by Jacob Ninan
Almost all believers will say that the greatest thing that Jesus did was to die on the cross for us. For this reason we love Him, and are eternally thankful to Him. This is only natural because we are the recipients of undeserved love and mercy. The more we see our own wretchedness, the more we wonder how God could love us so much.
But from the point of view of God the Father, there is something far greater than this that He saw in Jesus. God exalted Him far above every other name because Jesus humbled Himself. Jesus did not hold on to equality with the Father, but humbled Himself. Caring nothing for His reputation, He took the form of a servant, and obeyed to the point where He had to die. Therefore God exalted Him above every other name (Php.2:5-11). In the Father's eyes, this was the greatest thing about Jesus.
This shows us how much God values humility above all else. We may have looked at humility as a good virtue to have or as something we need in order to receive grace from God. But now we can see it as the thing that God values the most of all. Jesus' dying on the cross was but the final step of His humbling of Himself. This began with His first emptying Himself, then becoming a man, then becoming a servant of all men, and then obeying even unto death on the cross (Php.2:6-8).
Shall we not then pursue after this humility ourselves? We also notice that it was basically because of this attitude of Jesus that God gave Him the highest honour in the universe (v.5). Jesus had, of course, done much good to many people (Acts 10:38). But that was not why He received the greatest recognition from God.
Do we see that our attitude is more important to God than our actions? We tend to think more in terms of what we can do for Jesus or how much we can accomplish for God in one life. Those are the things we usually see highlighted in most Christian biographies too. But God will finally evaluate us by how much of the humility of Jesus we attained to during our earthly lives! It is not going to be a question of how many talents we received or how many opportunities we received to do things for God, but only how much we humbled ourselves. Is this not truly encouraging, especially for those who do not have many talents?
May we then seek to learn from Jesus the ONE THING that He wants to teach us - HUMILITY (Mt.11:29).