“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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