Humility is a character trait that God loves. The Bible tells us
that God is totally against human pride and boastfulness, and wants all of His
people to be humble. It is imperative, then, that all who call themselves
Christian work on being humble.
The Bible tells us that "God resists the proud, but gives
grace to the humble" (James 4:6).
We understand that pride doesn't give us plus points with God;
rather it gives Him more reason to resist us. Instead, what we must do is to
"[humble [ourselves] in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift [us]
up" (James 4:10).
One verse to keep us humble
To be proud means to have
an excessively high opinion of ourselves. Usually, a proud person imposes their
self-importance on others, which is what we call bragging. Proud people who
love to brag about themselves need not be proud of their financial or material
achievements. They can also be proud of how "holy" or
"righteous" they are compared to others.
This kind of character, no matter how much proud people try to
justify it, is plain wrong. The Lord Jesus Himself rebuked certain people for
being so self-righteous, and what He said will help all of us to stay away from
being proud of ourselves:
"Hypocrite! First
remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the
speck from your brother's eye." (Matthew 7:5)
Self-checking
Many of us have grown proud without noticing it. We see the
faults that other people have. We see their mistakes. We hear how they talk or
sing bad. We laugh at them as they make
unintended blunders. We criticise them for the way they walk. We look down on
them based on how they look.
Simply put, we look down on others because we think we're
better. Are we really?
We need to check ourselves if we have grown proud. We might be
Christian in name, but our character stinks far worse than that of a criminal.
We could go to church and confess to love
all men on Sundays, but we can't even extend a gracious hand to that quiet
homeless man sitting outside the church building on weekdays.
We need to evaluate ourselves in light of God's standards in
Scripture. Do we pass? No one passes, because "[t]here is none righteous,
no, not one" (see Romans 3:10). Only Christ is righteous. Only God is
good.
Work on yourself
Friends, if we want to be humble, we should stop looking at the
faults and failings of others and start working on ourselves. We're no better
than anybody if all we ever do is convince ourselves that we're better when in
fact we're not. Let's work on being humble.
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