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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
‘Be clothed with humility.’
1Pe_5:5
I. Before God.—It is impossible to enter into His Presence and to realise Him in any sense without feeling humility. Yet there is a difficulty with some people, and perhaps with those who are blessed with great intellect. The gift and power of a great intellect has its great temptations and its great troubles. But if those who have the great intellect will remember that whatever they have is the gift and power from God, there should be little difficulty for the most high in intellect to be humble in the Presence of God. But, as a rule, it is those who think themselves gifted and who are in themselves very conceited who find it difficult to be humble before God or before their superiors. With them it is littleness of knowledge, not greatness of knowledge, which makes the difficulty in their humility. But what trust and confidence true humility before God gives us, how it helps us to wait upon our God, just because we enter humbly into His Presence and know that we are not worthy of the least of His favours! Oh, how it teaches us to wait humbly and patiently for all that He will do for us, having little ourselves, and yet knowing that we possess all in Him and through Him!
II. In our estimate of self.—Sometimes when we talk of humility we are rather inclined to confuse self-depreciation with self-knowledge, which are two entirely different things. Humility is not self-depreciation, but humility does come from self-knowledge. If we see our many failings and our many feeblenesses in life, that in itself brings about humility of character. Yes, we need to be clothed with humility as regards ourselves. We do not want to depreciate ourselves, but we want to know ourselves, and I am quite sure when we do know ourselves an honest knowledge of self must bring a sense of humility. Sometimes people are inclined to depreciate themselves and call themselves humble, and be humble, in a sense, to avoid responsibilities and to avoid difficulties; but this is not Christian humility. We all know how we may be clothed with humility and with what spirit of humility to be clothed. Let us pray for such humility in our estimate, and not depreciation, of ourselves.
III. In our relationship towards others.—What is meant by humility here? I think that, again, is often misunderstood. I do not think it is putting one’s self in a false position and trying to occupy a place not ours, neither calling one’s self by another name and renouncing one’s natural calling and place in life. All this may be exceptional, and may be sometimes demanded of us, but not generally. But how are we to be clothed with humility as regards others? Is it not by accepting positions rather than by seeking positions, not assuming higher or lower positions for ourselves? Is it not by humbly forwarding the interests and claims of others and therein and thereby showing true humility, especially if the last or worst position is left to us by what we have done in the interests of our neighbours? Is it not in being ready to do the humblest action to help another, remembering the action and words of Christ when He took a towel and girded Himself and washed His disciples’ feet? The beauty of true humility is surely seen in the grace with which it is worn and the meaning with which it is used.
IV. The chief danger is in the motive of the wearer.—A man may so desire to be clothed with humility as to deceive his friends and gain some low end; a man may seek to be clothed with humility in order that he may shirk responsibility and avoid some of the highest duties of life; a man may seek to be clothed with humility because the sort of humility he professes he thinks will bring him admiration and therefore advance his self-conceit, which he travesties by the name of humility. Nay, it seems to me all such humility is vain. The only true humility is the humility which has for its end, at all events, the good of others and the accepting or the occupying of the position in which we can advance that cause by any action of our own, however lowly that action may be. Such humility leads us to follow Christ, to minister to the wants of others. Such humility leads us to do actions, however humble, for the benefit of our fellow-men. Such humility teaches us our own littleness, and makes us trust more in our God and in His help. Such humility encourages us to gentle submission and patient waiting on the Will of our God.
Rev. Prebendary De Salis.
THE CHRISTIAN GARMENT
(a) It is not a morbid contemplation of our own corruptions. It is possible to deplore our sins and yet to be very unwilling to part with them.
(b) It is not a feigned depreciation of ourselves and our work, in the secret hope that those to whom we speak may contradict us.
(c) It does not consist in underrating the powers with which God may have endowed us, and perhaps declining work to which He is plainly calling us, upon the pretence that we are not equal to undertaking it.
II. True humility is the opposite of self-consciousness.—There are men who are for ever thinking of themselves and the estimate which others form of them, but the truly humble man is not concerned with himself or with what others think of him; he forgets himself, and goes straight forward to do his duty. Humility is essentially a product of the gospel. The Romans had no word in all their literature to express what we mean by it. With them ‘humilitas’ was, with the rarest exceptions, understood in an unworthy sense. It meant baseness, meanness, servility; and as they had not the word, so they were strangers to the thing. The graces which Christianity has made admirable—meekness, humbleness of mind, forbearance, and the like—were unknown to or despised by the ancient world.
II. How humility is shown.
(a) By resignation to the will of God.
