The last BLOG was about wanting the appearance of humility or having true humility. The problem is that the proud soul wants to do things itself and it wants others to see it as humble whether it is or not. But when a proud soul is only concerned with having the appearance of humility, it is primarily concerned with how it appears to other human beings. True humility, on the other hand, is concerned with having God Himself. It loses its desire to just appear holy and humble before others and wants the essence of those things as it seeks God. When the soul wants God as its greatest desire, it loses its desire for appearances before others and will not care how it appears to others as long as it may have God. When a soul sets out to have God, its pride must be crushed. So the soul is left with asking itself whether it wants its pride and the appearance of humility or does it want God? We cannot have both at the same time and we will only pursue one at a time. The soul will either have its pride or it will have God. It will pursue self in the world or in religion or it will seek God. But it will not and cannot seek or have both.
Humility is utterly vital in the church and there is no true religion without it. The degree that a soul has of true Christianity directly corresponds to the degree of true humility that it has. If we only have the appearance of humility we only have the appearance of true Christianity. The Pharisees had the appearance of prayer and of fasting. Oh how humble they appeared to others because of their long prayer and the discipline of fasting. How humble we might appear in speaking against the Pharisees while we have the pride of the Pharisees in our heart and try to hide it by speaking against the spirit of the Pharisee. It may also be true that we don’t know our own hearts and simply don’t see the spirit of the Pharisee that is living in us. We may think of the pride of the Pharisees as being extravagant, but God hates the spirit of the Pharisees whether it is hidden or in the open. There is another tendency of the pride and spirit of the Pharisees and that was to justify themselves and be heavily critical of others based on the standard of themselves rather than the Word of God. How we must guard our hearts and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees as Jesus said (Mat 16:6).
But if humility is so vital in the church, that is, to the Gospel and to holiness and all that is received by grace (which is all things spiritual), then why is it so seldom heard of or seen? The very loud silence and conspicuous absence of it should loudly declare that something is greatly amiss in the professing Church of the day. The professing Church has been given over to seeking influence, morality, greater numbers and larger amounts of dollars. It has been given over to thinking of blessings are largely having to do with health and wealth. Its humility, therefore, is largely external and is something that the self can put on quite easily and think that because it has put humility on it can obtain grace from God. When this happens, the judgment of God has dropped on the professing Church quite severely. It is true that God does not judge His covenant people with wrath, but He does send very hard disciplines on them to teach them to seek Him and bring them back from harmful error.
While it may sound something less than sensible to some, if we have replaced the biblical idea of humility with a human-centered or psychological version, then we have gutted much of the heart of the life of Christianity. But the worldly idea of humility has basically displaced the biblical idea of humility and so people do not understand that they are proud and self-centered because they are under the darkness of the deception of thinking that they have biblical humility. We are taught that all we do is to be centered upon self and so humility is basically from self and about self. But the Bible teaches us that we are to deny self so that we can follow Christ. If indeed the biblical teaching of humility has been replaced with another idea, then the root of all grace has been severed. Without humility there is no true grace because Scripture is clear that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Scripture is clear that all that the believer receives from God is by grace. The fruit of the Spirit is by grace and the life of Christ is by grace. Without a biblical humility, there is no grace and no Christianity. It is that serious.
Regardless of what we think of true love, without true love there is nothing of true Christianity in us in accordance with the Great Commandments and other passages (I Cor 13:1-8; I Cor 16:22). Without humility there is no true love in the soul as all that the soul does would be out of self-love. There must be humility because humility is the emptiness of self and the presence of the life and Spirit of Christ. When the biblical concept of humility as the emptiness of self is replaced with some teaching where the reality of it is that the self is at the center, then the whole of Christianity has changed. It yanks God (in the mind and heart) from the throne and puts self there. Self is then the motivation and the goal for all that is done. Everything at that point is different.
God Loves... Himself 
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