I See Your False Humility and Raise You Jesus

***Warning***

This is going to sound like a massive rant, but I hope the main point will be well taken by the time I reach the end of the blog.

Humility. What is it? What does Scripture say about it? It seems to be all the rage now days, especially in postmodern Christianity, Emergent Church, and other such groups. They talk a lot about humility.

The New Testament talks about it a fair amount. Just by searching a concordance for the word humility, we can find seven references to it (Acts 20:19, Eph 4:2, Phil 2:3, Col 2:18, 23, 3:12, 1Pet 5:5).

Per Strong's, humility is:

I. the having a humble opinion of one's self
II. a deep sense of one's (moral) littleness
III. modesty, humility, lowliness of mind

However, the new fangled postmodern Christians have completely reinvented this word and the concept of it. Humility to them generally means anti-intellectualism and works.

That's a harsh criticism. How can I say that? First of all, many of them use the word humility to defend anti-intellectualism. In short, if I had a dime for every time I heard an emerging/emergent church follower use the concept of humility to mean "Well, we're just so limited," which is code word for: We just can't understand the Scriptures much, so we shouldn't be dogmatic about much of anything doctrinal, so let's just follow Jesus through social action the best we can.

 



I read a blog lately where the author spent the whole time talking about how he would rather be overseas in less fortunate places hearing people's stories and helping the poor, while other Christians would rather be in the Caribbean drinking beer on their vacations.

Please dude, keep telling us just how humble you are. The world needs to hear it!

Of course, helping the poor is good. Missionary work is good. St. James says as much in his epistle (James 1:26-27). And yeah man, love your neighbor as yourself. For this is good. Rock on. But, it's not the Gospel, it's the Law.

Yet, it's not humility to run around and help the poor and then go and tell everyone about it; and how they should be more like you, because you're a really, truly, authentic follower of Jesus.

It's actually false humility, which is pride. And it's a joke. You don't need Jesus to be a social revolutionary. You can keep it, because if that's you, you've probably missed the entire point of Christianity. It's not about works and telling everyone how humble you are. That's not even thinly veiled. It's very open and clear pride. And it's a shame that many people fall for that crap.

But then, even in the midst of this complete hypocrisy and false humility, here I am.

And I am prideful, stubborn, and a hypocrite too.

Maybe I don't go around telling everyone how I help the poor and they should follow my example more. But I write a lot of blogs and I hope people will read them and get something from them. I even hope a lot of people read them. Am I being prideful in that? Probably, yeah.

We are all universally prideful hypocrites, conceived and born in Adam. We're guilty, right from the start. Like St. Paul, we are the chief of sinners.

And that's why I will see your false humility -and mine- and raise you Jesus.

Not my "authentic" living, not my "radical" sold out life for Jesus, not my "missional" church, and not my false humility. Not any other emerging buzzwords either. None of it. I raise you the real thing. The Son of God, Jesus Christ, who Himself was raised up on a tree for the forgiveness of all of our sins. And if you don't fold when Jesus gets raised and still continue to stick to your real authentic, missional, radical living as the real Christianity, you lose. Jesus will roll over a royal flush and you'll be stuck bankrupt and broke with your pair of jacks. As in, your works produce jack squat. (Sort of like my friends Bruce and Mike. They shouldn't even sit at the poker table in the first place. They lose just by playing against me. Hehe) Your works leave you naked and exposed. Because none of your good and pious works do a darn thing to win you anything.

 

And that is why everything, yes, everything, depends on Christ and His work. Not on you and yours. Our best efforts are polluted garments; filthy rags. They're useless. They cannot merit righteousness, nor are they righteous. But Jesus is.

And that's good news. It's really good news.

Christ comes in the flesh and dies for us. He does everything that is necessary at Calvary, and now He can give Himself to us as a completely free divine gift through His powerful creative Word that creates faith.

Nope, it's not about us, much less about us social justice-ing the world, thereby making it a better place and ushering in the Parousia.

An old hymn has a line in it that goes like this: Jesus paid it all. All to Him I owe.

And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Philippians 2:8

And that's the truth. He paid it all. Everything. There is nothing left to be done. True humility is the recognition of this. That you are nothing and Christ is everything.

 



I address the postmodern emerging church because in general they have completely missed this point. In short, they have no Gospel. Their "gospel" is just another law to be obeyed, couched in pious terminology and social justice and helping the poor. Theological liberalism in general has missed the Gospel altogether. In reality, they don't even have any good news. It's about them and their following, and it's not the Gospel.

 God died for you. Receive your Savior through His means of grace.

O God, without whose blessing we are not able to please you, mercifully grant that your Holy Spirit may in all things direct and govern our hearts; through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen