Humility – Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild (pt4)

Lesson Number 4: Humility can lead and teach with authority.

This seems counterintuitive. We know that a leader ought to be humble, that Jesus even said the one who would be leader must be servant of all. It’s tricky to put that together with strong leadership or authority. In fact, the only way to manage it at all is to keep watching Jesus. There

was a tenderness about His authority. The implication, when Matthew says He spoke with authority, is that the people loved that—yearned toward it, warmed themselves in it. It would not have had such an effect on them if it had had even a hint of lordliness or tyranny in it. It must have been like the tender authority of a mom or dad, gentle and calm, who is patiently keeping a toddler out of mischief. The baby may sometimes feel thwarted, and may show its frustration, too, but clearly it feels safe.

There were times when Jesus’ authority was of a sterner variety. When He made a whip of cords, there probably wasn’t much humility in His voice or face. When, near the end of His life, in utter despair at ever reaching the priests and rabbis He loved so much, He uttered the “Woes,” there were tears in His voice, but they weren’t humble ones. So the most humble person on earth was not necessarily always humble. The question to ask ourselves is, When we sometimes lay aside humility, is it for our own sake, or for love of someone else?

During the last week of His life, Jesus grew more and more forceful. He cursed the unfruitful fig tree, rebuked the leaders, refused to answer lawyers’ questions, and dealt out some stern warnings. Then came the climax the universe had been waiting for, the series of events we have come to call The Passion. Why that particular word?

Would you believe that our meaning for it today, of strong emotion or obsession, is only a few centuries old? It actually comes from the Latin passus, past participle of pat, to suffer, and originally meant “an undergoing,” or “the state of being acted upon or affected by something external.” (Webster’s) Passive, in other words. A passion was the opposite of an action. Eventually, it was used in the sense of giving up one’s control to an emotion, “flying into a passion,” and from there it became what it is today.

Once upon a time, on a certain night, in a certain geographical spot that we can mark fairly precisely today, a man fought a superhuman struggle against his own will, his own longing for survival. Unbelievably, this Man was God. He fought between the two horns of His own particular dilemma, His survival or ours. Incomprehensibly, He chose us.

“Thy will, not Mine, be done,” He gasped, and gave Himself up to go passively to slaughter, meek and silent as a sheep. From that moment on, humble was all Jesus was. He let Judas kiss Him, let the soldiers take Him, let Herod mock Him. He didn’t answer the priests or Pilate or the false charges. He didn’t fight the cross or the thorns or the nails. He accepted the humiliation (a different thing entirely), and drank shame to the bottom of the cup. He submitted His soul to God. He died. “Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Phil. 2:8)

M. Scott Peck, in The Road Less Traveled, offered a very interesting definition of love. Love, he said, is “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” (p. 81)

Humility - Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild (pt3)

Lesson Number Three: Humility is willing to go above and beyond what is expected, and follows the leading of the Spirit.

From these humble beginnings, Jesus went on to lead a life in what we would call “humble circumstances.” He didn’t have a home of His own, He depended on the generosity of His friends for the food He ate, and He never appears to have worried at all about money. These things all fit well with what we tend to think of as humble. Yet it’s interesting to consider the leadership of Jesus.

The Bible says that one of the things that amazed the people about Jesus was that He taught with authority, unlike the scribes. (Matt. 7:29.) The custom among rabbis, then and now, was to carry a debate, say about a particular Bible passage, by saying, “Rabbi So-and-So says this, but Rabbi Thus-and-Such says that. Then again, it might mean the other thing.” Through many centuries, the Talmud and other writings have kept a faithful record of this ongoing conversation. The purpose was, in fact, humility. No rabbi wanted to put his own opinion above that of the others, particularly above that of a well-respected sage of days gone by. But he could state his own opinion. So the attempt was to keep all these ideas and insights on as level a ground as possible and give everyone a respectful hearing. This is a good example of humility.

Jesus, however, talked like someone who knew what He was talking about.

He insisted He had come from heaven and knew the Father personally. He said without roundaboutation that He was the Messiah, the Bread of heaven, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. “If you won’t believe me about earthly things, how can you believe me about heavenly ones?” He asked Nicodemus. (John 3:12) If these things had not been true, they certainly could not have been seen as humble in any way, shape, or form! And, by the way, one who does not believe these things has to either believe that Jesus was not at all humble, (was, in fact, insane or criminal) or that His disciples made this all up and He never said any of it.

Humility – Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild (pt2)

So Lesson Number Two must be that: Humility can speak confidently, without fear. Those suggested synonyms we saw were never seen in the life of the Son of God. He spoke the truth. A humble person doesn’t have to be hesitant or mealy-mouthed. He did so gently, though. Mary might have been a little taken aback by her Son’s question, but we can be sure her face didn’t turn red with embarrassment because of His tone.

When Jesus finally did leave home, the first official thing He did was to go to John to be baptized. John thought this might be taking humility a little too far. “Lord, You’re kidding! You should be baptizing me!” Jesus said it was fitting, and would “fulfill all righteousness.” (Matt 3:15.) There has been a great deal of commentary on all that He might have meant, but one of the things He seemed to mean was that He wanted to be a good example. Then He promptly went out to the wilderness to be tormented by an enemy who used to be His best friend, because the Holy Spirit led Him there.

Humility - Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild (pt.1)

Whenever we have trouble understanding some facet of Christian life, it always behooves us to go straight to the source. What can we learn about humility from Jesus? Obviously, the ultimate demonstration of humility was Jesus’ incarnation itself. Jesus  “although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men” (Phil. 2:6-7) We will never, not in millions of years, be able to really get our minds around what it meant for the Creator to become small enough, concrete enough to become the created. It’s impossible. It’s one of those things that can’t happen, but did. Once upon a time, on a certain day, in a certain geographical place, a newborn crinkled a damp face and made funny little squeaks and jerky motions with tiny hands, as all newborns do, only this one was God.

How can we possibly relate to this? Well, we could ask ourselves, when was the last time we stepped out of our comfort zone and became something that felt somehow “less,” for the sake of someone else?

This is Lesson Number One of five lessons: Humility is being willing to be smaller, less smart, less able, less beautiful than we really are, so that someone else may be bigger, smarter, capable, and beautiful.

As if that were not enough, the Creator then lived three long decades, long after He became officially and legally a man and a “son of Israel,” at home, “in subjection to” His parents.(Luke 2:51) We have just the one story, also there in Luke 2, of the time, at twelve, He began to grasp His identity and mission. He asked His parents, “Didn’t you know I would be doing My Father’s business?” Was this humble? It must have been, because then He went back home and back to being a dutiful son. 

Humility - The Two Extremes

Perhaps it will be easier to see what humility is not. As with most things, one can go off the road in either direction, and the extremes on either side of humility are easier to see. To the one side, we have conceit in all its snobbishness. We know for sure God doesn’t want us to go around considering ourselves lords of humanity. In fact, more than one text above speaks of false pride as well. Proverbs 16:18 says famously, “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before stumbling.” Phil. 2:3 has it right there in the verse: “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit.” The ellipse left in the middle of the 1 Peter 5:5, 6 passage left out “for God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” And several different texts promise the proud that if they don’t humble themselves, God will do it for them. So in one direction, humility is not arrogance, false pride, and conceit.

In the other direction, things get a little murkier. There is such a thing as false humility, too. It’s hinted at in Col. 2:18, 23. Verse 18 talks of “delighting in self-abasement.” Verse 23 admits that such things as self-abasement and “severe treatment of the body” have “the appearance of wisdom.” But they are only “self-made religion,” and “of no value against fleshly indulgence.” In Martin Luther’s time, and in some places still today, it’s considered pleasing to God (or the gods) to beat oneself, lie on nails, cut the flesh, and so on. We’re more enlightened than that, right? Yet there are some beloved children of God among us that appear to believe that God is pleased when they deny their bodies by being so unbendingly strict about dietary laws and restrictions that they look thin and unhealthy to everyone but themselves. Jesus, by contrast, was forever being called a drunkard and a glutton. We know He was never guilty of license or fleshly indulgence. Yet His lifestyle looked that way to some. Note His comments in Luke 7:33-35.

There is another region of what humility is not: the martyr. It’s easy to mock and make jokes about the “doormat” or “Mr. Milktoast” who mopes through his life letting everyone walk all over him and never stands up for himself. But this is a real, painful issue for far too many Christians. They’ve been taught that Paul told the Corinthians to always consider others more important, to look out only for others’ interests and never stand up for their own.

