HUMILITY

Reflections on a word preached by my brother priest, Drew Witt.

Philippians 2:5-11

“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 emptied Himself of 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.”

It is not humility for me to acknowledge that Eric Clapton is a better guitarist than I am. That is simple honesty. True humility is when the greater sets aside their greatness to serve the lesser simply because they choose to out of untrammeled love and compassion.

God, whose holiness and goodness are infinite, calls us all to humble ourselves, to recognize that we are utterly finite and helpless to bring about lasting, eternal change in ourselves. I must come to the place where I accept that I am worse than I have ever had the honesty and courage to confess and that I am loved infinitely more by God than I could ever imagine. All that I am in Christ Jesus is because of all that He is in me.

The humility that God invites me to live in is the union between what is true about my desperate need for the grace of God and His infinite grace given to me in Christ Jesus. It is embracing that my freedom to finally become fully human flows from the power of His grace in the face of my utter and absolute dependance upon The Lord and Him alone.

My Brother Drew+ stated today that one of the major flaws in the Western church is that it tends to view the church from the CEO and Boardroom down rather than seeing the church from “the bathroom up.” Jesus didn’t come as Heaven’s CEO, but emptied Himself to become the Janitor to serve all humanity by cleaning our “toilets”, the toilets of the world, utterly foul, stained and hopelessly vile.

Jesus Christ was not disappointed by our condition as it did not surprise Him. He came knowing our desperate need for forgiveness, healing, and deliverance. His life, sacrificial death on a Roman cross, His mighty Resurrection and victory over sin, death, hell, and the grace proved that He had cleaned our “toilets” to the uttermost. We could come to Him and receive that cleansing that could have never been achieved by any human effort. He humbled Himself to the death of a criminal, taking the criminality of the whole human race upon Himself, as only the Creator could do, being worth more than an infinite number of His creatures.

He has done that for all, so that, whosoever will, may come to Him in humility knowing that God has come to rescue us, Himself. He has eternal life, a new heart, and a new way of being for all who will believe Him. Will you come?