Are You Humble?
The question is impossible. If you answer, “Yes,” you are most likely lying or else deceived. If you answer, “No,” you are under conviction, even if your answer is honest… which it would be.
Pride is one of the fundamental sins, if not the fundamental sin. Fundamental in that it is involved in the first sin, and its fruit pours out into so many sins since. It lies behind all kinds of lies, all kinds of disrespect, both to God and man, behind coveting, lusting, murders, you name it. Go through the Ten Commandments and consider how much pride is involved in each sin. Perhaps some sins don’t involve pride, but pride lurks just around the corner. We can even be proud of our virtues. God help us!
A recent preaching text, 1 Peter 5.5, addresses this very sin. If we can take this verse to heart, we can make some headway, but surely, we need God’s grace to gain any kind of victory.
Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder. Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.
In the first place, submitting to leadership counters pride. Our text puts this in the context of the “younger” submitting to “elders.”1 “Younger” is an open-ended word, some translations make it “younger men” (the Greek is masculine) but the term can mean simply young men and young women. However, several details make me think Peter has some set of younger men in view.
First, the previous four verses (1 Pt 5.1-4) give us instructions for those who are elders in the church, just as Peter is a “fellow elder” (1 Pt 5.1). It is possible that in verse 5 Peter merely refers to those who are elders in general, but if so, it would be an abrupt change of subject.
In those instructions to the elders (pastors), Peter advocates what we could call “servant leadership,” the kind of leadership modeled after the Chief Shepherd and involves the elders in submission to that same Chief Shepherd. As Peter addresses “the younger,” he uses the term “likewise” — in the same manner. There is something about that instruction to the elders that is transferred to the younger men.
Last, in the next phrase, Peter extends his instructions to “all of you,” so it seems the young women (and older women and all) are included in the general instruction of the verse. The first bit is limited. It seems the limitation is to the young men.
The young men might also be further limited to a subset of young “elders-in-training,” but surely all young men need to learn the lesson of submission. The young — especially young men — are full of energy, ambition, curiousity, daring, and self-conceit. It seems every generation has the idea that their elders may have made good efforts, had good intentions, but with better education, better skills, better ideas, the young can succeed where their predecessor failed.
I used to think that might have been true of others, but surely not me (or my friends). Alas! (Remember, we are talking about pride after all. We are all guilty.)
That most excellent commentator, Edmond Hiebert says,
“The young, with their eager energies, should guard against the impulse to thrust the aged into the background and insist on their own ideas or ways in the face of the more mature views of the elderly.”2
Submission is an antidote to pride. It may not be a cure, but if you submit yourself, you will build some antibodies to the disease. Even our Lord Jesus learned obedience (Heb 5.8). We can do no better than that.
Peter doesn’t finish with the young men as he moves to the next concept. He includes all of us with them. “All of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility…”
Here submitting is expanded to include the idea of humility. Humility isn’t some kind of “holy low self-esteem.” Hiebert again gives us good insight:
“The term [humility] does not involve an attitude of self-disparagement or servility, but willingness to assume a lowly position to serve others.”3
Another commentary used this idea to describe humility, “self-killing.” In other words, put the ego aside and serve.
Peter gets his point across with a powerful word-picture. He says, “be clothed with humility.” The word, “be clothed” has the idea of “tying on an apron.” According to the commentaries, the serving class in the first century (slaves, mostly), would tie on an apron over their regular tunic as a symbol of their servitude. I suppose it also protected their one set of clothes — I doubt many slaves had an extensive wardrobe!
Nevertheless, subjecting ourselves to one another means putting on the clothing of humility. Someone else modeled that for us!
He riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself. (Jn 13.4)
We are to wear humility as our daily garment. How about you? Do you wear humility? I find that it is relatively easy to put on humility as our “Sunday-go-to-meetin’” garb, but what about Monday morning? (Or Tuesday, or Wednesday, or …)
In the last bit of our verse, Peter gives us a warning from the Septuagint translation of Proverbs 3.34. “for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.”
God is opposed to pride. Pride stands up to others, doesn’t submit well, if at all, stands on its rights, is full of self, knows its own mind (and speaks it). That’s all very well. Stand up like that and you will find out that God stands up against you. Who do you think will win that standoff?
So, there is a warning there, but also a promise. God “giveth grace to the humble.”
Because pride is so all encompassing, we need that grace. We need God’s help. We need to serve. We need to lay our egos down. We need to forget our own rights and quit whining about how hard we have it and simply look for ways we can serve.
When I preached this passage, I closed with this line. “Now, that was a pretty good sermon, wasn’t it?” You see? We can talk humility well. We need grace to live it.
Don Johnson is the pastor of Grace Baptist Church of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada.