What Good Is It to Be Humble?

Why should you want to be humble?
What are the benefits of humility? Well, first if all we should want to be humble because Jesus is humble. He said,

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls (Matthew 11:28-29, NIV).

One of the ways the fullness of God’s grace came through Jesus was in his humility. Since being a Christian means becoming like Christ in how we think and act, we should want to be humble as He was humble.

Second, we should want to be humble because God blesses those who are humble. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 5:5 (NIV) Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. All throughout the Bible God promises His special blessing to those who are humble.

• In Psalm 18:27 God promises to rescue the humble.
• In Psalm 25:9 God promises to lead the humble in doing right.
• Psalm 138:6 says He cares for the humble.
• Psalm 147:6 says He supports the humble.
• Psalm 149:4 says He crowns the humble with victory.
• Isaiah 29:19 God promises to fill the humble with fresh joy.
• Isaiah 57:15 God lives with the humble and restores their spirit and encourages them.
• Luke 1:52 God promises to exalt the humble.
• 1 Peter 5:5 says God favors the humble.

Those are all promises that God gives to the humble. They are conditional promises. You have to be humble to benefit from those promises.

The opposite of humility is pride. When the Bible says it is against pride it is not talking about pride we have in our work, or our kids, or the pride that comes from knowing we have done a good job. The pride the Bible condemns is thinking more of ourselves than we ought. It is putting ourselves head of others.

I don’t know many people who will come out and say “I am a really prideful person.” But I know many people who let this sinful pride dictate their behavior. Pride always puts us in place of God.

• Pride led Adam to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
• Pride led Cain to kill Abel.
• Pride led Moses to strike the rock in anger.
• Pride cost Saul the throne and ultimately his life.
• Pride led David to commit adultery with Bathsheba.
• Pride led the disciples to fight over who was going to be the greatest in heaven.
• Pride led Peter to declare he would never disown His Lord.
• Pride led Paul to persecute the Church, thinking he was doing God’s will.

I may be going out on a limb here, but if Moses (who was called the most humble man of his time), David, Peter, and Paul struggled with pride shouldn’t we be concerned about pride in our own life?

If pride is not so common and humility is not so rare, why does the Bible talk so often about humility?
Humility has the ironic honor of being the most often cited mark of a godly life in all of Scripture. More than 50 times humility is cited as a characteristic God looks for in His people.

Couple that with the fact that pride is condemned in the Bible more than 150 times and you see how important humility is and how dangerous pride is. In fact, the only times that pride is used in a positive sense in the Scriptures is when it is referring to having pride in the Lord, or in having children.

God has a whole different set of promises for the proud and prideful:

• 2 Samuel 22:28 says God watches the proud and humiliates them.
• Job 20:6-7 promises the proud will vanish forever, thrown away like their own dung.
• Psalm 5:5 says the proud may not stand in God’s presence.
• Psalm 76:12 says God breaks the prideful.
• Proverbs 16:5 says the LORD detests the proud and will punish them.
• Proverbs 11:2 promises that pride leads to disgrace.
• Proverbs 13:10 says pride leads to conflict.
• Isaiah 23:9 declares that God sends His armies out to destroy proud.

Do find any of those promises motivating enough to work at being humble? God has made it abundantly clear from one end of the Bible to the other that He values humility and detests pride.

If we want to live in a way that is pleasing to God, if we want to be like Christ we should strive to be humble. If we want to have God’s blessings flowing unobstructed in our lives (and out of our lives) we should want to be humble people.

How can you cultivate spiritual humility? To get the answer to that question I want to look at Ephesians 4:2 (NLT) which says,

Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love.

This verse gives us three things we can do to cultivate humility.

1. We cultivate humility by being gentle with one another. Humble people are gentle people. Gentle does not mean weak. Being humble is not the same as being another person’s doormat. It means that you treat people with care. When we are gentle we are taking care that we are not provoking arguments or anger with one another. It is so easy to get angry! It takes discipline to be gentle! Yet gentleness is often a stronger and more effective tool than anger. In fact Proverbs 15:1 (NLT) says, a gentle answer deflects anger, but harsh words make tempers flare.

    

2. We cultivate humility by being patient with one another. We need to be patient with one another. Life doesn’t always go the way we planned. People do not always come through, they do not always keep their promises, they do not always grow or learn at the rate we thought they would (or wish they would). Patience acknowledges that people are broken, plans aren’t fool-proof, and you aren’t perfect. Being frustrated is easy. Patience takes discipline.

    

3. We cultivate humility by making allowance for each other’s faults. This is about forgiveness and forbearance towards one another. The more willing you are to forgive the more likely humility is a quality you possess. Why is that? Forgiveness takes you to the cross. You can’t go there without seeing yourself there too. Holding a grudge is easy. Forgiveness takes discipline. Pointing out fault is easy. Making allowance for each other’s faults takes discipline.

If we want to follow Christ’s command to love one another as He loved us, then we need to cultivate the attitude of humility. Christian love is a humble love.

A love that is born out of spiritual humility is a love that knows who we are in light of who God is. It is a love that knows we are great sinners who have found great grace. It is a love that puts the needs of others before its own. It is a love that is gentle and kind to others. It is a patient love. And it is a love that is slow to anger, quiet in the face of the faults of others, and easily forgiving when offended.