Demand #16 – Humble Yourself by Making War on Pride
Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
—Matt. 23:12
The tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” I tell you, this man went down to his house justified.
—Luke 18:13
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
—Matt. 5:3
Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and love greetings in the marketplaces and the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts. . . . They will receive the greater condemnation.
—Luke 20:46-47
So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, “We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.”
—Luke 17:10
We focus on humility in the next two lessons. Jesus was clearly repulsed when He saw pride and lack of humility in the world. There is a deep working together of selfishness and pride in humans. C.S. Lewis called pride the “great sin” and started his chapter on pride in Mere Christianity with …
“I now come to that part of Christian morals where they differ most sharply from all other morals. There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves. I have heard people admit that they are bad-tempered, or that they cannot keep their heads about girls or drink, or even that they are cowards. I do not think I have ever heard anyone who was not a Christian accuse himself of this vice. And at the same time I have very seldom met anyone, who was not a Christian, who showed the slightest mercy to it in others. There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. And the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others.”
Only in the perversion of our sin nature could our attitudes toward pride make any “sense” if you can dare call it that. Pride will cause us to do stupid things and to continue to do stupid things that we know are stupid. Pride makes you stupid. The old expression, “well they would cut off their nose to spite their face” is an excellent synopsis of pride in action.
If you really look for pride and strive to eradicate it in your life then you’ll find that it goes undercover. It can be subtle. It is our sin nature that is subtle. One remarkably easy way to put your finger on pride in your own life is to confront an arrogant prideful person. When that person irritates you then you have found your pride. It is handy to remember that the major part of irritation we find in the arrogant pompous and boastful individual is simply our pride rising to meet pride in another. It doesn’t rise for fellowship but it rises in self interest and selfishness.
As Piper points out you can see some of subtleness of pride if you contrast boasting and self-pity. Boasting is pride manifested by success. Self-pity is pride manifested by suffering. Boasting says, “I deserve admiration because of my achievements.” Self-pity says, “I deserve admiration because I have sacrificed so much.” Boasting is the voice of pride in the heart of the strong. Self-pity is the voice of pride in the heart of the weak.
Generally we recognize boasting as prideful. My uncles were faithful to model this for me at an early age. They are all gone now and I think the Depression and poverty of their youth had a lasting, and negative, impact on their lives. They competed in houses, cars, and clothes. It wasn’t just what they had but that they needed to let you know what they paid for what they had that was entertaining. I grew up in t-shirts, jeans, and sneakers and, God willing, I’ll die in a t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers so the value of fine Italian leather shoes is really lost on me but it was central to their discussions. So I was exposed to boasting early on and I think most of us recognize that end of pride pretty easily. Saul was trapped in pride and boasters don’t respond well to the blessings or boasting of others. Think of Saul’s reaction to the blessing God had given to David.
1 Samuel 18:6-9
“when David returned from striking down the Philistine, the women came out of all the cities of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet King Saul, with tambourines, with songs of joy, and with musical instruments. And the women sang to one another as they celebrated,
“ Saul has struck down his thousands,
and David his ten thousands.”
And Saul was very angry, and this saying displeased him. He said, “They have ascribed to David ten thousands, and to me they have ascribed thousands, and what more can he have but the kingdom?” And Saul eyed David from that day on.
Self pity and bitterness are sometimes harder to recognize as pride. We can see anger sometimes and not see the root is pride. The following verses show Saul as he is sinking into self pity at not being able to hang onto what God will not give him.
1 Samuel 20:30-33
Then Saul’s anger was kindled against Jonathan, and he said to him, “You son of a perverse, rebellious woman, do I not know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your own shame, and to the shame of your mother’s nakedness? For as long as the son of Jesse lives on the earth, neither you nor your kingdom shall be established. Therefore send and bring him to me, for he shall surely die.” Then Jonathan answered Saul his father, “Why should he be put to death? What has he done?” But Saul hurled his spear at him to strike him. So Jonathan knew that his father was determined to put David to death.
Here self-pity sounds like it is self-sacrificing and thinking of another. However it is just garbage coming from a wounded and needy ego. Saul would like to be seen as God’s selection as king once again and the hero of Israel but it isn’t going to happen. Piper says, “The need that self-pity feels does not come from a sense of unworthiness but from a sense of unrecognized worthiness.” Saul thought that he was worthy to be king and have his heirs on the throne regardless of the bad news from Samuel. Jonathan saw that it is God who raises up kings and that God alone is sovereign. Saul had a wonderfully godly son and Jonathan is one of the most selfless characters in the Bible.
The root of our problem with pride is that we want to rule our own lives apart from submission to God, we feel we merit even better than what we have and we clearly merit all the good things we have, and then we take pleasure in being better than other people. We can be sneaky by trying to manipulate people behind the scenes to get what we think we deserve but God sees it. We can act with humility in public and then be disappointed that people don’t recognize our great virtue. In other words we want others to praise us for not boasting. In all these sins God sees our hearts. Religions have been founded on being worthy of blessing, the teachings of Scripture have been ignored so that Christianity could be modified to feed man’s pride. Pride really is a sickness that we struggle with all our lives.
