Have you ever gone to a specific church to hear a particular pastor only to find out that said pastor will not be in pulpit? It’s happened to me, and I’ve come to appreciate it’s not the messenger. It’s the message.
And so it was recently when an unknown minister (to me) spoke of humility. It was one of the first principles I remembered from the guy who saved my life, the minister I was going to hear.
Humility, as the guest pastor clarified, was particularly evident in Philippians 2. The entire chapter is devoted to Paul’s message to the church at Philippi regarding “Imitating Christ’s Humility.”
As I listened, humility went from a concept of docile behavior to a fact of faith and strength of conduct. It was made clear that Christ deliberately chose to consider Himself at best equal to, if not less than, His fellow man.
Remember, this is God choosing to make Himself human, in order to serve His divine purpose. This text tells us to “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.” Now my recollection of Christ says that’s a pretty good description of how He looked upon His duty and pretty much what got Him killed.
Isn’t it ironic to think that the most dangerous, therefore the most powerful and important, thing you can do in life is to care more about someone else than you care about yourself? This humility thing has teeth.
I mean, really, if anyone had a right to be arrogant, try being the walking, talking Word and deliberately transform yourself into a mere mortal. If you can grasp that thought, please do not let it blow your mind because you know you couldn’t do it. I mean, become the Son of God and die on the cross at the hands of men.
Fortunately, as the guest minister sermonized, Paul was not asking us to do the impossible. He lets us know the goal is service unto our fellow man. He reminds us that the mission is to put a cap on what we think of ourselves and our independence in favor of the recognition of our collective interdependence upon each other and the Almighty.
Christ died to save us all, and in Philippi Paul tells us that our conduct must be based on the recognition of the following truth: Out of this thing called humility, Christ saved the world. Are we better than Him?
Think it through. If you look down your nose at anyone, if you think you’re better than anyone, then you think you’re better than Jesus, who thought Himself no better – and even less than – you.
