God Loves… Himself

There is nothing in the Christian life that does not depend, in a manner of speaking, on the Christian being humble to some degree. There can be no growth in grace apart from humility because God only gives grace to the humble. So in one sense we can think of it as the greater the humility that is there the greater the grace that can be given. But we must be very careful at this point not to think of humility as a work in order to obtain grace. What we must understand is that humility can also only come to the soul by grace. It is grace preparing the soul to receive more grace. When Jesus told us in the context of the vine and the branches that we could do nothing apart from Him, He meant nothing rather than just a few things (John 15). We tend to dismiss the “nothing” in that text as perhaps nothing major and then think of ourselves as having the power to do the small things. Perhaps Jesus meant what He said (nothing). All spiritual growth in the soul and all spiritual fruit that the soul produces must come from Christ.

If we think and act as if we must humble our selves in order to receive grace, the logic of our position is that we are working in order to receive grace. James 4:10, along with I Peter 5:5-6 giving essentially the same teaching, tells us to “Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.” We are left with two choices as we view this verse. 1) We will believe that if we humble ourselves then God will do the work of exalting us. But this leaves us with a system that is essentially of works. 2) To humble ourselves means to realize that we cannot do the work of humility and that God must do that work in us as well and this is the true exaltation of the soul. This leaves us with a system of grace and not of works. It is faithful to the text and to the Bible as a whole. True humility, then, would see that it cannot truly humble itself but then bow to the work of God in the soul to work a humility that grows deeper and deeper in the soul. Another way to look at this as a whole would be to understand it as the Old Testament does at times which would be that the people were to do certain external things to humble themselves. But the inward work of casting out pride and self can only be done by God or it would be nothing more than the works of pride and self. If a proud person could humble self, then humility can be accomplished by a proud person. If humility can be accomplished by a self-centered person, then humility can be accomplished by a selfish and self-centered person. These things are simply not possible other than by twisting the meaning of words.

In the very back of his book on Humility Andrew Murray wrote this prayer which would be good for all:

“Lord, I pray that of Your great goodness You would make known to me, and take from my heart every kind and form and degree of pride, whether it be from evil spirits, or my own corrupt nature; and that you would awaken in me the deepest depth and truth of the humility that can make me capable of Your light and Holy Spirit.”

He also wrote the following words:

“The truth is this: pride must die in you, or nothing of heaven can live in you. Under the banner of the truth, give yourself up to the meek and humble spirit of the holy Jesus. Humility must sow the seed, or there can be no reaping in heaven. Do not look at pride as only an unbecoming temper, or at humility as only a decent virtue. The one is death, and the other is life; the one is all hell, the other is all heaven. As much as you have of pride within you, so you have of the fallen angel alive in you. As much as you have of true humility, so you have of the Lamb of God within you. If you could see what every stirring of pride does to your soul, you would beg of everything you meet to tear the viper from you, though it may mean the loss of a hand or an eye.”

It may sound as if humility is to stand around and wait for God to do it all, but that is not the whole story. We must set ourselves against the pride of our hearts and seek the Lord in prayer against the pride of our hearts and for His grace to tear it from us. We must learn to pray for humility and to seek the Lord for strength against self and its pride. This is spiritual warfare as it is the seed of the devil in us (pride) as we seek the seed of the woman (who is Christ) to crush the head of the devil which is pride in us. We must learn to fight the fight by realizing our utter impotence and His real strength. We must use the means of grace while knowing that those things are means of grace that He may show grace through, but also grace only comes in His timing. We are in a fight against our very selves. We must pray against ourselves (proud & natural self) in order that the spiritual self will grow by grace. It sounds so confusing to some, but as people learn to battle within their souls it becomes clearer.

Another reason humility is so hard to write on is because it is a spiritual issue and many seem to think of it in the physical or natural realm. To speak of humility is to speak of humility in the soul and even in the deepest part of the soul. But the pride of human beings is so great that they are blinded to their pride by their pride and so it is not inconsistent with the greatest amount or control of pride to think of one as humble. A proud heart wants to think of itself as humble and will fight to think of itself as humble. As the self-righteous soul wants to constantly justify its sin to others and to self, so the proud soul wants to justify itself as humble. In other words, those who read this may enter into a spiritual war. The devil wants to keep people proudly humble (so to speak). An oxymoron can occasionally be put to good use. The Pharisees give us an example of those who were proudly humble. They would mess up their hair and try to look bad in order to make it appear that they were suffering as they were fasting. To make a bad pun, they were being quick (fast) to the appearance of humility in order to bolster their spiritual pride.

What anyone must see if they truly desire true humility that this is a spiritual issue that is far beyond the strength of the natural man. Our pride wants to blind us to this and then deceive us to think that we have become humble while we are still in the grip of our pride. But Jesus Christ will work this in His people so if you know that you desire true humility, seek it from Him rather than your own works. It takes prayer and submission to Him to show you your pride and then it takes His grace in order for you to die to your pride in that particular issue. There will be times when your heart will scream (and perhaps your lips) when you think that He has pushed you beyond what you can handle. When you arrive at that point, and He will assuredly bring you to that point, try to remember that He is doing that out of kindness to you. If you were not pushed to the point of not being able to handle something, then you would have no need to know what humility really is and know what it means to live by grace. In His great mercy He teaches us and trains us by bringing things to us that are far too hard for us to handle in our pseudo-humility and spirituality lite. We may be able to recall and quote verses like “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me” (Phil 4:13), but until that is what He has taught us in our hearts we have no real idea of what it means. Humility is not something learned about; it is something that is learned in the heat of trials brought from the Divine hand to give us what is truly best.

