Evangelical Humility

Our Thursday night Bible Study has been going through a great little, yet highly profound, book entitled, “The Distinguishing Traits of Christian Character” by Gardiner Spring published 1829. Sometimes the language can be difficult, but by and large we have done well and been blessed by working our way through each of the chapters.

The latest chapter we studied was called “Evangelical Humility” and begins with this definition of what this means:

“Evangelical humility consists in a just view of our own character, and in a disposition to abase ourselves as low as the vileness of our character requires us to lie. The pride of the human heart casts a veil over the character of men and aims to conceal their worthlessness as creatures and their ill dessert as sinners; while the humility of the Gospel throws aside the veil, and discovers that native worthlessness which ought to sink the creature in the dust and that moral deformity which ought to fill the sinner with self-abasement.”

The first question that I had posed to the group was this – “Based upon [the statement above], how would you define “evangelical humility”? But before I solicited responses to that, I felt compelled to ask this question – “How would the vast majority of evangelicals define humility today?”

The sad reality is that most evangelicals of this generation would be appalled by the statement above. I have received a number of flyers from churches over the past few months and I dare say not one of them came close to giving any kind of debasement to man. Rather, man seems to be at the focus and there is a constant attempt to help people feel good about themselves by coming to church. I fear that humility today is defined more in terms of what we do or don’t do rather than the pursuit of a right and high view of God.

One definition given for today’s evangelical humility was tolerance. The church today is becoming more and more tolerant of various sins and lifestyles and even of dangerous and deviant theologies. This humility of tolerance wants to bring the standards of conduct and even theology to the lowest common denominator – all in the name of unity and will a face of humility.

But evangelical humility must center itself upon a high and lofty view of God. He is absolutely holy and perfect – man is defiled and wretched. Some would think that this is too hard, too discouraging, too demeaning. But I concur with Mr. Spring when he wrote:

“His more happy moments are those in which he is enabled to lie abased before God, and in which he has increasing desires to be kept humble to the end of his days.”

My feeble attempt to draw an analogy was as follows: I had a laptop computer a couple of years back that when purchased, was told specifically to run the battery all the way down before charging it back up. It seems that this battery, if run only 20% down before recharged would retain a memory, never allowing it to run down past that 20% mark and therefore never be of full use and never experiencing a full charge. As I read the Scriptures, God does want us to be run completely down, to come to the full end of ourselves, to truly deny ourselves, pick up our cross and follow Jesus. Too often we are to prideful to allow ourselves to be run to end of ourselves for fear of being so humbled. But it is when we are empty of ourselves that we become the most full of God. It is the most joyous for the believer when, having come to his end, is wonderfully delighted by the presence, the power and the pleasure of God’s filling him up for service. Let us not forget the words of our Lord who said in Luke 14:11;

For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.

The scriptures are replete with pictures and exhortations toward our humility, this high and exalted view of the awesome holiness of God and this debased view of ourselves. For it is only as we lose our lives in Christ that we truly gain life. Let us be then and John the Baptist who uttered those provoking words –

“He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30)

Let me close with the words of Mr. Spring who wrote on the attitude of the one truly humble before God:

They do not complain of God though He should sink them as low as they deserve to lie; but from the heart they approve the justice that condemns, while they are allowed to admire and adore the grace that rescues from the condemnation.

Let me ask you – how do you define humility? .