We get ourselves into all kinds of trouble with our
mouths. We boast about tomorrow, we
provoke, we praise ourselves, and we end up eating crow. Humility is a large part of wisdom but it
begins and ends not with thinking less of yourself than you ought, not despising
yourself but realizing that you walk and live before a holy God who has control
of all things. Rich Mullins wrote a song
called We Are Not as Strong as we Think we Are that begins with the words,
"Well, it took the hand of God Almighty, To part the waters of the sea,
But it only took one little lie, To separate you and me, Oh, we are not as
strong as we think we are." Where
we think we are strong we are often weak and we are human and therefore prone
to weakness and error. Wisdom is the
living out of that knowledge and understanding of our place in the grand scheme
of things.
Peter had thought himself to be a man of strength. He believed that no matter what the others
might do in Jesus hour of need, he would remain steadfast and loyal. Jesus punched a hole in his own
self-confidence by prophesying that he would deny Him three times in the next
few hours. Such an idea must have seemed
to Peter unthinkable and even unimaginable.
How would that even be possible? Peter
denies Jesus not only to those who have some power over him but even to a slave
girl. He had none of the qualities he
wanted to possess when things got tough.
The natural man wants to be steadfast and loyal to his friends,
courageous and decisive in times of difficulty, but we often are frail and
wavering. Peter, filled with the Spirit,
was all that he wanted to be, standing before the council and others defiantly
proclaiming Jesus to be the only name given under heaven by which a man might
be saved and scorning the idea that he should no longer use that name publicly
in preaching. Our strength is not our
own.
Jesus shows us the path of true humility, willingly laying
down His own claims in order to do the will of the Father, give glory to Him,
and to love and serve us. The willing
part is the important part. We are the beloved of God and we stand secure in
that knowledge because of the cross. From
that perspective we lay down our lives, take up our cross and follow Him,
simply emulating the example He lay before us.
We aren't self-loathing, we are called to love others as we love
ourselves and if we don't love ourselves we can't love others, cannot fulfill the
commandment. As the beloved it is a
choice then to serve the Father by loving others, we are under no obligation to
serve them on their own account but only for His sake. It is an act of loving devotion to the one
who loved us enough to die for us that we serve others. What would the world look like if everyone
copied Jesus' example in humility?
No comments:
Post a Comment