Humility – Part Two – As We Are to Live It

Yesterday and today we’re doing a rare “Best of C201” and looking at a topic which appeared several times in 2014 with each containing a key passage from Philippians 2…

Some of you know that in the last two or three years my go-to portion of scripture has been the place in Philippians 2 where Paul breaks out into a section that translators set out from the text as poetry, leading many to conclude it was either a creed or something that had been set to music as an early church hymn. This is the passage I mentally recite when I can’t get back to sleep, and if you invite me to speak at your church on less than 72 hours notice, this is the passage I will speak on.

I’ve created my own version of it, but for sake of familiarity, this is the NKJV, which is usually not my default translation:

5 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who,being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, 7 but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. 9 Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, 11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

So in practical terms, how do you adopt that mindset, that attitude; or to put it another way, how do you get to be humble?

He took on the role of a servant

Of the four things the text states this is really the only one that is open to us. We have already entered into the human condition, and we will almost certainly taste death, even if it is not the excruciating form that Jesus endured. Since we have no options vis-a-vis three of the four things stated, what we must press into is the idea of adopting the towel and the basin as our personal symbols; to give up the stallion in favor of a donkey; to take a seat at the back, not the front; and to seek not be served, but to serve.

We need to remember our sin

When spiritual pride comes knocking at the door, we need to remember our sinful condition. Like David, our sin is ever before us. If you’ve mastered holiness, good for you; but I still live in the middle of two conditions, in the warfare of two wills, two natures battling for control of my mind and actions. Without making this a confessional, suffice it to say that, like my apostle namesake, I haven’t attained it, but press on to it. Remaining in Christian community will help keeps us transparent and accountable.

It’s a really big planet

We are also humbled when we consider not only our place in the universe, but that we are members of a tribe seven billion strong. No matter how large your Facebook friends list, or whether you take significance in being either a big fish in a small pond or a small fish in a big pond; on a global scale sense of personal importance fades dramatically. You may be a superstar in your local church, or your denomination, or you may have won public service awards in your community, but on an international scale you’re probably not such a big deal.

Identifying humility’s opposite

I wrote about this a few days ago and suggested that while we often name pride as the culprit that undermines a humble spirit, ambition can be equally deadly. Being able to name the players in the spiritual battle that’s always ongoing really helps us see the root of the problem. Philip Yancey, in What’s So Amazing About Grace wrote about how the larger society operates by the rules of un-grace. Probably most people equally operate by the laws of un-humility. Timothy spoke of the last days being characterized by people who were “lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy…” We certainly do see a lot of that. When I remember how contagious these attitudes are I recognize the need to guard myself from trying to ‘keep up with the Joneses.’

I have a good example to follow

The whole point of this passage is comparison. Let the attitude or mindset that was in him also be in you. Three months ago, I wrote about the classic CCM song Understudy that uses Hollywood imagery to describe us apprenticing to the one with the starring role. No wonder the early followers of Jesus were called “little Christs.” Or, if you prefer, you can think of the students of who “walk in the dust of the rabbi;” doing everything their teacher does.

What other aspects of Christian living can serve to keep us humble?

The Psalms as a Microcosm of Biblical Theology

In this simple fractal, each individual section encapsulates in miniature the characteristic qualities or features of the whole.

Today we’re paying a return visit to the blog Brothers of the Book, written by Bill Hood. In preparation, I read several of the recent devotionals there on the Psalms. Click the title below to read this one at source:

Go And Sin No More

Today’s Passage: Psalms 49-54

It seems to me that all the theology of the Bible is found in these Psalms. Take for example Psalm 49.

Psalm 49:7-9 ESV
“Truly no man can ransom another,
or give to God the price of his life,
for the ransom of their life is costly
and can never suffice,
that he should live on forever
and never see the pit.”

You and I cannot save ourselves or anyone else. Even if you and I sacrifice our life for the transgressions of someone else it is not enough to save them; our very life is not valuable enough to pay the high price required by sin. These verses tell us that in man there is no hope. Of course, that is not the end of the story. You see, while man cannot save himself, God can and does save man. God can and did pay the price required of sin.

