Christ’s Humility
My favourite Christmas textual content places humility on the coronary heart of Christmas. So this Christmas I’m marveling at Jesus’s humility and wanting extra of it myself. I’ll quote the textual content in a second.
However first there are two issues. Tim Keller helps us to see one in every of them when he says, “Humility is so shy. When you start speaking about it, it leaves.” So a meditation on humility (like this one) is self-defeating, it appears. However even shy individuals peek out typically if they’re handled nicely.
The opposite downside is that Jesus wasn’t humble for a similar causes we’re (or must be). So how can Jesus’s Christmas humility assist us? Our humility, if there may be any in any respect, is predicated on our finiteness, our fallibility, and our sinfulness. However the everlasting Son of God was not finite. He was not fallible. And he was not sinful. So, in contrast to our humility, Jesus’s humility originated another method.
Right here is my favourite Christmas textual content. Search for Jesus’s humility:
Although he was within the type of God, [he] didn’t rely equality with God a factor to be grasped, however emptied himself, by taking the type of a servant, being born within the likeness of males. And being present in human kind, he humbled himself by turning into obedient to the purpose of loss of life, even loss of life on a cross. (Phil. 2:6–8)
What defines Jesus’s humility is the truth that it’s primarily a acutely aware act of placing himself in a lowly, servant function for the nice of others. His humility is outlined by such phrases as:
- “He emptied himself [of his divine rights to be free from abuse and suffering].”
- “He took the type of a servant.”
- “He turned obedient to the purpose of loss of life, even loss of life on a cross.”
Good Information of Nice Pleasure by John Piper invitations Christians to make Jesus the middle of the Creation season by 25 devotional readings.
So Jesus’s humility was not a coronary heart disposition of being finite or fallible or sinful. It was a coronary heart of infinite perfection and infallible truthfulness and freedom from all sin, which for that very motive didn’t have to be served. He was free and full to overflow in serving.
One other Christmas textual content that claims that is Mark 10:45: “The Son of Man got here to not be served however to serve, and to present his life as a ransom for a lot of.” Jesus’s humility was not a way of defect in himself, however a way of fullness in himself put on the disposal of others for his or her good. It was a voluntary reducing of himself to make the peak of his glory accessible for sinners to take pleasure in.
Jesus makes the connection between his Christmas lowliness and the excellent news for us: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will provide you with relaxation. Take my yoke upon you, and be taught from me, for I’m light and lowly in coronary heart, and you’ll discover relaxation in your souls. For my yoke is straightforward, and my burden is mild” (Matt. 11:28–30).
His lowliness makes our reduction from burdens attainable. If he weren’t lowly, he wouldn’t have been “obedient to the purpose of loss of life, even loss of life on a cross.” And if he had not been obedient to die for us, we might be crushed underneath the burden of our sins. He lowers himself to take our condemnation (Rom. 8:3).
Jesus’s humility was not a way of defect in himself, however a way of fullness in himself put on the disposal of others for his or her good.
Now we’ve extra motive to be humble than earlier than. We’re finite, fallible, and sinful and due to this fact don’t have any floor for boasting in any respect. However now we see different humbling issues: our salvation shouldn’t be owing to our work, however to his grace.
So boasting is excluded (Eph. 2:8–9). And the way in which he completed that gracious salvation was by voluntary, acutely aware self-lowering in servant-like obedience to the purpose of loss of life.
So along with finiteness, fallibility, and sinfulness, we now have two different large impulses at work to humble us: free and undeserved grace beneath all our blessings and a mannequin of self-denying, sacrificial servanthood that willingly takes the type of a servant. So we’re referred to as to affix Jesus on this acutely aware self-humbling and servanthood. “Whoever exalts himself might be humbled, and whoever humbles himself might be exalted” (Matt. 23:12). “Have this thoughts amongst yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus . . .” (Phil. 2:5).
Let’s pray that this “shy advantage”—this large floor of our salvation and our servanthood—would peek out from her quiet place and grant us the clothes of lowliness this Creation. “Dress yourselves, all of you, with humility towards each other, for ‘God opposes the proud however offers grace to the common-or-garden’” (1 Peter 5:5).
This text is tailored from Good News of Great Joy: 25 Devotional Readings for Advent by John Piper.
