Katz, Humility

HumilityA message spoken by Art Katz on the subject of humility. Art quotes liberally from Andrew Murray’s excellent book entitled, Humility, as well as from William Law. Murray calls humility ”the only root from which the graces can grow.” In other words, there is no growth in grace and no receiving of anything from God without this ultimate and essential requirement. The Latin term is sine qua non. The scripture that supports this is: ”He gives grace to the humble, but resists the proud.” He can only give grace to the humble. The proud have no disposition, recognition or need of receiving that grace. And God looks for this fundamental condition; it is also the very quintessence of God Himself: ”I am meek, and lowly; learn of Me.” There is a special promise made for the meek that is not given to any other, ”The meek shall inherit the earth.” Indeed, the Lord’s own death on the Cross as well as His whole earthly life is a statement of that meekness and humility. Just His coming in the form of man is a humiliation for God. He was confined in a body, limited to a finite form and fixed in one place in the earth - a very narrow place within Israel, from Galilee to Jerusalem - for His thirty-three years. His whole life had to be expressed and developed within the confines of one small geographic piece of His own creation. In only three-and-a-half years, He had to express and set forth a mode of being, by His own example, that would be given to mankind as a basis for following all the days that are left for the human race. The humility of God is the most awesome thing. It is not God putting on something to demonstrate a virtue that He wanted to commend to us. It is what God is in Himself. For example, He says (paraphrased), ”I stand at the door of your heart and knock. If any man chooses to hear my voice and open, I will come in and eat with him and he with Me, but if he doesn’t choose to hear and doesn’t open, I will stay outside.” This is the almighty God waiting for mere mortal man both to hear His voice and to open the door. He has every right to knock the door down, but He does not.

2. Murray continues, ”It is the one indispensable condition of true fellowship with Jesus.” I would add the only basis for true fellowship with anyone, because pride, arrogance, haughtiness of spirit, being uppity and unwilling to bend prevent fellowship. Humility is at the heart of the matter. How do you get it? How do you become the first in your neighborhood to have it? Anyone who has tried knows that he is on the road to dismal failure, especially if he is seeking to imitate humility. It is the phoniest of attempts to try and be humble. Humility is what God is. So the only way to have it then is to find some kind of basis by which we appropriate what God Himself is. Every time we will receive a condition of life, a circumstance that’s painful or humiliating, and receive it from God’s hand as coming from Him, we have an opportunity to learn of Him. This is true obedience, and with every such obedience rendered to God, something of the very character and personality of God is transmitted until the man is the thing in itself. Apostolic meekness is the hallmark of the true apostle. It is the hallmark of God Himself. He will have that quality of God. You can’t even define it because it is something wrought in the man himself through a history of union with the God, who Himself is meek. It will never be our experience unless we covet and desire this attribute. And it should be as distinctive of us as it is of God. If it is only one of many things in which we might have an interest, it will not be obtained. But if it’s the very basis of the receiving of any grace from God and the basis for relationship with Him and with the saints, then it ought to be the foremost object of our consideration. So you shall know them by their fruits, or you shall know them by the indistinguishable mark of God, the humility of God, the meekness of God. You can always tell religions that are false because what they celebrate and what they themselves express are completely the antithesis of the meekness of God. Violence is a statement of human arrogance that presumes it has the right to take the life of another. And so the meekness of what God is needs to be set forth in the church that has this as its chief mark and attribute, the meekness and lowliness of God.

With what shall I come before the LORD and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? 7Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? 8He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:6-8

3. The world’s definition of meekness is a kind of self-deferring humility that is contrived and phony. In fact, if we’re satisfied with that and people are impressed with that, we’ll never have the real thing. If you’re going to come to the meekness of God, you’ve got to come to the recognition first of your humanity, especially when you are stung and your self-interest is challenged and threatened. Whatever comes up from you will show the truth of the nature that has not yet been met by the Cross. So, just like anything else, if we’re satisfied with a false substitute for the authentic, God is not going to force the true upon us. First, we have to come to the humbling and humiliating recognition of the truth of our condition. Then comes the repentance over that and the shock of the disclosure of what is the truth of our condition and our hatred of it. Then comes the washing and the contrition in order that we can find a place of union with God in truth. God will not bestow grace except on the ground of truth. When we come on that ground, and the recognition of the horror of what has been revealed about the truth of our condition, then we’re in a place to receive a God who will meet us with His grace. We have come in truth. Then, by such meetings and such union, the time comes when the meekness of the Lamb, which you cannot imitate or emulate, becomes part and parcel of what we in fact are. And so, when our self-interest and self-love are threatened or touched, we don’t react in arrogant self-defensiveness.

