This post compliments my last one and elaborates further on the thoughts I articulated therein. If you haven't read it I would suggest reading it first.
What about Us?
The question you may be pondering at this juncture as did I, is: How does one achieves the level of righteousness that Moses and Paul lived? For in doing so they attained a level of righteous humility that draws us in and compels us to consider how we too can be vessels of the Lords work in this same manner. Certainly the simple answer is the power of the gospel, that is to reflect upon our own depravity, acknowledge the loving mercy and forgiveness that God has extended and accept it as salvation from ourselves and the consequence of our sinful existence. However, with regard to the humility that these men developed and sustained throughout their faith this can come as a striking contradiction to what we see among the common believer, be it ourselves or those around us. Accordingly, we must ask ourselves what made their faith unique that allowed them to sustain their humility in light of the righteousness God imbued upon them.
Living Beyond Your Power
I would be inclined to believe that it was the long standing faith and subjection to God's will that made them different. This is to say that what the Lord called them to do and what they in turn obeyed where expectations that they themselves could never achieve under their own strength. Paul was a murder of God's chosen people, Moses an awkward young man with a speech impediment, the potential to serve as God's spiritual leader for His people certainly was not innate within their human capacity. Accordingly, it was not that they did not desire to take pride in their right living, but that they simply could not. No one who knew them before the power of God had transformed their lives would have ever believed in their ability to lead God's people or dictate the annuls of the Lord's word which they eventual were privileged to do. Thus, it was the transparent and known inability and explicit depravity of these men that prevented them from boasting of God's work. Though Moses certainly struggled in this area, as is seen in his prideful beating of his staff upon the rocks so as to bring forth the water, none who truly knew his limitations could attach this power to Moses, but solely to the power of God. So while these men may have attempted to curry honor from those around them, their attempts proved futile, for the very nature of their deeds were inextricably the work of the Lord, to which only God could be credited for their existence.
Yielded Subjection in Brokeness
It follows then that we too must learn to place our lives at the mercy of our King, to carry the yoke that is light and learn subjection to His will. This is seen and attested to throughout the scriptures, that man must learn his absolute inability to alter his life for the better beyond the power of our Lord. We must achieve brokeness before our father and admit to Him and those around us that we acknowledge the extent of our limitations. When we verbally and transparently attest to our absolute lack of will, power or faculty to carry out the Lord's will, then and only then can we expect to embrace the power of the Spirit with an attitude of unworthiness and broken humility. However, we can only truly engage in such an expression of unworthiness, if first we search within ourselves and acknowledge our need for God to save us from our weaknesses. This includes our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual faults that can not be remedied beyond the direct power of God. One must truly come to the end of themselves and fall in contrite and shameful recognition of their sins and weakness in order to achieve brokeness. This is undoubtedly a daily routine that is a cornerstone of the gospel, one that we must be acknowledge with sincere sobriety. For if we do not recognize our absolute inability to alter our own lives, how then can we truly claim that we are reverently approaching Christ's throne in a somber and worshipful spirit.
Acknowledging the Atonement
Where our hope finally rests in pursuing the lives that we see attested to in scripture, is to sincerely reflect upon the work of atonement that Christ accomplished upon the cross. We must constantly be reminded of our comprehensively depraved and inescapable sinful nature, one that requires and demands a perfect being to atone for our iniquities; honestly believing that we are wholly and entirely without hope were it not for God's mercy. The work of the atonement was made entirely by Christ's sacrifice, through the offering of His blood upon God's alter in the heavens. We must emphatically grasp the gravity of this truth. We must see that Christ alone, without the aid, work or strength of any man, offered Himself for us and that any work that results from this is entirely and unquestionably the power of His spirit within us; to believe otherwise is the most heretical and abominable affront to our saviors selfless offering that man can enact. Believing that any of what you do that reflects righteousness is in anyway accomplished beyond the power of God, is to deny Christ of the glory, honor and worship that He deserves. When we claim that the deeds we accomplish are of our own doing, we are spitting upon Christ as the crowd did as He hung upon the cross suffering so that we might be saved. This..this is why God abhors pride and requires humility, it is not because He is an ill-willed and self-absorbed being as we fool ourselves into believing, rather it is because our humbleness that deflects all honor to Him, is the only means of true worship that we can muster. We can not accomplish any work of righteousness that glorifies Him without His strength, therefore our only way of honoring and thanking Him for his merciful provision, is to attest to His power. We do this by revealing our own weakness as a man and attribute any work that we accomplish to the power of God that is within us. Thus, humility is not simply a virtue as has grown so pervasive a thought in our culture, rather it is the sole means of glorifying our Lord.
Why am I Still Prideful?
You may be thinking at this point why am I still struggling to humble myself? This is a struggle that we must combat everyday of our lives, for just as intertwined with worship as humility is, that is the subjection to God, through the acknowledgment of our inability and in turn our pronounced expression of God as sole executor of our righteousness. So also pride, that is self-lordship, the belief and living in direct opposition to God through sinful independence, is inextricably the sole function of our depraved nature since the fall. Thus, the battle of humility and pride, is in fact the manifest realization of our depraved nature at war with our sanctified soul. This struggle to humble ourselves underscores every aspect of alteration that we are undergoing on our path of sanctification. The implicit opposition of our depraved lust for pride and the gospels requirement of humble submission stand in direct contradiction to one another. If humility is genuine yieldedness and worshipful subjection to God than pride is the complete antithesis of this. Do not allow yourself to miss the extreme momentousness of engaging in the pursuit of humility, it is the very essence of subjecting yourself to the truth of the gospel and is at the very heart of an ever evolving respect and honor for God's merciful forgiveness and salvation from our sins. If you truly desire to restore your relationships with the Lord, one that has been severed since the fall of man, you must ascribe yourself to the task of humble contrition and recognition of God's glory.
The Parable of The Unworthy Debtor
In conclusion I think reflecting on Christ's own parable that articulates this in the divine wisdom of God Himself is perhaps the best way to bring clarity to this conversation. Here Christ reveals the compassion for others that we should extend, in light of the compassion He has provided us. Here Christ clearly analogizes how undeserving we are of His mercy and yet how we still struggle to quell those depraved vestiges of pride even after experiencing His forgiveness. Place yourself in the shoes of the debtor and feel the poignantly grotesque sense of shame and avulsion that his actions elicit. His behavior is not abstract or nebulously sinful as can be wrongly attributed to the sinful heart of pride, rather it is clearly duplicitous and atrociously inhumane. This is how our battle over pride is played out every day, when we fail to acknowledge our own debt and the gracious atonement that Christ provided, thereby expunging the consequences we so rightly deserve.
Matthew 18:21-35
Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?”
Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times. “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. “The servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go. “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded. “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’ “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened. “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”