Psalm 51 illustrates this fact perfectly. Remember back in 2 Samuel when David took another man’s wife and then had that man killed? We all know that by God’s standard both acts were heinous. What you may not have considered, however, is that as king, David was above reproach. In fact, what he did in this instance was not really an unusual act for a king of that era. By the human standards of the day, outside of God’s law, David didn’t do anything wrong. God’s standard, of course, is a different matter entirely. There is scriptural evidence to suggest that David was being eaten up by his sin prior to Nathan’s confronting him; it bothered him and he became quiet and withdrawn.

I think one of the things that has bothered many of us who have read about David, is that he seems to be such a great man of God and then, seemingly out of the blue, he commits two horrendous sins in succession. How can a man with such a close relationship with God, who clearly loves the Lord and has shown time and again an ability to deny his own self-centered desires in order to be true to God’s standard, drop the ball in such a catastrophic way? “He didn’t just tell a little white lie to keep from hurting someone’s feelings; he committed adultery and murder!”

Do you know how you can tell David loved God? His sin bothered him. When Nathan confronted him with his sin, he could have, like any other king of the day likely would have, had Nathan killed. Instead, David confessed his sin. You see, if you are God’s man, sin will bother you. If you are God’s man He will discipline you. If you are God’s man you will confess your sin from a broken heart with true regret and remorse. In verse 1-6 of Psalm 51 we find David’s confession. He admits he has fallen short of God’s standard and that he needs to be forgiven.

A man that does not belong to God does not feel he needs to be forgiven for his sinful behavior. How can one who feels they have done nothing wrong desire forgiveness? How can forgiveness be given if it isn’t requested? David is God’s man even though he sinned. And that is my point about the theology we see here in the Psalms. David, a hero of the Bible, is not good enough to save himself. Even with all of his great works and great Psalms of praise, he cannot save himself; he falls short of the mark and deserves the pit. What hope do you and I have if even one like David is not good enough? Our hope is the same as David’s; it is the fact that God convicts us of our sin and enables us to perceive our guilt. Our hope is in the fact that He loves us enough to discipline us and provide cleansing for us as a result of our requesting forgiveness. Listen to David’s words:

Psalm 51:7-12 ESV
“Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones that you have broken rejoice.
Hide your face from my sins,
and blot out all my iniquities.
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from your presence,
and take not your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and uphold me with a willing spirit.”

You see, David knows that God must do the work of salvation. God must cleans us and renew our spirits within us. Now I found a couple of more verses in this Psalm fascinating.

Psalm 51:16-17 ESV
“For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;
you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”

God has developed an entire system of sacrifice; burnt offerings and wave offerings and peace offerings and the like, but David says God will not delight in that sacrifice or he would give it. He says that the burnt offering is not enough. The sacrifice that God requires is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart. I worry about those that seem to come to God too easily. Is their spirit really broken? Do they really have a broken and contrite heart? It is not for me to say, but either it is or it isn’t. If they are not broken by their sin, how can they truly ask for forgiveness? We tend to say that all you have to do to be saved is accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior. This is, of course, true, but a little over simplified. There must be confession and a changed heart. You cannot simply take Christ on as some kind of cosmic insurance policy without any sense of remorse or brokenness; it is not a sincere request.

As I did the dishes prior to sitting down to write this post, I listened to a song performed by Bob Carlisle entitled “We Fall Down”. It is the story of a man who trudges his way past a cathedral every day as he drags his wares to market. As he passes the cathedral he imagines how wonderful it must be to live in a place where you are warm and well fed and the burdens of the world are shut out. One day a priest passes by and the man asks him what it is like to live in such a place. The priest replied “We fall down, we get up. The saints are just the sinners who fall down and get up.”

