Today I prioritized several hours for the care of my soul. As a Christian, I want to keep my heart happy and pure in God. I desire to love Him and be humbled by His magnificence. The best things I can offer my wife, children, and Orange Park Bible Church is singleness of heart toward God and personal holiness. Here is what I walked away with this afternoon:
Humility may be defined as a habit of mind and heart corresponding to my comparative unworthiness and vileness before God, or a sense of my own comparative meanness in his sight, with the disposition to a behavior answerable thereto.
Excelling in Christ-likeness must produce greater humility in me. Humility is one of the excellencies of Christ, because he is not only God, but man, and as a man he was humble. If I am to be like Christ, the Holy Spirit working in me is conforming me in deeper humility. Humility implies a compliance with that rule of the apostle (Romans 12:3) that I think not of myself more highly than I ought to think, but that I think soberly, according as God has dealt with me. To strive for humility is to strive to see God. To see God is to grow in humility.
Jonathan Edwards has said thus: A truly humble man, since the fall, is also sensible of his moral meanness and vileness. This consists in his sinfulness. His natural meanness is his littleness as a creature; his moral meanness is his vileness and filthiness as a sinner. Unfallen man was infinitely distant from God in his natural qualities or attributes. Fallen man is infinitely distant from him also as sinful and thus filthy. A truly humble person is in some measure sensible of his comparative meanness in this respect, that he sees how exceedingly polluted he is before an infinite holy God. He sees how pure God is, and how filthy and abominable he is before him. Such a sense of his comparative meanness Isaiah had, when he saw God's glory, and cried out "Woe is me!" or Job who said, "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear; but now mine eye seeth thee: wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." To this sense of our own meanness and unworthiness that is implied in humility, it is not only necessary that we should know God and have a sense of his greatness, without which we cannot know ourselves, but we must have a right sense also of his excellence and loveliness. The devils and damned spirits see a great deal of God's greatness, of his wisdom, omnipotence. God makes them sensible of it by what they see in his dealings and feel in their own sufferings. However unwilling they are to know it, God makes them know how much he is above them now, and they shall know and feel it more after the judgment. But, they have no humility, nor will they ever have, because, though they see and feel God's greatness, yet they see and feel nothing of His loveliness. And without this there can be no true humility, for that cannot exist unless the creatures feel his distance from God, not only with respect to his greatness, but also his loveliness.
(Charity and Its Fruits by Jonathan Edwards)
This thought from Edwards was ground to worship on today. Who is more aware of God's greatness than Satan and demons, yet who is further from humility? Scripture teaches that Satan was not content with his estate, but desired to exalt himself to the throne of God. However, understanding that God brought himself low, condescended to us, and placed upon His innocent Son my sin causes me to see that God is incomprehensibly great, yet merciful, compassionate, and lovely. "The love of Christ compels us" (II Corinthians 5:14). Merely having a sense of the fact that God is infinitely above me is not working humility in me. I must be sensible that as there is an unimaginable gulf between God and me. I must also understand that He has brought me near to himself in sovereign choice by the death of His Son (Ephesians 2:13). Satan, demons and those judged in Hell will one day fully understand the highness of God and the lowliness of their estate, yet will not be made humble because they have not additionally been made near to His loveliness by the work of Christ. I have been brought near (Ephesians 2:13) and now must draw near (Hebrews 4:16). What grace I enjoy and I pray I never get calloused to the thought of my access to the throne and the blood of the Cross by which I draw near. A God who lends His ear; a God who gives faith; a God who gives wisdom; a God who employs my broken life to bring the Word of God to others; a God who is patient; a God who reveals Himself and dispenses mercy without measure. It is not the realization of the separation between God and me that produces humility; it is also the Holy Spirit working in me as I am then brought bear by the blood of Christ. The perspective of my separation from Him coupled with the realization of my nearness to Him produces humility.
I am unworthy of any mercy and deserving of all misery. It should be the disposition of my soul to lie low before God and to humble myself in the dust in His presence. Humility disposes me to be distrustful of myself and to depend only on God.
Humility further disposes me to renounce all the glory of the good I might think I do and deflect all praise to God. "Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory."
Humility is manifested in how cheerfully I submit to God's will as manifested in what He orders for me; and though God orders affliction, and low and depressed circumstances, I should not murmur, but feeling my meanness and unworthiness, I am sensible that trying circumstances are what I deserve and that my circumstances are ALWAYS much better what I truly merit.
In talking about God it should never seem in my speech or behavior that I esteem myself better than any saint because I might know more about a particular subject.
I should never be found treating what others say and do with contempt and scorn or speaking of others in ridicule and sneering reflections, making a sport of placing myself in a higher position as I differentiate myself from other men and their faults/mistakes.
I should not be stiff and inflexible and insist that everything must go according to what I happen to propose. I should not be presumptuous and self-willed, always bent on carrying my own points.
Humility will prevent a leveling behavior. Some persons are always ready to level those above them down to themselves, while they are never willing to level those below them up to their own position. But he that is under the influence of humility will avoid both these extremes.
Humility should also prevent in me a self-justifying behavior. He that is under the influence of a humble spirit, if he has fault, or has injured another, or dishonored the Christian name and character, should be willing to acknowledge his fault, and take the shame of it himself. I should never be hard to be brought to acknowledging a sin.
The gospel, above all things in the world, holds forth the exceeding condescension of God. No other manifestation that God ever made of himself exhibits such wonderful condescension as the Christian revelation does. The gospel teaches how God, who humbles himself to behold things that are in heaven and earth, stooped so low as to take an infinitely gracious notice of poor vile worms of the dust, and to concern himself for their salvation, and so as to send his only-begotten Son to die for them, that they might be forgiven, and elevated, and honored, and brought into eternal fellowship with him, and to the perfect enjoyment of himself in heaven forever. If our Lord and Master is humble, and we love him as such, certainly it becomes us who are his disciples and servants to be so too; for surely it does not become the servant to be prouder or less abased than his master. As Christ himself tells us, "The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord" (Matthew 10:24-25).
I know that the number one reason I desire to be humble is found in James 4:6, "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble." The original language would read, "God sets himself in battle array against the proud." I want to be made humble because I was to be made suitable for the presence of God where my joy is found and my soul is refreshed. "God please make me humble because it is the humble man you hear and the humble man you commune with." Time to pray...
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