Holiness Which Blooms Only in the Soil of Humility

“Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord” Hebrews 12:14.

“Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.” James 4:10.

“Humility and the fear of the LORD bring wealth and honor and life.” Proverbs 22:4.

Someone once asked Bernard of Clairvaux what the three most important virtues were, to which he replied, “Humility, Humility, Humility.”

The Reverend Frederick B. Meyer said, “I used to think that God’s gifts were on shelves one above the other and that the taller we grow in Christian character the more easily we could reach them. I now find that God’s gifts are on shelves one beneath the other and that it is not a question of growing taller but of stooping lower.”

Humility is the secret of and prerequisite for holiness. For without humility there can be no holiness and no service of real value in God’s Kingdom. Patronizing service is self-destructive and may be the greatest of all disservices. For this reason, to serve our fellow man at all, to avoid doing them harm greater even than the good we attempt, we must find a place for worship in our lives. If we would attempt to perform ministry that will prove good and not evil, we must act from the spirit of humility; worship alone can make us humble. Humility is not something that will come of itself, but emerges out of a deep devotion; desire and prayer, faith and practice; out of which springs joy in service, invigorated prayers, power in witnessing, and our walk in His will more potent than ever before!

Within the framework of Biblical faith, humility is a virtue and the right attitude we should have toward our Divine Creator. I think of it as the spontaneous recognition of our absolute dependence on our Creator; an ungrudging, un-hypocritical acknowledgment of the gulf which separates the Eternal Self-existent Being from the temporal utterly dependent being. It is God’s gift of grace, His unfathomable mercy which, having called us out of non-existence into existence, sustains us moment by moment from lapsing back into nothingness.

Humility is the logical consequence of an acute sin-awareness. It explains Abraham’s confession that he is but dust and ashes and is explained again in Paul’s sharp reminder to the inflated Corinthians that man’s position before God, is that of recipients, dependent creatures who are empty until divine benevolence fills them. Humility is also the right reaction of a guilty person in the presence of a holy Creator. It is the sinner’s admission that our failures as finite creatures have been due to our rebellion against our Creator God.

In the Old Testament we read of the grief of the young prophet as he sees the Lord: “Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips” Isaiah 6:5. In the New Testament it is the apostle’s honest self-deprecation as he reflects on his stubborn disobedience to the truth:

“For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God” 1 Corinthians 15:9.

“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst” 1Timothy 1:15.

It follows then that humility is the essence of Old Testament piety. It was exemplified by Moses who “was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth;” Saul at the outset of his career; and Solomon whose self-knowledge motivated his sincere self-abasement. As a foundation of holiness this virtue is expressed in Micah 6:8, “What does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

So Rabbi Joshua ben Levi was simply epitomizing the Old Testament when, discussing the merit of various blessings, insisted: “Humility is greater than all other virtues, for it is said in Scripture, ‘The spirit of the Lord is upon me, being good tidings to the humble” Rabbi Levi points out this “herald of joy is not to the saintly, but to the humble.” He deduces from this that humility, therefore, is greater than all other virtues.

Humility is no less the essence of New Testament piety. How could it be otherwise in light of Jesus’ own example? Humility was required on the part of the Son of God in Heaven before He ever became incarnate, so humility is a heavenly, Godlike, and holy quality. Our Lord humbled Himself, voluntarily abandoning His divine status, surrendering His dignity in order to live as a human being on the lowest level of poverty and obscurity, eventually sinking to the bottommost depths of humiliation and agony. The holiness of Jesus’ character exhibited nothing of pride or arrogance. Though unflinchingly courageous and at times scathingly outspoken, He was “gentle and lowly in heart.”

So His teaching on poverty of spirit had no hypocritical ring to it. Rather than accepting praise, He bore witness to total dependence on His Father as the Source of His own wisdom and power. Rather than grasping for glory, He ascribed all glory to His Father. When He stooped to wash the feet of His disciples, Jesus was not indulging in a piece of ostentatious theatrics; no, He was symbolizing with perfect integrity the whole meaning and message of His ministry. In that act the theme of His person and work broke through, that motif which reached its crescendo on Calvary’s Cross.

Jesus was perfect in humility and the world’s greatest Servant. “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” Mark 10:45. Consequently, since imitating Christ is the New Testament imperative, the life of the faithful servant must be a holy life which can only blossom in the soil of humility.

Humble King

Oh kneel me down again, here at Your feet;
Show me how much You love humility.
Oh Spirit, be the star that leads me to
The humble heart of love I see in You.
You are the God of the broken, the friend of the weak;
You wash the feet of the weary, embrace the ones in need.
I want to be like you, Jesus, to have this heart in me.
You are the God of the humble.
You are the humble King.

~ Brenton Brown

Always concerned to exalt the Savior as Savior and to exalt His Father, we as His disciples declare with the John the Baptist, “He must increase, I must decrease.” In everything and anything we do, the motive is God and God alone. We are to be reduced, lessened, and made to nothing so He can be our ALL. We are immersed into who Jesus Christ is and what His humility has done for us and what it does to us through the working of the Holy Spirit.

