Worthy are You, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power; for You created all things, and because of Your will they existed, and were created. (Revelation 4:11)
As we anticipate the arrival of our pastoral candidate, nothing could be more important than for us to have the mind of Christ. As I have been seeking to obtain this in my own life I have set myself on the consideration of the humility of Jesus as our Master and example. The day and time of my departure from this life is firmly fixed - oh, how I want that hour to find me ready for it in joyous slavery to my Lord!
As I consider biblical humility, it seems to me the proper place to start is to look to Jesus in order to determine what the principles were which he lived by when he was here. If he is indeed my example in his lowliness, I must understand the principles in which that humility was rooted and own those principles myself.
Jesus repeatedly acknowledged his own dependency upon the Father (John 5:19-20, 26, 36; 6:27; 12:49-50; 13:3; 14:10). If Jesus recognized his dependence upon the Father, how much more so should we as his disciples? As you meditate on Revelation 4:11 today, consider that God, in his creation of the universe, made man, the creature, a partaker of his blessedness and perfection. He revealed himself in and through us by communicating as much of his glory and goodness as the creature was capable of receiving. But this life which God bestowed was not imparted all at once; rather, each moment continuously by his mighty power. From the nature of this relationship between the Creator and the creature we see that humility is properly defined as total dependence upon God. It is the first virtue and the highest duty of the creature and its enemy, pride, is nothing more than the loss of it. Man lost his right relationship with God in the Garden of Eden – he lost his humility. Jesus came to bring humility back to earth and saved us by way of his own humility.
There is nothing more natural, insidious, difficult or dangerous than pride and we possess in ourselves alone no ability to cast it out. Let us look to Christ and study his character until we are broken down under a sense of our own pride and our souls are filled with love and admiration of him and his lowliness. Let us ask God for a determined perseverance in discovering how lacking we are in the grace of humility and for grace to see how powerless we are to obtain what we seek. And let us believe and ask Jesus Christ himself to impart to us this grace of humility as a part of his wonderful life within us.
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