There is something very basic in our confused thoughts and feelings when questions of status, pride and equality challenge us personally. The change required and promised is more radical than that. Another view on it comes from the way that Jesus regarded his own status. The Jews were offended that Jesus seemed to speak as if he had equality with God. Concern to enjoy equality with anyone, let alone with God, is nearly always presented in a bad light in the New Testament.
Equality is represented as a concern with status, and something to let go.
It was a lesson he applied to himself. As members of the body without concern for status, but as servants of one another, giving special honour to the least among us, and in this we honour Jesus Christ whose love made him the servant of all. It would be quite wrong to see the message of this sermon, calling popular ideas of equality as an ultimate value into question, as a call for return to some more hierarchical and authoritarian society. Aspects of equality in changed social relationships in our society over the past generation or so have not moved as far as the promises of the Kingdom, but they do signify benefits which can be enjoyed. In the end we hope that by the grace of God in Jesus Christ we will be enabled to enjoy that free relationship of love in which we all rejoice in the glorious liberty of children of God without regard for status, even the status of equality.