We have read so many times about how important it is to God for us to be humble. We understand what humility is and can easily explain to anyone what it requires, but today I want you to do a little diging. I myself have gone through something in my family that revealed something about my humility to me.
We have posted an article about pride previously; about how nasty this little thing is and just how well it is able to disguise itself and seeing that this is such an important thing to grasp, we will be digging in a little deeper today.
Maybe you are a humble person, so much so that people could not describe you without using the word humble. Maybe you are slow to take credit, wouldn’t make any efforts to be the centre of attention and would never even consider reminding someone of your status, position or accomplishments.
Maybe you are the poster child for humility, but as much as that may seem to be true, I am almost certain that, if you look a little closer, somewhere in a tiny little crack, that nasty little guy is lurking somewhere. Now we know, that nobody is perfect, of course not, but this kind of pride may be bigger in all of us than we would like to admit.
We are always comparing ourselves or other people with others and that is just the way the world works. Sometimes we do it based on qualifications, experience, knowledge, skills, background etc. and yes it is necessary in many cases obviously, but unfortunately the same is true for many things where the creation of divisions does not serve a proper purpose.
People are also compared by the personal choices they have made, their looks, where they live, how much they earn, how they dress and many other things and based on these kinds of things we are “assigned” to specific groups or categories in society.
Yes, it seems that this argument is pointing towards judgement, something which is a whole other thing on its own, but what I want us to look at, is what we do once we have decided where someone fits in in our opinion. This is where I want us to zoom in today.
What makes this so bad, is that we do not even realise that we do this anymore. Once we make our evaluation of a person, we almost subconsciously give them another label in our minds, which could be one of the following three: 1 they are better than me, 2 we are more or less the same or 3 I am better than them. Now you may think that’s crazy and that people don’t do that, but just humour me for a second. Think about the people you know, in your family, at work, at church or anywhere.
You have already evaluated them and created an opinion about them in your mind. Now, ask yourself if you have ever considered that you are in any way better than any of them. You do not have to admit this to anybody but you most probably have done this at some point, in some way to some degree.
Now, this is just what makes Jesus so amazing. He is the King of Kings and there is not one living thing that has ever existed or ever will, that is more worthy than Him and if it was up to us to decide what kind of life He was going to have while He was on earth, then it would have looked a whole lot different. We would surely have placed Him in a setting where He would have had the best of the best, amongst the best of the best and yet, He was born in a manger, did not live a life in riches, chose ordinary and even sinners as His friends, went into places we would not have sent Him, travelled journeys we would not have chosen for Him,
He preached in the fields, to the poor and not in fancy buildings to people who were “fit” to enter there and if you ask me, this was a great part of the reason people did not accept Him to be who He said He was because they had already decided where in society He was going to “fit in”, they had already decided what everything about the Messiah was going to “look like” and when He showed up, it was not at all what they had expected.
If that is not crazy enough, the Son of the living God who created heaven and earth, who deserves all the glory and praise, He who has the name above all names, went down on His knees and washed the feet of his disciples. If HE did that, if HE who most certainly is so much better than His disciples or anyone, anywhere, ever, did not look down on them, how could we ever, in any circumstance think that we are even slightly better than anyone else?
Yes we may recognise that we are in better positions and that we have made better life choices, but we should be very carefull not to let that create any degree of pride within us because everything you are, everything you have, everything you have accomplished that is good and admirable is by the grace of God, you are not even saved because you decided to be saved! It is a free gift given to all so that no one may boast, HE paid for your sin before you even knew His name, you are not saved because you chose Him, you are saved because He chose you!
Yes, it is true, we are not obligated to socialise with everybody regardless of their habits and we may even still be willing to wash their feet, but todays message is about our thoughts, it is about not allowing pride to sneak in unnoticed. We will never be able to help people while we are looking down on them.
Love is the only language that can call anyone to Jesus and we can’t love one another if pride separates us, we cannot love one another if we are not willing to get down on our knees for certain people, in our actions as well as our thoughts. What would you and I have thought about Paul if we had known him before he knew Jesus and what label would we have given him?
God bless,
Miryna van As