if servant leadership is “sacrificial,” it would be good to ask what is being sacrificed. Being a servant or slave in the ancient context meant a deep loss of status and honor, which were essential components of a person’s identity and key measures of a person’s worth. For a person to become a servant or slave meant giving up these critical markers of identity. In today’s terminology, we might say that this person became a “nobody.” It also meant the loss of the right to self-determination and self-assertion. But for Paul, this is precisely what freed him to consider others before himself.