Pride: A Sense of Merit
Jesus hit the sense of merit head on. Scripture tell us the reason he told the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. “He told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt” (Luke 18:9). We can’t be good enough to deserve something from God. All the good things that God gives us come to us as a result of grace. Grace is God’s undeserved blessing in our lives.
So the merit-conscious Pharisee says in Luke 18:11-12, “God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.” Even if you acknowledge God, if you take pleasure in feeling superior to others then, if you are a Christian, your heart is not right and you’ll be subject to discipline from God.
Pride delights in feeling superior and not in growing holiness. It is right and good to enjoy the Grace of God and to be thankful for growing in holiness but a healthy joy in growth recognizes that the beginning, middle, and end are all in Grace.
Craving the Praise of Men
Even you don’t think you deserve it, you might still want the praise of men. Jesus warns us not to give to charity or pray or fast in order to be seen by others. “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them” (Matt. 6:1). “When you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others” (Matt. 6:5). “And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others” (Matt. 6:16).
They are (we are) “hypocrites” because in praying and fasting there is a desire to appear as if the treasure is God, but in fact the treasure is the praise of men. Praise for piety one way in which lusting for the praise of others shows up in our life but it is not the only kind of praise that pride craves. It also craves praise for power and wealth. So Jesus says to his disciples, “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you” (Luke 22:25-26). In other words, do not delight in having superior power or superior wealth. The pleasures of being “over” or “above” others does not come from humble trust in the grace of God. Jesus said, “[The scribes and Pharisees] love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others” (Matt. 23:6-7). The sin is not in the place of honor, the best seats, greetings in public places, and a title. The sin is in the misplaced love of the thing instead of the appropriate love and thankfulness to the Savior.
Pride Is Loveless
Just before saying, “They do all their deeds to be seen by others” (Matt. 23:5), Jesus says, “They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger” (Matt. 23:4). A prideful religious person may teach high moral standards without praying or helping people carry the load because they are loveless. The proud person doesn’t really want anyone to advance beyond them (makes it hard to be superior) and the proud do not understand that God’s grace works to help sinners make progress in holiness without getting proud.
A proud religious person will not show the repentant sinner how Jesus’ yoke is easy and his burden is light (Matt. 11:30), because they do not experience it as easy and light. They strive at a heavy burden so that there can be a sense of merit and boasting in achievement.
We Are Unworthy Servants
So in Jesus’ teaching there is a very close connection between humility and servanthood. As disciples we need to moves from poverty of spirit to childlike trust in God’s grace to a heart of servanthood and acts of service.
The first Beatitudes is, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” (Matt. 5:3). That is, blessed are the people who do not find a basis for merit or desert when they look within themselves. As spiritual beggars, they are the opposite of those “who trusted in themselves that they were righteous” (Luke 18:9). They know that they have nothing in themselves to commend them to God.
Jesus describes the attitude we are to have in Luke 17:10—“When you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’” This verse crushes pride. Jesus says, no degree of obedience, from the worst to the best, merits any absolute claim on God. A perfectly obedient human should say—it would be part of his obedience—“I am an unworthy servant.”
This conviction is the root of humility in our hearts. An infinite and holy God created me and it is only reasonable that I serve Him with my whole heart every day of my life. I would be an unprofitable but a faithful servant to do so. It would be my reasonable duty. But I haven’t done that. I’ve sought my own priorities, I’ve served myself, and I’ve disobeyed a holy God. So like the tax collector, everything good that we get from God is mercy. It is undeserved. “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (Luke 18:13). “This man went down to his house justified,” Jesus said (Luke 18:14). I want mercy and grace. I don’t want what I deserve.
Demand #17 – Humble Yourself in Childlikeness, Servanthood, and Brokenhearted Boldness
Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
—Matt. 18:3-4
Let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves.
—Luke 22:26
A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. . . . If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household. So have no fear of them.
—Matt. 10:24-26
The produce humility in our hearts we don’t just need to be aware of an absence of merit (as we saw in the last chapter), but we need to be aware and immersed in grace. Humility is not just the servant who says, “I am an unworthy servant”; humility is also a child at rest in his father’s arms.
Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3-4). We must humble ourselves in both ways: like an unworthy servant and like a trusting child. There are some key points to being childlike and not childish.
Humility
In Matthew 18:4 Jesus says, “Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” This kind of humility was not perceived as a positive thing in Jesus day and it really isn’t viewed as a positive thing in this day and age. Jesus is demanding an end to love of power, status, self-sufficiency, demanding our rights, and control (it was only an illusion anyway).
Little Ones
He says, “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matt. 18:6). He describes believers as “little ones,” and he describes little ones as those who “believe.” Both terms are important. Nearly all of the Church, the Body of Christ are not great, strong, or self-sufficient in the eyes of the world. They don’t trust in themselves but they do trust in Jesus.
