Stranger and Pilgrim

Over the last week I have been quick slack in blogging. However I have greatly appreciated the refreshment afforded by a God-Glorifying Lord’s-Day Rest. As part of my resting, I’m taking a little time to bring you another blog-post. To the end that Christ may be honored, through us, as we embrace the beauty of  humility by grace.

Earlier this week I found myself at the library, waiting upon the rest of my family to finish some homeschooling projects. While the rest of them occupied a study room, I was entrusted with my youngest sister in the main room and using one of the public computers. She patiently sat in my lap as I skimmed through a few sermons by Jonathan Edwards, when I finished, I decided to spend the rest of my time teaching her a lesson on the Virtue of Humility; a valuable lesson to learn young!

Explaining humility in a way that a young child can understand requires some thought and patience. Out of curiosity, I actually turned to a regular dictionary to see how it might define the term “humble”.

“Having or showing a consciousness of one’s defects or shortcomings; not proud; not self-assertive; modest” – YourDictionary.com

Does such a definition comport to scriptural teaching? Manifestly not! True humility is not thinking little of ourselves, nor does it consist in lack of assertion; but rather thinking nothing of ourselves, and ascribing all greatness to God alone. Aaron Orendorff offers the following helpful insight:

If pride is the self-centered disposition to determine one’s own reality, to be god of one’s own life, to say in every act and word, “My will be done,” then humility cannot be merely the ability to forget one’s self (that is, to be self-uncentered) or even less the ability to be self-pitying, which is really just pride in reverse; rather, humility is the ability to find one’s center in the God whose overwhelming loveliness and glory are able to dethrone us from the usurped lordship of our own darkened hearts. Humility is spiritual sanity. Its constant refrain is, “God is God and I am not.

The most humble man ever to walk this earth was our Lord Christ. The Westminster Catechism tells us that Christ’s humiliation consisted in “his being born, and that in a low condition, made under the law, undergoing the miseries of this life, the wrath of God, and the cursed death of the cross; in being buried, and continuing under the power of death for a time.” All this, for the Glory of God.

For the child of God, humility is but a means to the same end, God’s pleasure in the display of His glory in Christ. It consists in exalting Christ and abasing self.  Humility is not something achieved and forgotten about, it is a daily manner of living. The goal is God’s glory, humility is the means to accomplish that.

Culture offers us a superficial definition of humility; Christ has demonstrated true humility, that we should follow in His steps. True humility, we must remember, is an attitude before God, an attitude of contrition; it is a simple child-like trust in the resurrection power of Christ!

Holiness starts with self-abasement and “lowliness of mind”; if we desire to peruse these virtues we must rid ourselves of “I am not like other men” and “esteem others better than ourselves.” To esteem our brethren as better than us, is to esteem ourselves as nothing, and to esteem God as all in all. This is the mark of holiness and humility in the child of God.

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus

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