God originally created human beings to manifest His own glory and not the glory of any other. But Satan injected his poison of pride and self-centeredness into human beings and now all are born dead in sins and trespasses and are by nature children of wrath (Eph 2:1-3). Out of pride and self fallen human beings now glory in themselves and seek their own honor and glory in all they do. This is exactly what Satan wanted in that he is at war with God over who gets the glory. Each human soul that is full of pride and lives for self demonstrates that it is a child of the devil. It is true that many human beings devote themselves to doing charity work or to religion in another name and many in the name of God. But that is not the same thing as doing those things from the grace and strength of grace that comes from God. It is easy for a human being that is devoted to self to give self to the things that would honor self in the ways of religion or the work of charity. The human heart is seemingly boundless in finding ways to gain attention to self for its so-called devotion to good works. Even the good works of human beings shows us the need for true humility so that it may be the glory of God working those things in and through us.
In the last BLOG we looked at how human beings are utterly dependent on God each moment for all things in the physical and spiritual realms. He is the One that upholds us each moment and gives each breath and all things. The soul must learn this in order to understand true humility. The life of God is imparted to and shared with the soul (of true believers) moment by moment for no other reason than grace. We say the words “saved by grace alone” and we think that it simply means that we are delivered from hell based on His help which we don’t deserve. Rather than that, however, true salvation is also to be saved from self and the power of sin. True salvation is to have the life of God in the soul. All of these things comes to us each moment by His grace. Now since we know that Scripture teaches us that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble, we know that we only obtain grace to the degree that we are humble. The proud live by self even though they may think they have humility, but it is truly pride that they live by. But the true believer lives by grace each moment which means that the true believer must be seeking the emptiness of self so that is may live more and more by grace.
Surely, then, we can see something of what true holiness is then. Hebrews 12:10 tells us that we are partakers of His holiness and so holiness is something that comes to us from Him. The proud seek to do outwardly good things and find a form of self-righteousness in them. But the humble know that they can do nothing apart from Christ and so all that is good that comes from them is really that which originated in Christ and came to them through Christ. True humility is to see that all that comes from the self is in fact sin regardless of whether it is externally good or not. True humility seeks to be full of Him so that what comes from the person is in fact the life of God being expressed through it. The humble person understands that the command to be holy as He is holy (I Peter 1:13-16) is not a command to do something in the strength of self. When Jesus commanded the disciples to give the thousands around them food, He did not command them to do what they could do in their own power (Mark 6:37). Instead, He took five loaves of bread and two fish and broke them and then had the disciples set the food before the people. He commanded them to do what only He could provide and enable them to do. The command to be holy as He is holy is something like that. If we try to be holy as He is holy in our own strength, we will see very quickly that we cannot do so. This should drive us to be partakers of His holiness and so have true holiness.
The soul that learns that it is only grace that enables it to live in holiness, love, and truth is the soul that is beginning to learn what true Christianity and true humility is all about. True humility will only come to the soul that reaches the point of not living for self and doing all in the strength of self. This is the person that recognizes deep within its soul and not just intellectually that every command of Scripture is beyond its strength to keep as God would have it kept. This is the soul that understands that it must live by grace each moment or it is living by its own strength and pride. If the soul is to live by grace each and every moment, then we must realize that the soul must be humble each and every moment because God only gives grace to the humble. This soul has begun to awaken to the fact that being saved by grace also has to do with being saved from the life of self so that the life of grace may live in it. This soul has begun to understand what it means to die to self and that the life of Christ in the soul is the life of grace. When this soul runs into temptation, it knows that it must die to self and that the fight is by and through grace. This soul lives by grace each moment and so it knows that it must seek true humility each moment as well. Where the self is, grace is not. Where grace is, self is not. The humble soul seeks a deeper and deeper humility so that it may partake more and more of Christ who is grace to it.
God Loves... Himself 
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