You Bow to No One

In The Return of the King, the final film of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, there is a scene that catches audiences off guard every time. Aragorn has just been crowned King of Gondor. The entire kingdom kneels before him. He wears the crown, holds the scepter, and carries the authority of a lineage stretching back thousands of years.

Then he sees them — four hobbits standing in the crowd. Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin begin to bow, as everyone else has done. But Aragorn stops them. He shakes his head and says, with tears in his eyes, "My friends, you bow to no one." And then the king — the king — kneels before them. Every person in that courtyard follows.

It is one of the most powerful moments in cinema because it reverses everything we expect about power. The one with the greatest authority uses it not to elevate himself but to honor the humble ones who carried the burden no one else could bear.

This is the pattern of the Kingdom of God. Paul writes in Philippians 2 that Jesus, "being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage." Instead, He humbled Himself — not before a courtyard, but before a cross.

True greatness has never been about who kneels before you. It has always been about before whom you are willing to kneel.