We have to be careful about getting our theology from pop Christian songs; far too many of them are a little off, and one might find things in this song with which to disagree. Still the idea that the saints are just the sinners who fall down and get up is pertinent to what the lesson of David teaches us. When we accept Christ we are “reborn”; we are new creatures; the old is gone the new has come. Our problem seems to be we don’t understand the power of the new creature and we have phantom sensations that remind us of our old selves. I’ve heard it said that an amputee will often have a sensation that the removed limb is still attached. The limb is gone but the mind, for some reason, gives the sensation that it is still there. I think we can get that same kind of sensation after we have had the old self removed.

What this phantom sensation means is that we might, from time to time, fall down. The question here is what are you going to do once you’ve hit the floor? Will you deny your sin, or will you confess your sin and ask for forgiveness? The enemy is a dastardly creep. He will encourage you into a stumble and then condemn you in an effort to keep you down. David has shown us the proper response. We must confess, ask for forgiveness, and get back up and on with being a man of God. We will have to live with the consequences of our sin as David did, but we must rise in the victory already provided by Christ, go, and sin no more.

Have a blessed and righteous day!

Humility Reminders

Today’s post appeared jointly with the blog Thinking Out Loud.

 

Some of you know that in the last two or three years my go-to portion of scripture has been the place in Philippians 2 where Paul breaks out into a section that translators set out from the text as poetry, leading many to conclude it was either a creed or something that had been set to music as an early church hymn. This is the passage I mentally recite when I can’t get back to sleep, and if you invite me to speak at your church on less than 72 hours notice, this is the passage I will speak on.

I’ve created my own version of it, but for sake of familiarity, this is the NKJV, which is usually not my default translation:

5 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who,being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, 7 but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. 9 Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, 11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

So in practical terms, how do you adopt that mindset, that attitude; or to put it another way, how do you get to be humble?

He took on the role of a servant

Of the four things the text states this is really the only one that is open to us. We have already entered into the human condition, and we will almost certainly taste death, even if it is not the excruciating form that Jesus endured. Since we have no options vis-a-vis three of the four things stated, what we must press into is the idea of adopting the towel and the basin as our personal symbols; to give up the stallion in favor of a donkey; to take a seat at the back, not the front; and to seek not be served, but to serve.

We need to remember our sin

When spiritual pride comes knocking at the door, we need to remember our sinful condition. Like David, our sin is ever before us. If you’ve mastered holiness, good for you; but I still live in the middle of two conditions, in the warfare of two wills, two natures battling for control of my mind and actions. Without making this a confessional, suffice it to say that, like my apostle namesake, I haven’t attained it, but press on to it. Remaining in Christian community will help keeps us transparent and accountable.

It’s a really big planet

We are also humbled when we consider not only our place in the universe, but that we are members of a tribe seven billion strong. No matter how large your Facebook friends list, or whether you take significance in being either a big fish in a small pond or a small fish in a big pond; on a global scale sense of personal importance fades dramatically. You may be a superstar in your local church, or your denomination, or you may have won public service awards in your community, but on an international scale you’re probably not such a big deal.

Identifying humility’s opposite

I wrote about this a few days ago and suggested that while we often name pride as the culprit that undermines a humble spirit, ambition can be equally deadly. Being able to name the players in the spiritual battle that’s always ongoing really helps us see the root of the problem. Philip Yancey, in What’s So Amazing About Grace wrote about how the larger society operates by the rules of un-grace. Probably most people equally operate by the laws of un-humility. Timothy spoke of the last days being characterized by people who were “lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy…” We certainly do see a lot of that. When I remember how contagious these attitudes are I recognize the need to guard myself from trying to ‘keep up with the Joneses.’

I have a good example to follow

The whole point of this passage is comparison. Let the attitude or mindset that was in him also be in you. Three months ago, I wrote about the classic CCM song Understudy that uses Hollywood imagery to describe us apprenticing to the one with the starring role. No wonder the early followers of Jesus were called “little Christs.” Or, if you prefer, you can think of the students of who “walk in the dust of the rabbi;” doing everything their teacher does.

What other aspects of Christian living can serve to keep us humble?