To my mind, true Christianity turns its back on status, security, and success according to secular standards, asking only an opportunity to serve, however inconspicuously. Glorying in nothing but the Cross we struggle to achieve a proper self-evaluation, neither unrealistically deflating nor egotistically inflating. We take seriously the injunction to make the attitude of Jesus our all controlling life principle whether in relationship to God or to our brothers and sisters.

That is to say, Christ’s faithful disciples fight a continual battle against that pride which is the root of sin; that egoism which breeds self-centeredness, self-exaltation, self-will, self-sufficiency, self-confidence, self-righteousness, self-glorying, self-absorption and hence self-delusion with its ultimate fruit of self-frustration and self-despair. As we keep on winning the battle against pride and presumption, we mature in that holiness which blooms only in the soil of humility.

Christian humility rests in the end and death of ourselves; it is the secret of dying to self and living for God. Like Jesus Christ, we reject all worldly honors and recognition and seek the honor that comes from God alone; all else counts, to us, as nothing. For true Christians, God is our ALL and our Lord alone is exalted.

Of course, humility is forever susceptible to gross misunderstanding. Let it be said candidly, therefore, that Biblical humility is not the inverted conceit which disguises itself as lowliness. Rather, it is that attitude which results from a fearlessly honest self-appraisal, a self appraisal which neither minimizes one’s achievements nor exaggerates one’s failures. Humility is not the subtle self imposed misery that disparages oneself. Humility is not the subtle self imposed misery that disparages oneself. Self-denunciation and self-condemnation are still focused on self. Humility comes from looking away to Jesus and focusing instead on God’s amazing grace that delivers us from sin. It is grace that then enables us to live out the meekness and kindness that are the hallmarks of humility. It is not that cowardice which protects itself by a groveling Uriah Heep insincerity. Uriah Heep is the fictional character in the novel David Copperfield. He is notable for his cloying humility, obsequiousness, and always referring to his own “umbleness.” But as someone so truthfully pointed out, “When we become aware of our humility, we’ve lost it.”

Humility is indeed an experience; we can hear about the need to be humble, read, and even study about it. But unless the Spirit makes humility real personally to the individual, we are surely to become haughty about the need for being humble.

In other words, we cannot say to ourselves, “From now on I will be humble” for this in itself is pride speaking. But let’s say for the sake of argument that we decide to “be humble.” To the extent that we are successful, we become proud of the fact that we have become humble. This is the point where many of us stop, not recognizing the pride still in us.

But even if the pride is recognized, is the problem solved? No, because even as we become aware of this fact, we are in danger of being proud of the fact that we became aware of the fact that we were being proud. Thus, we find ourselves caught in a vicious circle which we cannot escape.

Humility is not a purely private virtue. It is the product of that radical centering on God which gratefully acknowledges God’s sovereign bestowal of gifts and His enabling us in His service; thus it eliminates the arrogance that destroys community. Completely devoid of arrogance, humility nevertheless rejoices with Mary, “for the Mighty One has done great things for me, holy is his name.” We cannot make ourselves humble and we are in gross err if we think that humility is something we must do. Scripture clearly teaches us that what matters is what we let God do. God discharged an angel to Mary, not to ask her to do something, but to let Him do something.

When all is said and done, humility is acknowledging the truth of our position as dependent creatures and vessels, yielding to the throne of Creator God. When His creatures says yes to His will, His mind, and His Love, the vessel in which the life and glory of God are to work and manifest themselves, has acquired the holiness which blooms only in the soil of humility.

Reference
Kenneth E. Kirk, The Vision of God

IN ARAMAIC

Shepel - Be low, bring low, to humble.

“But you his son, O Belshazzar, have not humbled yourself, though you knew all this” Daniel5:22.

IN HEBREW

Anav, Anavah - Poor, afflicted, humble, meek.

“The humble shall see this, and be glad: and your heart shall live that seek God” Psalm 69:32.

Sapel - Be or become low, be abased.

“Better to be lowly in spirit and among the oppressed than to share plunder with the proud” Proverbs 16:19.

Dak - Crushed, oppressed.

“The LORD is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble” Psalm 9:9.

IN GREEK

Tapeinophrosune - Humility, modesty. It is a way of thinking about yourself

“I served the Lord with great humility and with tears, although I was severely tested by the plots of the Jews” Acts 20:19.

Tapeinos - Relating to position, power and esteem means low position, poor, lowly, undistinguished, of no account. Also refers to emotional states and ways of thinking, in a bad sense, pliant, subservient, abject; in a good sense, humble.

“But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” James 4:6.

“Young men, in the same way be submissive to those who are older. All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble’” 1 Peter 5:5.

Tapeinwsis - Humiliation as an experience, humility, humble station.

“But the one who is rich should take pride in his low position, because he will pass away like a wild flower” James 1:10.

Tapeinow - Literally, to make low, lower; figuratively, to humble, humiliate by assigning to a lower place; make humble in a good sense.

“I am afraid that when I come again my God will humble me before you, and I will be grieved over many who have sinned earlier and have not repented of the impurity, sexual sin and debauchery in which they have indulged” 2 Corinthians 12:21.

“Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up” James 4:10.

The hub was inspired by Saintatlarge after reading his excellent: Humility: the Living Word for the NOW Generation.