The ugliest version of this is the abused wife who believes, and may even be told by her pastor, that if she can only hang in there and be a good enough, loving enough wife, things will change. The unexpected thing is, learning to respect ourselves can actually be the key to others’ learning to respect themselves, as well as us. A question to ask an abuse victim: Who is the abuser hurting worse, you or himself? If the victim can see that the abuser is damaging his own soul as much as he is damaging those he abuses, she may be able to see that the most loving, self-denying thing she can do is to stop enabling him to continue that pattern another minute. Her standing up for herself, leaving the situation, may be the only chance the abuser, who is still a beloved child of God and for whom Jesus died, will ever have to see the truth and get the help he needs to change. But is this humility? Where, in the middle of all this confusion, is the genuine article that God wants each of us to have?

The Spiritual Discipline of Humility

According to Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, humility is “the quality or condition of being humble; modest opinion or estimate of one’s own importance, rank, etc.” Interestingly enough, at the bottom of the page is this list of synonyms: “Humility; bashfulness; distrust; suspicion; doubt; fear; timidity; apprehension; hesitation.”

And there we have the problem with humility in a nutshell. What is it really? Here are five admonitions from God’s word concerning humility:

1. “It is better to be humble in spirit with the lowly than to divide the spoil with the proud.” (Prov. 16:19)

2. “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)

3. “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.” (Phil. 2:3)

4. “So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.” (Col. 3:12)

5. “You younger men, likewise, be subject to your elders; and all of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another. … Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time.” (1 Pet. 5:5-6)

What would happen if we put any of those suggested synonyms into these verses? “It is better to be fearful in spirit. … Walk distrustfully with your God. … With suspicion of mind, regard one another as more important.” This can’t be right! The original definition, “ a modest opinion or estimate of one’s own importance” seems much closer. But we shouldn’t go on “seems.” A Christian can’t just look for the definition he likes best, when rightly dividing the Word of truth. And besides, we’ve seen experienced Christians display all of the above attitudes and more, and label them humility.

One of the most surprising Bible texts on humility says that even God humbles Himself! “Who is like the Lord our God, who is enthroned on high, who humbles Himself to behold the things that are in heaven and in the earth?” (Psalm 113:5-6) One of the things the Hebrew word includes is a lowering of the eyes, usually in submission. The Psalmist is pointing out that it is a deliberate lowering of God’s eyes to look down to us. This planet is so messed up, we could add that it is a lowering of His standards, too, to be willing to look on all this sin and pain when He could keep His attention on heaven and let us cease to exist. God is clearly not fearful, doubting, or suspicious.

Isaiah 58 on Fasting

This chapter is often thought of only in the context of Sabbath-keeping, but in fact, it addresses many other spiritual disciplines, particularly fasting.

Verses 1-3—“Declare to My people their transgression … their sins. They seek Me day by day and delight to know My ways … They delight in the nearness of God. They say, ‘Why have we fasted and You do not see? Why have we humbled ourselves and You do not notice?’”

Why is God not listening to their prayers?

What is God disappointed about here?

Do the people really delight in God’s nearness or want just decisions?

How can you tell?

Verses 3-5—“Behold, on the day of your fast you find your selfish desire, And drive hard all your workers. Behold, you fast for contention and strife and to strike with a wicked fist. … Is it a fast like this which I choose, a day for a man to bow down? Is it for bowing one’s head like a reed and for spreading out sackcloth and ashes as a bed? Will you call this a fast, even an acceptable day to the Lord?”

Have you ever felt God was ignoring your prayers?

Is it possible for a person to attend church and still harbor sin and selfishness?

What about prayer meeting?

Verses 6-7, 9-10—”Is this not the fast which I choose, To loosen the bonds of wickedness, To undo the bands of the yoke, And to let the oppressed go free, And break every yoke? Is it not to divide your bread with the hungry And bring the homeless poor into a house, When you see the naked, to cover him; And not to hide yourself from your own flesh? … If you remove the yoke from your midst, The pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness, And if you give yourself to the hungry, And satisfy the desire of the afflicted, Then …”

What do these things have to do with fasting?

What kind of fasting and prayer does God want?

Verses 8-11—”Then your light will break out like the dawn … Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; You will cry, and He will say, ‘Here I am.’ Then your light will rise in darkness, And your gloom will become like midday. And the Lord will continually guide you, And satisfy your desire in scorched places, And give strength to your bones; And you will be like a watered garden, And like a spring of water that does not fail.”

What is the promised result of true fasting?

Why does God insisted on social justice and practical compassion?

Is God asking us to “fast” (cease) from our prejudices against the poor and oppressed?