Humility, while vastly misunderstood and hardly sought after, is at the heart of Christianity. Apart from a humble heart the Christian will not receive grace and so will not grow in grace. Apart from humility there is no love in the soul. Apart from humility there is no true blessedness in the soul since humility is at the heart of the Beatitudes. Without humility there can be no following of Christ who is the Humble Lamb of God. Apart from humility there can be no taking up the cross daily which is necessary to following Christ.
“God wished to reveal Himself in and through created beings by communicating to them as much of His own goodness and glory as they were capable of receiving. But this communication was not a giving to the creature something which it could possess in itself, a certain life or goodness, of which it had the charge and disposal. By no means. But as God is the ever-living, ever-present, ever-acting One, who upholdeth all things by the word of His power, and in whom all things exist, the relation of the creature to God could only be one of unceasing, absolute, universal dependence. As truly as God by His power once created, so truly by that same power must God every moment maintain. The creature has not only to look back to the origin and first beginning of existence , and acknowledge that it there owes everything to God; its chief care, its highest virtue, its only happiness, now and through all eternity, is to present itself an empty vessel, in which God can dwell and manifest His power and goodness.”
In the last BLOG (Humility 11) we started looking at the statement by Andrew Murray from his book on Humility. We looked at how God’s desire in created human beings was to reveal Himself. This should give us a great clue as to the nature of true humility. Another statement which should give us a clue as to the nature of humility is Murray’s point that when God communicated Himself to them He was not giving the creature something which it could possess in the sense that it had charge of it to dispose of it as it pleased. This is truly an insight which strikes at the heart of the modern professing Church. It seems as if people think that God gives them gifts and then it is up to them to use the gift in their own strength and in their own way to make Him look good. People seem to think that they have to force themselves to study the Bible and then to do what it says in their own strength. They seem to think that the balance of the whole world is upon their shoulders. But it is simply not so. God does not give us things to possess for ourselves and He does not give it to us as something that we have charge over and is at our disposal. No, we are to walk by faith each moment. We are to live by the grace we receive through faith.
If God did give us our gifts and even grace in the soul which would be under our own charge and at our disposal, then He would have given Himself and His sovereignty over to the whims of human beings. We would be something like Simon in Acts 8 who wanted the gift to give the Holy Spirit in his own power. We would be able to give grace to ourselves whenever we wanted it. We would not need to walk by faith because we would simply live by what we had already received. If Simon had what he said he wanted, then he could simply be the sovereign over who received the Holy Spirit. That would simply be another way of wanting to be like God. But the Christian is blinded to the ways that s/he wants to be like God. When we want to live by our own strength rather than grace, we want to be like God. When we think that faith is something we can come up with in order to get God to do what we want, that is another way we want to be like God. When we think that if we can be good as a way to get God to do something for us, that is a way we want to be like God. When we think we can live the Christian life by our own strength plus some grace, that is a way we want to be like God. When we study the Bible looking to our own spirituality or intellectual abilities to give us understanding, this is a way we want to be like God. When we pray in such a way as to inform God what He needs to do or what we want Him to do, that is a way we want to be like God. When we “do” church according to our own desires and methods, we are being like God.
Humility, on the other hand, is when the soul is emptied of self and so it looks to God to do what He commands it to do. The humble soul sees its own nothingness and looks to God for the strength to do even the smallest of things. The humble soul looks to God to give it understanding when it studies the Bible because it is His Word and He alone can give us a true spiritual understanding. The humble soul prays to God for His own glory and desires to be full of His glory on the basis of grace alone. The humble soul is truly emptied of self and so looks to God for its strength in all things. The humble soul recognizes its poverty and knows that it can do nothing apart from Christ (John 15:4-5). The humble soul knows who works in it “both to will and to work for His good pleasure” (Phil 2:13). The humble soul looks to God for grace to do all things because He alone is the strength of the soul for all.
God Loves... Himself 
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