4. The world’s definition of meekness is a kind of self-deferring humility that is contrived and phony. In fact, if we’re satisfied with that and people are impressed with that, we’ll never have the real thing. If you’re going to come to the meekness of God, you’ve got to come to the recognition first of your humanity, especially when you are stung and your self-interest is challenged and threatened. Whatever comes up from you will show the truth of the nature that has not yet been met by the Cross. So, just like anything else, if we’re satisfied with a false substitute for the authentic, God is not going to force the true upon us. First, we have to come to the humbling and humiliating recognition of the truth of our condition. Then comes the repentance over that and the shock of the disclosure of what is the truth of our condition and our hatred of it. Then comes the washing and the contrition in order that we can find a place of union with God in truth. God will not bestow grace except on the ground of truth. When we come on that ground, and the recognition of the horror of what has been revealed about the truth of our condition, then we’re in a place to receive a God who will meet us with His grace. We have come in truth. Then, by such meetings and such union, the time comes when the meekness of the Lamb, which you cannot imitate or emulate, becomes part and parcel of what we in fact are. And so, when our self-interest and self-love are threatened or touched, we don’t react in arrogant self-defensiveness.

5. Paul rejoiced for those Hebrews saints who took their strippings with joy, knowing in themselves that they had a far greater recompense in heaven. It didn’t matter what was stripped from them in this life; they knew their reward in the life to come. They knew it was not an accident that could be attributed to men, but that God Himself had allowed it as the very testing of the truth of where they were with Him. If you are too much in your possessions, you’re going to be resentful, angry, irritated, and vexed if they were to be rudely taken from you. But if those things are given of God to begin with, (what do you have that has not been given?), then you receive it with joy, because you know that God Himself has brought that provocation and testing. And in receiving it with joy, you’re giving to those who have stripped you such a testimony that they’ll not be able to turn from it. They expect you to be resentful; they expect you to curse and to be angry. But to see you taking that stripping with magnanimity and grace is the very testimony of God Himself. Murray continues, ”…pride can degrade the highest angels into devils, and humility can raise fallen flesh and blood to the thrones of angels. Thus, this is the great end of God: raising a new creation out of a fallen kingdom of angels.” In one statement, you have the whole cosmic purpose of God through the church: to replace fallen angels who have fallen through their pride and arrogance. God is going to take ’beggars off of dung heaps’ to replace the fallen angels because they themselves will be in a governmental place exhibiting the character and the Spirit of God, which is humility. Those angels that were first given that governmental place have lost it through their pride. God will return, through humility, what was lost to Him through pride, through the sons of men that are being formed at His hand in their character and life. That is why when the ”fullness of the Gentiles comes in, so all Israel shall be saved, as it is written…”

6. What is this fullness? It is the number from all nations that will replace the number of fallen angels who have lost their place of preeminence because of their pride and arrogance. Their leader, Lucifer, exalted himself by his own beauty. He was intoxicated and taken up with himself in pride, and they who followed him had the same disposition. But those who will replace him have exactly the opposite - they have the humility of God. And that is the whole cosmic saga; that is what this whole redemption is about since its commencement. Murray continues, ”…evil can have no beginning but from pride, and no end but from humility.” The fullness of the Gentiles is a church that exhibits this essential quality of God, not as a cosmetic overlay, but as the essential truth of their being. They have submitted to the work of God in the humiliating circumstances that bring them down. They accept lowliness, they accept rejection, they accept stripping, and they accept even the loss of their own lives if it should be required, because that is the very nature of God. Murray quotes William Law, ”There never was, nor ever will be, but one humility, and that is the one humility of Christ. Pride and self have the all of man, until man has his all from Christ.” God’s salvation, therefore, is bringing humility to men. It is a divine attribute; you can’t form it from the earth. You can form other things: intelligence, skill, other character things, like even diligence itself; but humility is distinctively what God is in Himself. And except that God comes down with it and makes it available for man, there is no prospect of obtaining it. Salvation is God bringing humility to men, and salvation not only from hell and death, but salvation from hang-ups, from character defect, because then on that basis, you can continue to receive grace upon grace until you are formed in His image; and His image is humble.

