01 What is Humility?
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"What is Humility?”
Let me rephrase: What is humility to you? What does humility look like for you?
Think about that for a second.
What is humility to you? Some of you may have instantly thought of service, and putting others before yourself.
And you’d be correct.
Some of you may have thought of humility as a lack of boasting in yourself and giving glory to God.
And you’d be correct.
Some of you may have thought of sacrifice.
And you’d be correct.
Some of you may have gone a step deeper, thinking that humility isn’t thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less, and you’d be correct.
In thinking these things you are all right! BUT, I want you to recognize that although these are all correction depictions of humility, they are fruits of humility. They are all positively associated with humility but they aren’t getting at the source of it.
When you think this way, you are looking at the flower on the surface, but not the roots that were needed for it to appear. I want to take you a step deeper. I want to take you under the surface, into the soil.
When speaking on humility, we’re talking about the roots of your life. Say it with me…the roots. We’re talking about the inner being. We’re talking about your heart.
Proverbs 4:23 says “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” Everything we do flows from the posture of our heart.
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Matthew 11:29 is the only verse in the Bible that describes the condition of Jesus’s heart, of which it says that He was “gentle and lowly”. In other words, Jesus was humble in heart. In a future week we’re going to dive deeper into the importance of this verse, but today I want you to understand and recognize that everything Jesus did came from a heart of humility. His every word, His every action, was ROOTED, say it with me, ROOTED, in humility.
So I’ll ask you, what is the condition of your heart? Is it like that of Christ’s?
SURELY NOT! You’re not God. You aren’t perfect.
In our flesh we are prideful in heart. We are sinful beings. We are self-centered, self-seeking, self-fulfilling. Our world revolves around us! Have you ever heard the phrase “We’re all the stars of our own story”? That is so true of us in our flesh. That is so true of our world. Think about what the world feeds us…they say to “follow your heart”...”believe in yourself”...and it is all centered around SELF.
The truth is we are not the star of THE story. We can choose to make our life about us but if we do we will lose it. Jesus says in Luke 9:24 “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.” Now I’m saying all of this because I want you to realize the core of what humility is: I want you to recognize what humility is rooted in:
Humility is rooted in an accurate assessment of self. Humility is the accurate assessment of self.
And that accurate assessment is that, at your root, in your heart, you are NOTHING without God. Nothing. You have nothing without God, and you can do nothing without God.
Think about the first part of that last sentence: You have nothing without God.
1 Corinthians 4:7 says “What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you go on boasting as if you did not receive it?” The gifts you have, they are from God. Whether you believe you have few or many, they are from the Maker of heaven and earth. And the honor of your gifts can never be bestowed to the thing itself, but to the Maker who made it what it is. God, the Maker, deserves all the glory.
Think about the second part: You can do nothing without God. Jesus says in John 15:5 “...apart from me you can do nothing”.
Without Jesus, you can do nothing of lasting significance. Nothing of spiritual good. We are paralyzed without Christ. So humility is rooted in the accurate assessment of self, and Paul had an accurate assessment of self. One of the most righteous men in the history of all mankind, who wrote ¼ of the new testament, 13 books total, describes himself as this:
He says in Romans 7:18, “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.”
Nothing good dwells in the flesh. That is the accurate assessment of self. Nothing good dwells in my flesh. Nothing good flows from the natural, fleshly posture of our heart. If nothing good dwells in our flesh, and the accurate assessment of self is that we are NOTHING without God, then what must we do?
We must uproot ourselves. To be rooted in humility we must uproot the mess that is our flesh. We must empty us of us. I’ll say it again to stress significance. We must empty us of us. And in recognizing nothing good dwells in our flesh, we must seek to become empty vessels, so that God be all.
Andrew Murray, a man who I’ll reference a lot on this subject, wrote a book called Humility, and he writes of this beautiful illustration of water in relation to our need to empty ourselves: He says that ‘water fills the lowest places first’.
In relation to us, the lower and emptier we lay before God, like water, the speedier and fuller will be the inflow of His divine glory. In other words, God can do more with you the more control you give Him. Look to the life of Jesus. Philippians 2:7 says Jesus ‘emptied Himself’. He emptied Himself for our sake, and in return we must empty ourselves for His sake. Another translation of that verse says Jesus ‘made himself nothing’. So if He made himself nothing for our sake, in return we should make ourselves nothing for Him.
So back to the initial question: What is Humility?
Humility is being rooted in an accurate assessment of self. That we are nothing, and God is all. True biblical humility comes when we see ourselves as nothing in the light of God, and in recognizing this, we seek to make ourselves nothing so that God may be everything in our life.
Now I know this is a lot. It is so difficult to hear that we are nothing, but my hope is that we would realize that nothingness is not a bad thing. The state of nothingness is actually our highest glory. Our highest glory is letting God be all and being a vessel for His glory and His kingdom. Because ultimately, that is all that matters and all that lasts. Our flesh and the glories of this world will fade and pass away, but the Kingdom of God will last forever.
I don’t want to be the star of my story, I want to be a vessel that impacts His story, the one that lasts forever.
So now that we have established what humility is, we are going to move into studying and learning the importance and necessity of it.
