The humility of Christ is something of great beauty in Scripture and is only seen if one is looking for it. When Scripture tells us to be like Christ, it is not telling us to be like Him in our actions as much as it is telling us to be like Him in terms of our hearts. Our actions will never begin to be anything like His until our hearts are shaped and formed by His inner work in the soul. Until our hearts are like His heart our actions will not be like His actions and certainly will not be with the same intents and motives that He had.
Luke 22:42 is the text where the famous words of Jesus are found: “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done.” It was where Jesus knew that He had to go to the cross and bear the wrath of the Father for the sins of sinners. He did not want to have the stench of sin imputed to Him and He did not want to bear the wrath of the Father. Human flesh shrinks and shrieks at the thought of that. But Christ bowed in humility before the Father in a way that the world has never seen before and will never be seen again. It is true that we cannot imagine the humility of the Son of God who humbled Himself to be born as a tiny and helpless human infant. Not only did He take human flesh, He took on the flesh of a human infant. He subjected Himself to helplessness in the flesh of a human while He was infinite in power in terms of the Divine. We simply cannot imagine the depths of His humility. But being found in human flesh, He bowed in submission to the Father to endure the pain and sufferings of the wrath of the Father and then of death.
The deepest form of humility is the emptiness of self and the presence of Divine life and love in the soul. Whatever one wants to say, there can be no deeper humility than to be emptied of self and to have the presence of the Divine life in the soul. To the degree that God by His grace empties the soul of self is the degree of the Divine life in the soul. The deeper the soul grows in humility the more the soul is capable of having the Divine presence and life in it. In Christ we see a perfectly sinless being with all rights to perfect happiness without any discomfort or pain submit to enduring more suffering than anyone in history will ever have to suffer. The human part of Him must have screamed at the thought of such suffering, but the perfect love in His heart led Him to bow in submission to the pleasure of the Father. When the pleasure of the Father is the loving desire of our heart, we must bow to whatever it His pleasure to ask or command of us.
The comparison of ourselves and Christ is not pleasant at this point. When we take an honest view of self in our past we see that self has asserted itself in so many places. We can see our selfishness and tempers putting themselves into the forefront rather than Christ. We can remember that little trials that God brought our way and how we were angry with how He would treat us. We can remember praying for His will to be done because we knew they were the right words and that we were supposed to pray like that. But our hearts did not really desire it. We can think of times when we have looked upon others and despised them rather than stoop to their level. This can be those who are lowly and so we refuse to be with the lowly, though we assure ourselves that we have good reasons for doing so. At other times we have refused to be with the non-lowly but that was our of fear of self being looked down on and so in a sense self refused to stoop to serve or do something in the name of Christ. The humility of Christ demands our all before the rich and the poor.
But again, do I really see the glory of God shining in and through me as if Christ Himself truly lived in me? Do I really behold the glory of God shining through me through Christ because I have been emptied of self? Whose glory is it that I seek during the day? Whose glory do I really desire in my religious actings? I can have the theology of the best and be as conservative as anyone, but if I am full of self I am nothing but a Pharisee. To put it even more plainly, until I have been humbled or emptied of self I am full of self just like the Pharisees were. To put it another way, if I am not truly living for the glory of God I am living for the glory of self. I cannot have two masters and I will love and live for the glory of God or I will love and live for the glory of self. When our greatest love is self, we will try to make God our servant. When our greatest love is God, we will bow ourselves to be the servant of God. It is His will that must be done on earth as it is in heaven, not mine. Soli Deo Gloria.
God Loves... Himself 
Leave a comment