7. When God has got that in a people who can replace those that have fallen from pride, the age will have been completed, and then Israel shall be delivered. He waits for this in the church in order to deliver Israel. So, He humbled Himself, taking upon Himself the form of man and as a servant and as a Jew, the most despised of all the races of men, and bore that, even in humility, humbling Himself unto death. That very same humbling of Himself unto death opens up the grace of life, resurrection life through the willingness to come to that final place of humility. To ’die to self,’ or to come out from the power of self, cannot be done by any act of resistance we can make. This death to self, which is the last hindrance to humility, is not something that we can perform. Self cannot die through self, by self, because if self could do it, then we would be boasting in what we have accomplished in the death to self by our own self. It is a death that only God can bring. So the one true way of dying to self is the way of patience, meekness, humility and resignation to God. It is to have the humbling awareness that I cannot do this in myself. I may desire humility and to be like the Lord in lamb-likeness, but I know that the more I try in a self-conscious way to obtain it, the more frustratingly it will allude me. I have got to recognize that only God can perform this, and that He will perform it in His own time - not when we might want it. So it requires a total resignation to God, and that is the most humbling thing to which man can submit himself. A total submission to God, to have this formed in us in the time and mode that He Himself will elect, is resignation. Any impatience that desires it before that time, or seeks to circumvent God to obtain it by ourselves, is to effect and put on a show of it. It is not a true submission or resignation to God. Resignation is that complete yielding and trusting, and that is the key to obtain the humility of God.

8. We can sum this up another way. It is a ’loving not your own life.’ It is being willing to suffer the humiliation of not having arrived, or your marriage is still in such and such a condition or your fellowship leaves much to be desired. And you are not quick to patch it up or to give a cosmetic appearance to something. You would rather live with the humiliation of the truth of that condition, knowing that the remedy is not going to come by any hands-on that you can apply. You’re concerned for it, not because you want to be relieved of the reproach, but you want to see God glorified by the truth and the reality of what He is wanting to perfect in that person, fellowship, or in that marriage. The resignation is that you will have to wait for it. It’s waiting on the Lord and it’s trusting in the Lord; it’s being resigned unto the Lord, and you know, it can take a long time! On top of this, you are going to be battered by well-meaning people who want to see a quick solution and think that it is some kind of minor thing that needs to be adjusted. But no, it lies too deep for words. That condition exists because of God. He has brought you to a point where you cannot of yourself bring a resolution, and until it comes from God, you have to suffer this condition with your face sticking out. So the Lord knows how to put this together. And when it comes, it’s a relief that finally what you have desired is now obtained. But more than the issue of personal relief is the issue of God’s glory. Something more has been obtained in the reconciliation of marital differences. God has been glorified, because He Himself has brought the answer.

9. William Law continues, ”This is the truth and perfection of dying to self. For if I ask you what the Lamb of God means, must you not tell me that it is and means the perfection of patience, meekness, humility, and resignation to God? Must you not therefore say that a desire and faith in these virtues is an application to Christ, is a giving up of yourself to Him and the perfection of faith in Him? And then, because of this inclination of your heart to sink down into this patience, meekness, humility, and resignation to God, you are truly giving up all that you are and all that you have from fallen Adam. It is leaving all you have to follow Christ. It is your highest act of faith in Him.” This is the leaving of all. We often think it means leaving family, friends, or prospect of a career or something like that. But this is the giving up of any last confidence in yourself (that you can of yourself and by yourself obtain the character of God), and rather trust Him for it in His own time and way. It is that final surrender by which, indeed, the true thing comes. It is your highest act of faith in Him because you are trusting Him to do it. To have a natural humility is a contradiction in terms. It is not a natural condition at all. It may appear to be that, but I would suggest that they would have a harder surrender to God than those who are outwardly arrogant would. Humility is only natural to God, and no man can have it except He bestows it. And when we humble ourselves to call on the name of the Lord, that process of obtaining begins. God alone has the power to bring His own person, His own attribute and character into the life of a believer. William Law continues, ”When the Lamb of God has brought forth a real birth of His own meekness, humility, and full resignation to God in our souls, then it is the birthday of the Spirit of love in our souls.”

