes back further than preschool and even further than our father Adam at Creation.

Satan loved preeminence so much that he usurped his created position and sought to be as God.  You can see his spirit captured in the likeness of the King of Tyre described by Isaiah in Isaiah 14:12-15.  That ultimate resolve in the devil’s spirit shows up in 14:14, “I will make myself like the Most High.”  So enamored was he with this philosophy of life that he pitched the opportunity to Eve.  She and Adam bit on the proposition…and here we are.  “You will be like God,” Genesis 3:5.  Somehow, it is not difficult to recognize that his version of “being like God” did not rise to the expectations that we may have once had.  You call our experience in this broken world after sin’s entrance being like God?  What?

The five “I wills” of Isaiah 14:12-15 unpack this yearning for prominence.  I will ascend…set up my throne…sit enthroned…ascend above the heights (I’ll be the highest one!)…make myself like the Most High!  I’ll set myself up as the prominent one!  How inviting does that aspiration sound to our own heart? 

That yearning for prominence lies hidden in some.  We can even be unconscious to its influence over our will that shapes the choices that we are making.  The roots of such tendencies are devilish.  They find their seminal source in our arch enemy, Satan himself.  It is his way of life that he pawns off on us. 

Jesus is calling His followers to a completely different way to live.  “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all,” Mark 9:35. It stands to reason that He would be the one teaching this.  The apostle Paul noted the M/O of Jesus’ life in Philippians 2:6, “who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant…”.   Jesus wore lowly servitude.

There is a bit of Diotrephes in all of us (3 John 1:9).  It would help us to face it in repentance if we called it what it is, devilish!  Jesus chided the Jewish leaders who “loved praise from man,”  (John 12:43).  The apostle Paul spoke of the trap of pride for the church leader (1 Timothy 3:6). 

O, to see ourselves rightly for who we are before the One true God and to seat Him in His rightful place.  John the Baptist had it right all along.  When responding to the reality that Jesus’ following was growing and John’s precursor congregation was getting smaller, John’s response was golden.  “He must increase. I must decrease,” John 3:30.  I love that verse, but it is easier to read than to live out.

Colonial American gospel preacher George Whitefield became very famous in his day.  Some argue for a season he was the most famous American in the mid 18^th century.  One day, in response to plaudits that he was getting, he had had enough and quipped, “Let the name of George Whitefield perish!”  Think of the focus of the Lord’s prayer; His name, His Kingdom and His will.  I can get those backwards and find myself reaching for my name, concerned for my kingdom, and preferring my will.  That’s a recipe for pilgrim’s regress. 

The devil wears prominence.  The follower of Jesus wears others-oriented deference, preferring others ahead of ourselves.  Yes, the first shall be last.  That’s the ethos of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ.

This is not written in the abstract.  As our good church on-boards a neat young man as our “Senior Pastor in Waiting,”  I have become alert to all manner of devilish yearnings for prominence that have secreted themselves in the catacombs of my own heart.  The next nine months of my ministry life will be given over to leadership deference and ceding responsibility and leading-authority over to another.  It feels foreign.  I am having to reckon with each scintilla of resistance in my own heart.  It is the right way forward.  Those old devilish tendencies are resistant to everything but that old-school discipline, framed in that classic King James Version rhetoric, of mortifying these tendencies. 

It is hard to die, but it is the way to life.  The downward reflex is one that must be developed.  It is not a natural reflex.  Each season of our lives is a footnote on the good work of making us like Jesus that God continues (Philippians 1:6)…on and on. 

Recently, Andi and I were invited to a global gathering of servants of Christ being funded by the Langham Trust as a legacy of John Stott’s vision and ministry.  They have published works from leaders we have never heard of in the majority world.  As I passed the Langham Trust book table a title caught my eye, Live to be Forgotten.  I found it a measure uncomfortable.  Now whatever page that is, I fear it is one that my playbook is without. 

Yes, the Devil wears prominence, but Jesus choose insignificance.  Through the ministry of His insignificance, we have come to salvation.  Jesus’ way is the path unto life.  Let’s be found there, even if no one knows who we are in that path.  God sees and is taking notice.  “These are my beloved children in whom I am well pleased!”  Jesus wears im-prominence.  What are we wearing today?