Humbling Ourselves Under the Mighty Hand of God
God’s instruction is clear and repeated: Pride brings God’s judgement, opposition, and ultimate humiliation; humility brings favour, grace, and ultimate exaltation.
Humility is often misunderstood. Many of us confuse false humility with the real thing. True humility is essential for serving God joyfully and receiving the unfading crown of glory promised in 1 Peter 5:4. Peter goes on to instruct us to “Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.’”
Even pastors need these reminders, prone as people sometimes are to exalt us, and prone as we are to accept the exaltation.
In Matt. 23, Jesus sums up a block of teaching with “The greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”Calvin encourages us to imagine that God has two hands. With one, like a hammer, he “beats down and breaks in pieces those who raise up themselves.” And with the other hand he “raises up the humble who willingly let down themselves, and is like a firm prop to sustain them.”
God’s instruction is clear and repeated: Pride brings God’s judgement, opposition, and ultimate humiliation; humility brings favour, grace, and ultimate exaltation.
But If we are going to “put on humility” then we need to know what humility is.
False and True Humility
Humility is not found in self-punishment or thoughts of oneself as worthless or useless. It is not constantly mentioning your inadequacies or comparing yourself to others and saying how much better they are compared to you - as if self-loathing and self-pity were themselves virtues.
These are all manifestations of false humility that are subtly yet distinctly self-centred. Such statements are made with only one reference in mind: yourself. And always having yourself at the centre of your own thoughts is the very opposite of true humility. Humility, as someone once said, “is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.”
True humility, on the other hand, has God as its reference point. It comes from seeing yourself in light of who God is and having a sense of your smallness compared to Him.
A Humble Mind
In 1 Peter 3:8, we find these words: “Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind.”
He means that we are to have a modest opinion of ourselves. The key to Christian humility is to avoid comparing oneself to others and instead compare oneself to Christ. When we do this, it will align our behaviour with reality as we see that compared to Christ there is nothing in us worthy of exaltation. And this will keep us from acting and speaking in self-exalting ways.
Serving the Needs of Others
"This does not mean a poor self-concept (‘I'm no good’),” says Peter H. Davids, “but a willingness to take the lower place, to do the less exalted service, and to put the interests of others ahead of one's own interests."
When we dwell on thoughts of worthlessness, we tend to default to inactivity. But that's not humility; it is closer to self-pity masquerading as humility and it serves as an excuse to avoid action.
But true humility takes action - it takes the lower place, volunteers for the less-exalted service, and serves the interests of others instead of the interests of self.
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Michael Krahn is a pastor, the husband of Anne Marie, and the father of Madeleine, Olivia, and Sophia. Make a connection on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.