(b) Again, humility is shown by submission one to another. This is especially referred to in the passage before us. I am not sure that a truer evidence of the humble spirit is not given by submission one to another than by submission to God. All men will acknowledge that we should submit to God, but to give way to our neighbour does not appear so obvious a duty. Certainly, at times when we may think the demands of others unreasonable and unfair, it requires no little grace to be willing to give way to them. This grace of submission runs counter to the very bent and bias of our nature.
III. Why is humility so needfui?—It is needful for protection. Clothing is worn to shield us from the inclemency of the weather, from biting cold, and from scorching heat. But we may say, with truth, that humility is needful to avert far greater dangers.
(a) It is needed, first, to shield us from the judgment of God. We read here, ‘God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.’ There is no sin so offensive to God as pride, for in Him there is no pride.
(b) Humility is needful also to protect us from the foes that threaten our inward peace. Some men never get the respect paid to them which they think is their due; consequently their days are consumed with jealousy and wounded pride; like Haman, who so long as Mordecai refused to stand up and do him reverence was unable to enjoy all the honour that had been heaped upon him by his sovereign. How different is this spirit from that of the Master.
(c) Humility is needful for the service of man. This, perhaps, is the chief thought in the passage before us, where we read literally, ‘Gird yourselves with humility.’ The word ‘clothe’ here is a technical word relating to the white scarf or apron of slaves, which was fastened to the girdle to distinguish slaves from freemen. And so the Apostle says, ‘Put on the dress of the servant, that you may be willing to wait upon others, and show kindness to those who are in need.’ The great hindrance to service is a reluctance to stoop.
—
Rev. E. W. Moore.
Illustration‘That was a touching story of Bishop Burnet, who “had often meditated on the text, ‘Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth’ (Mat_5:5), without satisfying himself as to its true meaning, until one day, in his morning walk, he observed a dwelling more wretched than any he had passed, and, drawing near to it, was surprised to hear from it a voice of joyous praise. He looked in at the window and saw a poor woman, the sole inmate of the cottage, with a piece of black bread and a cup of cold water on a little stool before her. Her eyes and hands were lifted up to heaven as in a rapture of praise, while she repeated, again and again, these words, ‘What, all this, and Jesus Christ too!’ ” The Bishop returned home, impressed as never before with the power of Christ, not only to reconcile the truly humble soul to the most trying circumstances, but to give a joy in them to which the heirs of earthly inheritances were often strangers.’
HUMILITY FALSE AND TRUE
(a) There is ‘humility’ of external things: in a mortification of the body—a thing which nature likes to do, and which men generally admire, and call it saintly. But it is a cloke, not a robe. A look—a posture—a ceremony. There is a great deal of self-applause, self-righteousness, conscious goodness. Self is denied on one side to break out gratifying itself on the other side. The body is more vile, but the Spirit is full of self-consequence.
(b) There is another counterfeit which Satan makes and calls ‘humility.’ (For there is never a work of God’s but Satan is ready to counterfeit it.) It is what St. Paul calls, in his Epistle to the Colossians—a ‘voluntary humility’—people thinking themselves unworthy to come to God. They put in other matters that God hath not required, and therefore ‘worship angels.’
(c) And there are those who do not know it, but who, like Peter, are, under an appearance of ‘humility,’ indulging contemptuous pride. ‘Thou shalt never wash my feet.’ ‘I am not good enough to be saved. I am not worthy to come to the Lord’s Supper. I cannot believe God loves me.’ What is that but the worst form of pride—giving God the lie, and setting up worthiness as a condition to receive the free gift of God?
II. True humility is to cast yourself so low, that you just take, as a poor, helpless sinner, without a question, all that God is, and all that God gives, and all that God undertakes for you, as all your life, and all your peace, and all your salvation. For remember that this is the grace to which God has promised everything else. If you have been feeling lately more of a miserable nothingness, it is a great token for good. God is preparing you for some great thing. David, who knew very well—always connects a believer’s happiness with a believer’s holiness; the peace always grows in the low places. ‘The humble shall hear, and be glad.’ God ‘gives grace’—not to the proud—but always ‘to the lowly.’ ‘To this man will I look, saith the Lord, even to him that is of an humble and contrite spirit, and that trembleth at My word.’ I earnestly warn you that there is no protection against errors in doctrine, however gross—or evil in practice, however vile, excepting to live very near to God in your own heart, and be down low in the dust, ‘clothed with humility.’ It would not be too much for me to say that, at this moment, the only reason why you have not any good thing you like to name, is, that you are not low enough yet to get it.
III. Christ is coming! Christ is coming! And it is high time to be dressed for His arrival. And in what other robe does it become a forgiven sinner to come in, but to be ‘clothed with humility’?
Rev. James Vaughan.