Humility

Andrew Murray's "Humility" is a classic. I read it years ago, and it's making the rounds at Church of the Apostles. I borrowed Robert's copy (my old one is lost - maybe in Ivan) to review it some for the first section of Matthew 18, Jesus' Discourse on Community, where Jesus calls for humility first off, before going any further about relationships in the Christian community.

From the preface of Murray's "Humility":
There are three great motivations to humility: it becomes us as creatures; it becomes us as sinners; it becomes us as saints. Humility is first seen in the angels, in man before the Fall, and in Jesus as the Son of Man. In our fallen state, humility point us to the only way by which we can returen to our rightful place as creatures. As Christians, the mystery of grace teaches us that as we lose ourselves in the overwhelming greatness of redeeming love, humility becomes to us the consummation of everlasting blessedness.

It is common in Christian teaching to find the second aspect taught almost exclusively (ie. that it becomes us as sinners) and [some] have thought that the strength of self-condemnation is the secret of humility... the Christian life has suffered where believers have not been guided to see that even in our relationships as creatures, nothing is more natural and beautiful and blessed than to be nothing in order that God may be everything. It needs to be made clear that it is not sin that humbles but grace. It is the soul occupied with God in His wonderful glory as Creator and Redeemer that will truly take the lowest place before Him."

Humility is really just knowing who you really are. In Greek and Roman culture, humility was shameful; but for the Jew and the Christian is was and is the highest virtue. Who we are before God, before Jesus, is at the same time nothing, so very, very small, and yet also beloved, precious, worth the "precious blood" of the Son of God. Humility is being occupied with God, and not with ourselves. The way toward humility is not, as Murray says, self-condemnation (focusing on ourselves), but God-exaltation (focusing on the goodness and greatness of God). Our own sense of smallness and preciousness will inevitably follow.

Our sense of importance will not be in relation to others ("who is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?"), but only that we know we are important to the heart and love of God, to the kingdom of our humble savior king.

Thank you Lord Jesus for your great humility, in incarnation, in obedience, in suffering and death, and even now in your intercession for us. Be formed more and more in us, as we mroe and more look to and trust in you.