HUMILITY-GENERAL

The very design of the gospel is to abase us; and the work of grace is begun and carried on in humiliation. Humility is not a mere ornament of a Christian, but an essential part of the new creature. It is a contradiction in terms, to be a Christian, and not humble.

Richard Baxter

The Reformed Pastor, Chapter 3, Section 1.

Christian humility does not consist in denying what there is of good in us; but in an abiding sense of ill-desert, and the consciousness that what we have of good is due to the grace of God.

Charles Hodge
An Exposition of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, 1959, p. 317, by permission Banner of Truth, Carlisle PA.

Humility is a strange thing. As a rule, once you discover you have it you lose it. Humility is like a rare flower -- put it on display and it instantly wilts and loses its fragrance! Humility is one character trait that can never come out of the closest; it is not something to announce from the rooftop...No, humility is not something to be announced. For then, if you can imagine the irony of this, you have become proud of your humility.

Author Unknown

Humility is a paradox. The moment you think you've finally found it, you've lost it. There has yet to be written a book entitled, "Humility and How I Achieved It." And yet, God expects (and rewards) an attitude of servant-like humility in His followers.

Author Unknown

Humility: The beginning of perfection is to be little in self. The increase in perfection is to be less. The end of perfection is to be nothing at all.

Author Unknown

Humility is backing away from a fight that you know that you can win.

Author Unknown

“My sin is ever before me” (Psalm 51.3). A humble soul sees that he can stay no more from sin, than the heart can from panting, and the pulse from beating. He sees his heart and life to be fuller of sin, than the firmament is of stars; and this keeps him low. He sees that sin is so bred in the bone, that till his bones, as Joseph’s, be carried out of the Egypt of this world, it will not out. Though sin and grace were never born together, and though they shall not die together, yet while the believer lives, these two must live together; and this keeps him humble.

Thomas Brooks

Humility is having an accurate, low view of ourselves and seeing ourselves as God sees us.

Karl Graustein

Excerpted from: Growing Up Christian, P&R, 2005, p. 84. Used by Permission.

Characteristics of the Humble:

1. I am amazed that the infinite, holy, all-powerful God loves me and wants to have a relationship with me.

2. I often think about how much greater God is than I am.

3. I understand my weaknesses, and I am willing to talk about them with others.

4. When I serve others, my primary goals are to bless them and honor God.

5. I enjoy leading so I can serve others as I use my gifts.

6. I enjoy following so I can assist the leader and serve others.

7. I do not mind serving in private ways, even if I am never recognized or thanked.

8. I often ask others for advice.

9. I regularly study the Bible for guidance and direction.

10. I compare my life to the standards of God.

Karl Graustein

Excerpted from: Growing Up Christian, P&R, 2005, p. 87. Used by Permission.

So what can we do to grow in humility?

1. Pray for more humility.

2. Understand the immense difference between God and us.

3. Be aware of your weaknesses and limitations.

4. Study God’s promises to the humble.

5. Study creation.

6. Spend time with people who are more gifted than you are.

7. Learn a new skill.

8. Spend time with humble people.

9. Spend time with people who are honest with you about yourself.

10. Serve others.

Karl Graustein

Excerpted from: Growing Up Christian, P&R, 2005, p. 89-92. Used by Permission.

Remember, it is not your weakness that will get in the way of God’s working through you, but your delusions of strength. His strength is made perfect in our weakness! Point to His strength by being willing to admit your weakness.

Paul David Tripp

Age of Opportunity, P&R Publishing, 1997, p. 189, Used by Permission.

I am persuaded that love and humility are the highest attainments in the school of Christ and the brightest evidences that He is indeed our Master.

John Newton

There was no part of creature holiness that I had so great a sense of loveliness as humility, as brokenness of heart and poverty in spirit. There is nothing that I longed for more earnestly. My heart panted after this, to lie low before God as in the dust that I might be nothing and that God might be all.

Jonathan Edwards
Memoirs

Nothing sets a Christian so much out of the devil’s reach than humility.

Jonathan Edwards

Humility may be defined to be a habit of mind and heart corresponding to our comparative unworthiness and vileness before God, or a sense of our own comparative meanness in His sight, with the disposition to a behavior answerable thereto.

Jonathan Edwards

The Spirit of Love is a Humble Spirit.

The more excellent something is the more likely it will be imitated. There are many false diamonds and rubies, but who goes about making counterfeit pebbles? However, the more excellent things are the more difficult it is to imitate them in their essential character and intrinsic virtues. Yet the more variable the imitations be, the more skill and subtlety will be used in making them an exact imitation. So it is with Christian virtues and graces. The devil and men's own deceitful hearts tend to imitate those things that have the highest value. So no graces are more counterfeited than love and humility. For these are the virtues where the beauty of a true Christian is seen most clearly.

Jonathan Edwards

Religious Affectations.

Humility is the repentance of pride.

Nehemiah Rogers

A Puritan Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 147.

Our father was Adam, our grandfather dust, our great-grandfather nothing.

William Jenkin

A Puritan Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 225.

