Humility
Song of the Week: Starts and Ends by Hillsong United (2019)
Book of the Week: Freedom of Self Forgetfulness by Tim Keller (2012)
Today we’re taking a team of our student leaders on a retreat. As part of our meetings this semester we’re looking at a book called The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness by Tim Keller. It’s a short book, easy read, almost more of an essay. We’re getting ready to leave currently, so I’ll leave you with a passage and some commentary by the man himself.
1 Corinthians 3:21-4:7 - So don’t boast about following a particular human leader. For everything belongs to you — whether Paul or Apollos or Peter, or the world, or life and death, or the present and the future. Everything belongs to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God. So look at Apollos and me as mere servants of Christ who have been put in charge of explaining God’s mysteries. Now, a person who is put in charge as a manager must be faithful. As for me, it matters very little how I might be evaluated by you or by any human authority. I don’t even trust my own judgment on this point. My conscience is clear, but that doesn’t prove I’m right. It is the Lord himself who will examine me and decide. So don’t make judgments about anyone ahead of time—before the Lord returns. For he will bring our darkest secrets to light and will reveal our private motives. Then God will give to each one whatever praise is due. Dear brothers and sisters, I have used Apollos and myself to illustrate what I’ve been saying. If you pay attention to what I have quoted from the Scriptures, you won’t be proud of one of your leaders at the expense of another. For what gives you the right to make such a judgment? What do you have that God hasn’t given you? And if everything you have is from God, why boast as though it were not a gift?
Keller comments on that passage to say that Paul’s goal is to lead us to a place of humility, but then we need to talk about what true humility is.
It’s hard to grasp exactly what true humility is. It’s easy to want to put a face to it. “True humility looks like doing this and not doing that” or what have you, but the problem is humility is internal. Paul seems to argue that true humility is discerned in the heart and the Lord is the one who sees it and ultimately rewards it. I can do something that puts others ahead of myself, and that looks great externally, but what if I’m doing that for the praise and admiration of onlookers? What if, when I eschew people’s compliments toward me, I’m only doing so to fish for more? Am I telling other people about the good things I’ve done in order to talk about God’s goodness and the ways he’s used it in the lives of others, or am I displaying my good deeds to boast? Only you can tell.
The kicker of the whole passage is in 4:7 when Paul says “and if everything you have is from God, why boast as though it were not a gift?” One of the more impactful quotes I’ve read in the last year or so was in a book on prayer where the author said that “prayerlessness is functional atheism.” What I took from that is I can say I believe in God, believe he can change things, that my life is submitted to him, but if I’m not praying, doesn’t that say more about what’s actually going on in my heart? I think the same could be said for humility, but over time. You can keep up a facade of selflessness, but eventually you have a difficult friend, spouse, kid, relative, etc. that brings the worst out in you, and the true heart is revealed.
None of us are perfect at this, and I’d be excited to write more about the book as we take the team through it, but for now, let’s understand that the path to true humility begins in the heart, not in the hands.
In love,
Josh