10. When we talk about the life of God or the abundant life of God, it is not only a source of energy and enablement, but also the source of a distinctive quality of life - namely, the Lord’s humility. We have His humility in proportion as we have His life, and we have His life in proportion as we have put our own natural life into death. We cannot bring ourselves to that death of self outside of the recognition that that death can only be worked by God. It is meekness to recognize that we are powerless, and that something has to be wrought in us from God by His life, nor is it instant. If meekness and humility are not in your heart and thought as the most desirable of all things from God, then we will never find it. He humbled Himself even unto death and the death of the Cross, which is to say, the most humiliating form of death. Under Roman torture the victim died of asphyxiation because he was stretched out in such a way that the fluids of his body finally drowned him. That is why they broke the legs, to hasten the death because as long as a man could stretch himself on his feet, he could continue to suck air. But the moment that he could not stretch, then the fluids would rise up and he died an agonizing death of suffocation or drowning, and that nakedly before people who were watching the process.

11. The crucifixion of Jesus was the most remarkable demonstration of the only authentic God who is God, and that this is His distinctive, ”Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and you will have rest to your souls. You don’t have to strive, if you’ll learn of Me - not learn about Me, academically - but learn into Me by appropriating the means that I will give you to obtain what I am in Myself every time you’ll accept with resignation the conditions that are calculated against your pride. I could have given you this kind of a spouse and you could have sailed off and been the admiration of many, and she would have been such a blessing to your ministry and supportive of it. But you would have retained your pride and even have boasted in what a master husband you are and how your house is under authority and everything is in its place. But that may well have been a phony pretense. Everybody would have complimented you for it, but you never would have been in the place of My choosing and the place of My use. If you are willing to suffer a blow against your pride and to show that without Me you can’t be a husband, you can’t be a father, you can’t be a minister, you can’t have your house in order, then that releases Me. You will learn of Me as I give you the conditions by which you will see My grace.”

12. This is the way, this is the faith, this is the way of the Lord, and this is why people cannot make up their minds for Christ. This is why they are in the valley of decision and never come through. They intuit that this is a way that is against the flesh and against pride, and they will not have it. So we are calling people to a very strange salvation, from the very thing that the world wants them to enjoy and to develop: their pride, their self-sufficiency, self-exaltation, of commending themselves before men by virtues that they have in themselves. God wants all that to be brought to death. The only thing worth having is God Himself - for He alone is righteous - He alone is love, truth, mercy, patience, and humility. He calls us to the way of the Cross, which is the way of humbling, and the church is the very provision for our maturation in the way. There you are going to be confronted; there situations will arise, which, if you had avoided God, would never have come up. There you are going to find yourself in collision with other saints and inevitable conflicts where you have to humble yourself to go to one another and find reconciliation before you bring your gift to the altar. Who wants it? But the end of it is that God will have perfected Himself in a Body of saints and given them a place of eternal distinction in the overview of His kingdom. They will replace those fallen angels who opted for pride, and He will have in the place of government those that are lowly and meek like Himself. They will exhibit, not through imitation, but through authentication that reality of God because only then can the government of God go forth. The government of God is not bureaucracy, but the administration of God’s mercy, kindness and goodness to the earth. It is the bringing of the spirit of humility by which such government is performed. So, it is good to know what we are being saved for and what salvation itself means: that Christ might be formed in us, through His life, because this humility is the distinctive character of that life. END