“Humility” Is Not a Four Letter Word!

People who are full of grace are humble people. Humility is one of the central qualities of a person who is living in, growing through, and giving out God’s grace.

Before we get any further with this we need to answer the question what is humility?
Humility is not really seen as a very desirable trait today. I think this is because our culture today is really focused—even fixated—on building self-esteem and self-worth.

In my experience, when people think of being humble they think it is only because you have been humbled. The idea many people today have of a humble person is often a picture of someone who has been beaten down and defeated (humbled and humiliated), and that picture does not fit the profile of a positive self-image.

Allow me to let me set the record straight right now. That is not what the biblical idea of humility means. Humility is not at all incompatible with a healthy self-image. (Notice I said healthy, not positive. Having a healthy, proper self-image is a good thing.) Humility is not about thinking less of yourself than you should. It isn’t about beating up on yourself. Listen to Paul’s teaching on humility in Romans 12:3 (NLT), Don’t think you are better than you really are. Be honest in your evaluation of yourselves, measuring yourselves by the faith God has given us. And in Philippians 2:3-5 (NLT) Paul says, Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too.

Humility is being honest about yourself. It is an honesty and a transparency about yourself in light of who God is. Phil Hodges sums it up well saying that “humility not about thinking less of yourself, it is about thinking of yourself less and thinking more about the needs of others.”

The next question we need to ask is why does grace produce humility? Why should we expect people who are living in the light of grace to be humble people? Simply put, it is because these people know how much they need God’s grace. Their honesty about who they are in light of who God is brings them to the inescapable conclusion that without God’s grace they would be lost. Grace produces humility because it makes you see your sin for what it is and what it cost in order for you to be forgiven.

R.W. Barbour wrote,

He who has not felt what sin is in the Old Testament knows little what grace is in the New. He who has not trembled in Moses, and wept in David, and wondered in Isaiah will rejoice little in Matthew, [and] rest little in John. He who has not suffered under the Law will scarcely hear the glad sound of the gospel.

The only way you can truly see and appreciate the beauty of the loving grace of God is in knowing that you are a sinner who needs it more than anything else. What good is grace to a person who doesn’t think they need it? A great example of this is in Luke 7:36-47 (NLT):

One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to have dinner with him, so Jesus went to his home and sat down to eat.
When a certain immoral woman from that city heard he was eating there, she brought a beautiful alabaster jar filled with expensive perfume.
Then she knelt behind him at his feet, weeping. Her tears fell on his feet, and she wiped them off with her hair. Then she kept kissing his feet and putting perfume on them.
When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know what kind of woman is touching him. She’s a sinner!”
Then Jesus answered his thoughts. “Simon,” he said to the Pharisee, “I have something to say to you.”
“Go ahead, Teacher,” Simon replied.
Then Jesus told him this story: “A man loaned money to two people—500 pieces of silver to one and 50 pieces to the other. But neither of them could repay him, so he kindly forgave them both, canceling their debts. Who do you suppose loved him more after that?”
Simon answered, “I suppose the one for whom he canceled the larger debt.”
“That’s right,” Jesus said. Then he turned to the woman and said to Simon, “Look at this woman kneeling here. When I entered your home, you didn’t offer me water to wash the dust from my feet, but she has washed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You didn’t greet me with a kiss, but from the time I first came in, she has not stopped kissing my feet. You neglected the courtesy of olive oil to anoint my head, but she has anointed my feet with rare perfume.
“I tell you, her sins—and they are many—have been forgiven, so she has shown me much love. But a person who is forgiven little shows only little love.”

This owning of our sin and sinfulness before the holiness of God makes us and keeps us humble. What would we do, what would we be, where would we go without the grace of God? People who live in God’s grace know that they are undone without it; and know that all their strength, zeal, love, wisdom, and righteousness comes through their union with Jesus Christ and not from within themselves.

So we know what humility is, it’s being honest about yourself in light of who God is. And we know why grace is going to produce humility, because apart it you will not appreciate the beauty of, or even desire grace of God.