Still another reason why it is hard to write on humility is because of its link with so many other issues of the heart. It is not necessary to delineate all of these and make many distinctions at this point, but humility is inseparable from many other things of the heart. We cannot speak of true mortification of sin, dying to self, contrition for sin, humiliation of the soul, and things like that without going through humility. Yet when those things are brought into the picture, the soul begins to have great fear and wants to flee. As the body flees from things that will harm or kill it, so pride should be viewed as having a life of its own and it does not want to die. This pride will plead with you to spare it and it will hide behind many rational arguments. This pride wants to be spared and like a chameleon it will take on the colors and dress of many things. While the Beatitudes speak of the merciful being blessed because they will be shown mercy, yet in this case you must show your pride no mercy at all.

Jesus’ command reaches the soul when He tells us to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and then to follow Him. This is repeated several times in Scripture. But why does He tell us to deny ourselves before He tells us to take up our cross and follow Him? It is because the flesh and the pride do not want to do anything that will harm the flesh or the pride. The issue of following Christ is first and foremost a battle with self. Self does not want to pick up that cross and self does not want to suffer. Self does not want to be mocked and made fun of. Our pride is so great we want to do anything but suffer in our soul. However, there will be many who will say “Lord, Lord” and yet will be told to depart from Him because we practice lawlessness (Mat 7). If we do not deny self, we will have chosen self over Him and so will be in disobedience to His command. The issue of humility, then, is not just a matter of adding a little virtue, but also a matter of salvation and of walking by grace. If we try to deny self by the strength of self, we will also live by self since self will not have been denied. We must die to self or we will never die to pride. When we cast out self by self we will pick up a cross of our own choosing rather than the cross Jesus commands us to take. We must die to self and be emptied of our pride so that we will take up the cross of His choosing and live by the grace He chooses. Humility is not an easy issue at all, but it is a battle to the death of self. This requires humility because this death to self can only be accomplished in us by God. This may sound like a great mystery, and perhaps it is, but this is one of those things that you have to do to learn it.

Humility is a very hard subject to deal with for at least two main reasons. 1) It is thought that it may take a lot of pride for one to think that he is humble enough to write on humility. 2) If one does ever think that s/he is humble that is the point one can know that s/he is not humble. Perfect humility will never be obtained in this life and so one can only realize that s/he is growing in humility rather than obtaining it perfectly. It does not necessarily take pride to write on humility, though that can certainly be the case, but can simply come from an awareness that it is a misunderstood subject and that the one writing needs to grow in it as well.

I have read several modern books on humility and found them to fall quite short of what humility really is. Older works, however, get to the real issues. Humility is not something that man can work up and it is not a virtue that we have or can just put on. It is how we receive all we have from God. Pride and faith are opposites, yet humility and faith are inseparable. The true believer walks by faith and receives all by faith because the “job” of faith is to receive grace. This is why salvation is by faith alone. It is by faith alone so that it may be by grace alone (Rom 4:16). We walk by faith when we live by the grace that faith receives. All that the believer does is to receive grace from the Lord because apart from Him we can do nothing spiritual (John 15:4-5). Pride opposes grace because pride is self-centered and wants to do something to earn it or believe that self can merit it. But faith receives grace and grace alone. It is the humble soul alone that receives grace. Grace is the motive of all that God gives the soul. We receive the love and joy of God only by grace, yet He only gives grace to the humble. So we have to understand that humility is at the very root of the Christian life.

Not all aspects of humility are necessarily related to how sinful a person is. That was a very profound thought I read several years ago (Andrew Murray) that really changed my thinking and the way I viewed myself and especially my heart. There is a humility that is related to the fact that human beings are creatures in the presence of their Creator. If all humility were related to sin, then Jesus Christ could not be the perfect standard of humility as He was perfectly sinless. He was without sin in His Divine being and yet humbled Himself to clothe Himself in human flesh. While clothed in human flesh the sinless Christ humbled Himself to go to the cross to take the sins of others upon Himself and suffer for their sins. This humility that He had, beyond question, was apart from His own sin. This shows us that all human beings at all times and in all ways are to be humbled before God.

But what is humility? Sure it is the proper position of a creature before its Creator. But what is that? If pride in the human creature is to be full of self-love, self-sufficiency, and self-centeredness, then humility is the emptiness of self in the creature. Pride is the spawn of the devil, but to be emptied of that is humility and God fills the humble with Himself. God dwells with the lowly and the contrite in spirit (Isa 57:15). The world thinks of humility as one that is not so dogmatic and thinks that s/he may be wrong and cannot have a conviction of a strong view on anything. The world that has invaded the Church thinks of humility as those who will not stand for anything. But we must remember that Jesus Christ was perfect in humility and He strongly stood for truth. Humility is not weakness, but it is strength or leads to strength since it is the emptiness of self that leads to God filling the creature. The believer is one that has power dwelling in him or her, though that power is of God and is for His glory.

“Humility is the only soil in which the graces take root; the lack of humility is the sufficient explanation of every defect and failure. Humility is not so much a grace or virtue along with others; it is the root of all, because it alone assumes the right attitude before God and allows Him as God to do all….From the beginning, let us admit that there is nothing so nature to man, nothing so insidious and hidden from our sight, nothing so difficult and dangerous, as pride. Let us feel that nothing but a very determined and persevering waiting on God and Christ will disclose how lacking we are in the grace of humility, and how weak we are to obtain what we seek. Let us study the character of Christ until our souls are filled with the love and admiration of His humility. And let us believe that, when we are broken down under a sense of our pride and realize our inability to cast it out, Jesus Christ Himself will give us this grace as a part of His wondrous life within us.”

Pride in our soul is far worse than any form of cancer in our body. We must have the Great Physician deal with this pride by cutting it out with His discipline so that He may in His great mercy and grace give us the grace of His humility in our souls. The Great Physician would have us die to pride and self and we must seek that from Him.