Trust
In a normal way the children trust their father to take care of them. I was placed on airplanes, ships, and automobiles and taken from one place to another from my earliest memories. On the weekend my dad’s idea of recreation was to put us in the car and go for a ride with the objective of getting lost. He did a great job with deserts and mountains and cheap gas. My brother and I never worried because we trusted that he would get us out of whatever he got us into. On the longer trips we would wake up in strange places but we were not in control he was. We were content that we would have everything we needed if not everything we wanted.
Keep in mind that Jesus is not calling us to be childish. We are not supposed to be unproductive or immature. That’s not the point of the comparison. The point is that we don’t take joy in a feeling of superiority or not being recognized as an important person. Instead we believe and trust the way a child believes and trusts. We find our security and meaning and joy in Jesus and all that our heavenly Father is for us in him.
Lowliness Leads to a Spirit of Servanthood
Jesus said “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all” (Mark 9:35). Sometimes he illustrated his point by putting a child in their midst and saying, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me” (Mark 9:37). Having a servant’s heart and ministering to those God calls you to, even if it is to the nursery, is right in God’s eyes.
Even at the Last Supper, when he was preparing to give his life in the ultimate demonstration of servant-love, the disciples were arguing about who was the greatest—so deeply engrained in us is this craving. He said, “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you. Rather, let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves. For who is the greater, one who reclines at table or one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at table? But I am among you as the one who serves” (Luke 22:25-27).
I think that we’ll be shocked by who is honored in heaven versus who was honored here on earth.
How Jesus Served and Will Serve
In Matthew 20:26-28, Jesus connects his demand that we serve others with his own service of us and shows us the kind of thing he has in mind. “Whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Piper says, “Service means doing things out of love that are costly to ourselves but aim to bring temporal and eternal benefit to others.” That is a nice definition to meditate on. We need God’s direction since we need the master to tell us servants what we need to do. Jesus portrays his second coming not only as a demonstration of great power and glory (Mark 13:26), but also as a time when he will again take the lowly (but beautiful) role of servant: “Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will dress himself for service and have them recline at table, and he will come and serve them” (Luke 12:37). I’m afraid that sort of freaks me out. I trust God will give me the grace to receive that service.
When Jesus said (repeatedly), “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted” (Matt. 23:12; Luke 14:11; 18:14), he was warning against the great servicekiller (self-exalting pride) and calling for the great service-maker (Christ-dependent humility).
Brokenhearted Boldness in the Cause of Truth
These days if you preach the Gospel and call others to believe it then you will not be considered humble. The typical condemnation of Jesus’ claim to be the only way to heaven (John 5:23; 14:6) is that it is arrogant.
G. K. Chesterton saw this coming in 1908. He makes the point that at one time humility was sought with regard to our ambitions. We sought modesty so that our ambitions would not wrap us in pride and destroy us. However, we now consider modesty with regard to our convictions as a virtue. We are right to doubt ourselves but doubting the truth isn’t really rational. However, that is the current atmosphere. If you say that Jesus is the way the truth and the light and that no man can come to the Father except by Him then you’ll find out how things work. We don’t doubt ourselves anymore, whatever you believe is fine as long as you don’t tell others that you believe in the exclusive truth claims of your belief. You must doubt the revelation of Scripture. Chesterton says “We are on the road to producing a race of man too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table.”
Humility: Five Implications for Bold Truth-telling
First, humility begins with a sense of subordination to God in Jesus. “A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a slave above his master” (Matt. 10:24).
Second, humility does not feel a right to better treatment than Jesus got. “If they have called the head of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign the members of his household” (Matt. 10:25). Therefore, humility does not return evil for evil. It is not a life based on perceived rights. It is a life of sacrifice.
Third, humility asserts truth not to bolster ego with control or with triumphs in debate. It speaks truth as a service to Christ and as love to the adversary. “What I [Jesus] tell you in the darkness, speak in the light . . . do not fear” (Matt. 10:27-28).
Fourth, humility knows it is dependent on grace for all knowing and believing and speaking. “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). This will create a demeanor that is neither cocky nor timid.
Fifth, humility knows it is fallible, and so considers criticism and learns from it, but also knows that God has made provision for human conviction and that he calls us to persuade others. Jesus told us that the church should stand ready to correct the wayward member (Matt. 18:15-17). And he told us that even though we are fallible and may need correction, we should unashamedly go and make disciples of all nations, telling them to do everything Jesus commanded (Matt. 28:19-20).
Humility: The Gift to Receive All Things as a Gift
If humility is the product of reaching, then we will instinctively feel proud of it. Humility is the gift to receive all things as a gift thankfully and unself-consciously.
I want to end with the following from Piper’s personal journal, “Is not the most effective way of bridling my delight in being made much of, to focus on making much of God? Self-denial and crucifixion of the flesh are essential, but O how easy it is to be made much of even for my self-denial! How shall this insidious motive of pleasure in being made much of be broken except through bending all my faculties to delight in the pleasure of making much of God! Christian Hedonism is the final solution. It is deeper than death to self. You have to go down deeper into the grave of the flesh to find the truly freeing stream of miracle water that ravishes you with the taste of God’s glory. Only in that speechless, all-satisfying admiration is the end of self.”
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