Humility is not just something that people may or may not have as they go on their merry Christian lives, but it is something that they must have. Edwards tells us that this is not an option. A humbled heart is something that is a necessary condition for being a Christian rather than just something that may or may not happen. Again, it is not that a person can work up this humbled heart or evangelical humiliation by his or her own strength and power, but this is a work of grace in the heart. It is a work of grace that God always does to hearts that He is going to dwell in. By definition a believing heart is one that loves God, yet without humility and humiliation of the heart a person will not love God but will instead do all from the love of self and the glory of self.
The quote from below is from Jonathan Edwards’ Religious Affections and the longer quote can be read in the BLOG Humility 36.
“In a legal humiliation men are made sensible that they are nothing before the great and terrible God, and that they are undone, and wholly insufficient to help themselves; as wicked men will be at the day of judgment; but they have not an answerable frame of heart, consisting in a disposition to abase themselves, and exalt God alone. This disposition is given only in evangelical humiliation, by overcoming the heart, and changing its inclination, by a discovery of God’s holy beauty. In a legal humiliation, the conscience is convinced; as the consciences of all will be most perfectly at the day of judgment; but because there is no spiritual understanding, the will is not bowed, nor the inclination altered. In legal humiliation, men are brought to despair of helping themselves; in evangelical, they are brought voluntarily to deny and renounce themselves; in the former, they are subdued and forced to the ground; in the latter, they are brought sweetly to yield, and freely and with delight to prostrate themselves at the feet of God.”
Despite the widespread and modern notion that humility only comes from a sight of sin, that was not the teaching of Scripture or all the older writers. It must be admitted that a sight of sin accompanied by grace can lead to a kind of humility, but since Jesus was perfectly humble we can know that there is a humility that is not directly related to sin. We are to be humble simply as created beings. But another reason for this is that true evangelical humiliation comes when the heart is changed and it discovers God’s holy beauty. Until the heart is changed, it will never see the glory of God in its beauty. Only the heart that is spiritual can see the kingdom of God and the spiritual heart is also the only kind that can see the beauty and glory of the kingdom of God. The heart with spiritual sight is enabled to behold the glory of God: “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit” (II Cor 3:18). The discovery of the beauty of God is not by an intellectual argument or deduction, but by the tasting of the Lord that He is good (Psa 34:8). This is the soul that now beholds the beauty of the glory of His grace (Eph 1:5-6) and is simply ravished by that beauty. This is the soul that does not resist humility, but instead desires to be in the dust and admire His glory of free grace apart from the interests of self. But this is also the soul that desires to be full of His glory so that His beauty may be manifested through it.
Edwards’ quote points to the hearts of the men in Scripture. The heart that has evangelical humiliation desires to be lowly and to abase itself, but not for the virtue of it but so that the beauty of God would be seen. Many have seen their helplessness before God and how they are vile and guilty wretches before His glory, but their hearts have not loved that but instead have been forced to it. Instead of being like John the Baptist who tells us that he must decrease and Jesus must increase (John 3:30), these souls love themselves and their honor but simply know that they cannot do as they please. They dislike their helplessness and their inability to do things for God. They dislike the fact that they cannot serve Him and absolutely hate the fact that they are under His wrath. They are humbled in one sense of the word but they have not been emptied of self. But those who have evangelical humiliation have such a love for God and His glory that they have a disposition in the heart to abase themselves in order to exalt God alone. These are the ones that have been brought to an end of their external selves in legal humiliation and then have had their hearts changed so that now they behold the beauty of God. When they see the beauty of God in His holiness and glory, they see the depths of their being a creature and then of being a sinner. They now see that what they love to do is to abase self so that the glory of God will be exalted in themselves. They see that they can no longer seek their own honor if they are going to seek His, so they bow in brokenness before Him as empty vessels. Paul was utterly broken and so sought the glory of God in Christ rather than His own. In our day we are too full of ourselves to be full of the living God. How desperately we need to be humbled.
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