by Jacob Ninan
What is humility? It is not a way of behaving externally in a self-demeaning way or trying to impress others with a show of false humility. It is also not in going around telling others what sinners we are! But it is determined by what we think of ourselves privately in our thoughts. It is usually in comparison with other people and in relation to God that we can entertain proud thoughts in our mind.
The closest I have come to finding a definition for humility in the Bible is in Rom.12:3, "For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith." Pride comes when we think of ourselves more highly than what corresponds to reality in our life. We must recognise that God has given all of us different measures of faith (concerning different tasks we each have to do), and gifts that are needed for the particular functions each of us has in the body of Christ. Each of us is equally important to God, and none of us is superior in essence to anyone else. It is obvious, that we have gifts that others do not have, and others have gifts we do not have. So, none of us can afford to compare ourselves with others and think that we are superior or inferior to them. It is usually this foolish comparison that gives rise to pride or a sense of inferiority.
What we need to remember is that we should have a sound (sober) assessment about ourselves according to what God has given each of us (1Cor.4:7). Belittling ourselves is also a lack of sober assessment because we overlook what God has given us, which is, in effect, to insult God. Whenever we have a tendency to think of ourselves as greater than others, let us remind ourselves that all the abilities we have are gifts from God and therefore nothing for us to boast about in ourselves.
A great warning for us in this connection is the example of Lucifer who was at one time the chief of the angels and who was gifted in many ways. Possibly when he compared himself with the other angels he may have thought he was superior to all of them. The only one who was exalted above him was God. So, he began to desire to exalt himself to the level of God Himself (Isa.14:13,14). That pride led to his fall, and he was thrown out of heaven and became Satan.
When we begin to look down on others, sometimes we are tempted to think, "How could he do that? I would never do that!" Shall we then remember that, as many godly people have said before us, if it were not for the grace of God we may have done the same or even worse things? Perhaps these people who fell had circumstances and pressures in life that we have been protected from. Can we then say that we would not have done those things if we had been in their place? God warns us about thinking of ourselves as superior, because we would become very vulnerable in such states of mind (1Cor.10:12). In the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector who went to the Temple to pray, Jesus brought out the typical attitude of a self-righteous man who looked down on others (Lk.18L11,12).
If only we can understand how we stand in the presence of the holy God, we would not be so quick to have that kind of confidence in ourselves and look down on others. People like Isaiah, when they saw visions of God, have bowed themselves before God and acknowledged their sins (Isa.6:5). What about all these people nowadays who claim to have visited heaven and walked around with Jesus%mdash;what kind of attitudes do they display?
So, one of the first signs of humility that we ought to have is to recognise our sinfulness in the sight of God. That is when we will earnestly work out our salvation (with fear and trembling) (Php.2:12,13).
Some people look at their abilities and skills and think that it was because God saw their great potential for the kingdom of God that He picked them up. Actually, He picked up each one of us because He saw that we were so needy. It was when He saw that we would all get lost for eternity because of our sins that He sent His Son to come to earth to suffer and die for us. All of us were equally dead in our sins, living according to our sinful desires, and it was entirely His mercy towards us that He picked us up (Eph.2:3-5). There is nothing we can boast about from ourselves.
Another important lesson in humility is to recognise how entirely dependent we are on God. In fact, none of us can even be sure of our next breath but for the grace of God. There is nothing good that we can do apart from Him. But we can see that the modern trend is to turn our attention entirely away from God to 'our hidden potential', telling us, "You can do it!" What we hear many people boasting is, "I can do it!" Even among Christians, there is no emphasis on what we need to repent of, and about seeking God for help. Some Christians simply add "Through Christ who strengthens me," to what the world teaches them to say, i.e., "I can do it!" What Paul was referring to when he wrote Php.4:13 was how he had learned to live both in need and in abundance, and what people generally refer to nowadays is about getting a promotion, buying things, etc.!
When Satan tempted Eve in the Garden, he pointed out to her how she could get the knowledge of good and evil in herself, and how she could become like God, able to decide independently what to do (Gen.3:5). Before this, Adam and Eve had been entirely happy when their dependence was wholly on God. But now, by eating this fruit, they were, in fact, making their 'declaration of independence' from God, even though they might not have understood it then. This is the same thing that Satan is promoting in the world now, telling us to depend on ourselves instead of God.
Hardly anyone quotes nowadays what Jesus testified about Himself in Jn.15:5 that without the Father He could do nothing! Our confidence in what we can do through the strength that Christ gives us has to be balanced by the recognition of the fact that without His strength we cannot succeed at all.
When we become truly humble, we decide not to make our own decisions concerning what we want to do, but look to God to tell us what He wants us to do (Jn.5:19). We realise that we cannot make our decisions and then ask God to bless us in what we do. Isn't this what many committees do? Also, we must realise that it is only when we are doing the will of God that God promises us to help us and not when we are seeking to do whatever we want.
We recognise that we don't know many things and so we learn to depend on God and acknowledge Him in all our ways (Prov.3:6). On the contrary, if we begin to imagine that we know what to do, we get puffed up (1Cor.8:1). It is the fear of God, including the fear that if we miss the will of God we would totally go wrong, that leads us to practical wisdom (Prov.9:10). Even in trying to study the Bible, do we rely on our intelligence and our knowledge of Hebrew and Greek, and forget that we need God to open the eyes of our heart if we are to understand what God really means. The same Holy Spirit who inspired the writers to write the scriptures has to inspire us to understand them too. This was why Paul prayed for the Ephesians for God to enlighten their heart (Eph.1:18)/span>. Jesus said that unless we were determined to put to action what we understood from God's word, we were not going to be able to understand what God had in mind (Jn.7:17).
No one of us knows our future. We don't even know whether we would be alive the next moment or day. Even as much as a generation ago, Christians were used to acknowledging that 'God willing' they wanted to do certain things (Jas.4:13-15). But nowadays anyone who uses that phrase is treated as if he is weird!
Prayer is the mark of a humble man who knows that without God he cannot do anything good or right. Even the things we may imagine 'we can do in our sleep'—when God trains us, we will find that we need God's grace to do them. Jesus taught us to watch and pray at all times because of the weakness of our flesh (Matt.26:41). He Himself gave us the example by crying out to the Father to save Him from death (Heb.5:7). This was obviously not about His death on the cross because He did die there. Possibly it was about the 'death' that would have resulted if He had yielded even once when He was tempted (Heb.4:15). That was His example of humility as a Man.
Many times we learn true humility only after many failures. But if we don't give up when we fall, we can become convinced that without God, we cannot do anything right.
There are two aspects we need to focus on as we move forward. We must deal with pride in our heart whenever we become aware of it. The other is to learn more and more to depend on God for everything in our life. It is only live in the presence of God, knowing that He knows everything about us and that we cannot fool Him in any way, that we can grow in humility (Jas.4:10).