GOD GIVES HUMILITY

“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”  (Philippians 2:5-8 ESV)

The chief mark of a Christian is humility.  But we are not saints, we confess to ourselves, and don't expect to be.  God is holy, but we are not.  Christ is humble.  We are far from it.  We admire the ideal.  But we consider reaching it unattainable.  Our conduct lags behind our creed.  We go around with a cloud of hopelessness hanging overhead.

But don't you see, as long as we think of humility as an ideal, beautiful but unattainable, that we will never even try for it?  Don't you see that even with all our theology about Christ saving us, if we flinch under every humiliation, and fail to see God's hand upon us, we will never be what we can be?  The first mark of a Christian is humility.  It is not easy to reach.  It was not easy for Jesus.  Don't think it was!  He prayed and struggled.  He was tempted like us.

"God …. gives humility," says Thomas Kelly.  "Growth in humility is a measure of our growth in the habit of the Godward-directed mind.  And he only is near to God who is exceedingly humble … There is a humility that is in God Himself.  Be ye humble as God is humble." (Thomas Kelly, “A Statement of Devotion”)  God gives humility to us. 

-- H.S. Vigeveno in “Jesus the Revolutionary”

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