Is It Wrong to Be Ambitious?

The short answer: No. Wanting to do something great with your life can be a very good thing, and Paul himself was ambitious. What the Bible warns against is selfish ambition: wanting to be great so that people will look at you. The question isn’t whether you aim high, but who you’re aiming for.

Maybe you want to be a surgeon, a footballer, a songwriter, an engineer, a business owner or the first in your family to go to university. Maybe someone has made you feel that wanting to be the best is somehow un-Christian, as if humble people should aim low. That isn’t what the Bible teaches. (Book 1 answered whether it’s wrong to be rich. This chapter is about something different: the drive to achieve.)

Two kinds of ambition

The Bible is sharp about one kind of ambition. “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or empty pride, but in humility consider others more important than yourselves” (Philippians 2:3). James warns, “For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every evil practice” (James 3:16).

The very first big building project in the Bible was driven by this. The people of Babel said, “let us build for ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens, that we may make a name for ourselves” (Genesis 11:4). For ourselves. A name for ourselves. That’s selfish ambition: greatness as a way of making yourself the centre.

But there’s another kind. Paul wrote, “In this way I have aspired to preach the gospel where Christ was not known” (Romans 15:20). He wanted something huge: to take the message of Jesus to places that had never heard it. He travelled thousands of miles, planted churches across an empire, and wrote letters that are still read every day. That’s not a man who aimed low. And he summed up his deepest ambition like this: “So we aspire to please Him” (2 Corinthians 5:9).

Interestingly, Paul also told ordinary Christians “to aspire to live quietly, to attend to your own matters, and to work with your own hands” (1 Thessalonians 4:11). Doing ordinary work faithfully is a worthy ambition too. Greatness in God’s eyes doesn’t always look like greatness on a stage.

Jesus redefined greatness

James and John once came to Jesus with a bold request: “Grant that one of us may sit at Your right hand and the other at Your left in Your glory” (Mark 10:37). Jesus didn’t tell them to stop wanting greatness. He told them what greatness really is: “whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be the slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve” (Mark 10:43–45).

So Jesus doesn’t cancel ambition. He turns it round. Aim to be great at serving. Aim to be first at giving. Use every gift you have for God’s glory and other people’s good.

Testing your ambition

Here are some honest questions to ask about your dreams:

• Who is it for? Would I still want this if nobody ever praised me for it? “Whatever you do, work at it with your whole being, for the Lord and not for men” (Colossians 3:23).
• Who does it help? Does this goal serve other people, or only me?
• What will it cost? Am I willing to cheat, trample friends, or neglect God and family to get there? If so, the ambition has become an idol.
• Can I hold it loosely? Could I trust God if this door closed? Ambition is good as a servant and terrible as a master.

Aim high, stay humble

Hard work and skill are good gifts. “Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will be stationed in the presence of kings” (Proverbs 22:29). Practise. Study. Train. Paul even used athletes as a picture of the Christian life: “Run in such a way as to take the prize” (1 Corinthians 9:24).

But keep asking whose name you’re trying to make great. Humility isn’t thinking you’re rubbish. It’s forgetting about yourself because you’re caught up in God and other people. The most ambitious thing you could ever want is the one Paul wanted: to hear, at the end, that you pleased the One who made you. “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31).

Think about it: What’s one big dream you have? How could it become something you do for God and for others, not just for yourself?

Go deeper: C. T. Studd (For Teens) — Charlie Studd was one of the best cricketers in England and played in the famous 1882 Test that started the Ashes; the chapter tells that story and why he later said cricket had taken the place of Christ, while insisting games themselves were never sinful. Start with chapter 2, “Mr Studd at the Oval”.