Skip to main content

 HUMILITY

Philippians 2:1-11

“Is there any encouragement from belonging to Christ? Any comfort from his love? Any fellowship together in the Spirit? Are your hearts tender and compassionate? 2 Then make me truly happy by agreeing wholeheartedly with each other, loving one another, and working together with one mind and purpose. Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too. You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. Though He was God, He did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, He gave up His divine privileges; He took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When He appeared in human form, He humbled Himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross. Therefore, God elevated Him to the place of highest honor and gave Him the Name above all other names, that at the Name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

True humility is demonstrated when the greater lowers itself to care for the lesser. When I state that Eric Clapton plays guitar better than me, that it not humility; that is honesty.

God is infinitely more perfect, more complete, more good, more just, more kind, more righteous, more holy than any human being. Yet God, Who is infinitely greater, demonstrated true humility by choosing to become fully human while still being fully God. Jesus Christ, Eternal God the Son, Incarnate Word of God, wrapped Himself in the finite, limited reality of a singular human being.

The One Whom the universe cannot contain, emptied Himself of His divine prerogatives and showed us Who God is and what He is like. To see Jesus Christ is to see the Father. That is why it is utterly vital to steep oneself in the eye-witness accounts of the Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John to see what God is like. There was nothing false in the humility of Jesus Christ. He genuinely humbled Himself to rescue the crown of His creation from the brokenness of sin and its ultimate “wage” of eternal separation from all the Goodness of God.

Now, there is a false humility and we see on display every day in our world. It is a thinly veiled pride that does what it does for the accolades of others. It always takes a camera to record “acts of mercy and kindness” photo ops to show how kind and humble one is as they feeds the poor. Jesus never did what He did for the sake of putting on a show. Often, when He healed broken people, He pulled them aside to do the miraculous so that it didn’t become some sort of side-show. In fact, He often told those He healed to tell no one about it.

Jesus Christ came to serve, not to be served. He came to give up His life, to lay it down in order that we might be restored to God. He died that we might live and receive Eternal Life. True humility doesn’t care if anyone notices what it does. Humility does what it does for the sake of those who need what it has.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

WHAT DO YOU BLESS? It would be an act of utter folly and disaster were I to choose to "bless" what God will not bless. God's wrath is set against anything and anyone that would try and hinder you becoming all He created you to be and to grow in by being united to Him through the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus Christ. There is nothing arbitrary about the Word of God. He is very specific on what will make for life and what will not. Human life only becomes human life when the Holy Spirit becomes Life withing a believer. Being united to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the follower of Jesus becomes a new creation and begins to live Life as God intended. God begins the good work, and He is the One who will bring it to competition. Somethings will NEVER make for life. What God calls sin, missing the mark of what will make for life, is always sin regardless of what culture anywhere and anytime say to the contrary. Sin cannot save, heal, redeem, restore or remake...
Post a Comment
Read more
BEWARE DECEPTION   Deuteronomy 18:9 “When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, be very careful not to imitate the detestable customs of the nations living there. Deuteronomy 12:29-30 “When the Lord your God goes ahead of you and destroys the nations and you drive them out and live in their land, do not fall into the trap of following their customs and worshiping their gods. Do not inquire about their gods, saying, ‘How do these nations worship their gods? I want to follow their example.’ Pragmatics was the downfall of Israel when they took possession of the Promised Land. To the unredeemed eye, it seemed that the fertility gods and agricultural gods of the pagan nations actually were helping the indigenous peoples. Just because something works does not make it right or good.  God promised to prosper His people if they would trust Him to the point of obeying His Word. God's Word is not empty. When He directs and commands, it is always for...
Post a Comment
Read more
 THE FOLLY OF IDOLATRY Martin Luther said that the human heart is an idol factory. The truth is that we were created to know and live by the gracious rule of and in the Presence of God who created us. Our peace, our understanding of meaning and purpose can only be truly grounded in God who created us for that meaning and purpose. The rebellion of Adam and Eve, their decision to do the opposite of what God said would make for life, resulted in spiritual and ultimately physical death. They chose to believe they needed something more than what God had provided. Their doomed attempt to try and live life without reference to God as the ground of meaning and purpose did not make life fuller, but emptied it. They wanted to decide what was good and what was evil without God and the disintegration of human life was the consequence. Rather than living in the Presence of God and by the gracious rule of God all around them, they turned from wholeness to brokenness, from fulfilment to scarc...
Post a Comment
Read more