A humble sinner is in a better condition than a proud angel.

Thomas Watson

A Puritan Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 149.

God’s choice acquaintances are humble men.

Robert Leighton

A Puritan Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 149.

The focus of health in the soul is humility, while the root of inward corruption is pride. In the spiritual life, nothing stands still. If we are not constantly growing downward into humility, we shall be steadily swelling up and running to seed under the influence of pride.

J.I. Packer

Rediscovering Holiness. Christianity Today, v. 36, n. 13.

Humility is something we should constantly pray for, yet never thank God that we have.

M.R. DeHaan

Being humble is not thinking less of yourself, it is think of yourself less.

Author Unknown

Spiritual emotions result in Christian practice because they always exist alongside spiritual humiliation. Humility before God inspires obedience, just as pride inspires rebellion. Humility, then, necessarily leads to Christian practice.

Jonathan Edwards

Just as pride is the root of every evil, humility is the root of every virtue.

Stuart Scott

The Exemplary Husband, Focus Publishing, 2000, p. 185.

You are not mature if you have a high esteem of yourself. He who boasts in himself is but a babe in Christ, if indeed he be in Christ at all. Young Christians may think much of themselves. Growing Christians think themselves nothing. Mature Christians know that they are less than nothing. The more holy we are, the more we mourn our infirmities, and the humbler is our estimate of ourselves.

C.H. Spurgeon

The best definition of humility I ever heard was this – to think rightly of ourselves.

C.H. Spurgeon

Humility is the proper estimate of oneself.

C.H. Spurgeon

Every Christian has a choice between being humble or being humbled

C.H. Spurgeon

Humility does not mean thinking less of yourself than of other people, nor does it mean having a low opinion of your own gifts. It means freedom from thinking about yourself one way or the other at all.

William Temple

The source of humility is the habit of realizing the presence of God.

William Temple

They that know God will be humble and they that know themselves cannot be proud.

John Flavel

J.I. Packer

Rediscovering Holiness, quoted in Christianity Today, November 9, 1992, p. 37.

In trial and weakness and trouble, He seeks to bring us low, until we learn that His grace is all, and to take pleasure in the very thing that brings us and keeps us low. His strength is made perfect in our weakness. His presence filling and satisfying our emptiness, becomes the secret of humility that need never fail. The humble man has learned the secret of abiding gladness. The weaker he feels, the lower he sinks, and the greater his humiliations appear, the more power and the presence of Christ are his portion.

Andrew Murray

The right manner of growth is to grow less in one’s own eyes.

Thomas Watson

A Puritan Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 131.

God creates out of nothing. Therefore, until a man is nothing, God can make nothing out of him.

Martin Luther

The Early Years, Christian History, n. 34.

When you are forgotten or neglected or purposely set at naught, and you sting and hurt with the insult or the oversight, but your heart is happy, being counted worthy to suffer for Christ-that is dying to self. When your good is evil spoken of, when your wishes are crossed, your advice disregarded, your opinions ridiculed and you refuse to let anger rise in your heart, or even defend yourself, but take all in patient loving silence-that is dying to self. When you lovingly and patiently bear any disorder, any irregularity, or any annoyance, when you can stand face to face with waste, folly, extravagance, spiritual insensibility, and endure it as Jesus endured it-that is dying to self. When you are content with any food, any offering, any raiment, any climate, any society, any attitude, any interruption by the will of God-that is dying to self. When you never care to refer to yourself in conversation, or to record your own good works, or itch after commendation, when you can truly love to be unknown-that is dying to self. When you see your brother prosper and have his needs met and can honestly rejoice with him in spirit and feel no envy nor question God, while your own needs are far greater and in desperate circumstances-that is dying to self. When you can receive correction and reproof from one of less stature than yourself, can humbly submit inwardly as well as outwardly, finding no rebellion or resentment rising up within your heart-that is dying to self

Author Unknown

Humility is the only certain defense against humiliation.

Author Unknown

Does God ask us to do what is beneath us? This question will never trouble us again if we consider the Lord of heaven taking a towel and washing feet.

Elizabeth Elliot

The greatest test of whether the holiness we profess to seek or to attain is truth and life will be whether it produces an increasing humility in us. In man, humility is the one thing needed to allow God's holiness to dwell in him and shine through him. The chief mark of counterfeit holiness is lack of humility. The holiest will be the humblest.

Andrew Murray

Just as water seeks to fill the lowest places, so God fills you with His glory and power when He finds you empty and abased.

Andrew Murray

Man is never sufficiently touched and affected by the awareness of his lowly state until he has compared himself with God's majesty.

John Calvin

Institutes , 1, 1, 3.

Humility, then, is a recognition that we are at the same time “worm Jacob” and a mighty threshing sledge – completely weak and helpless in ourselves, but powerful and useful by the grace of God.

Jerry Bridges

Should you ask me what is the first thing in religion; I should reply that the first, second, and third thing therein is humility.

Augustine

The true way to be humble is not to stoop until you are smaller than yourself, but to stand at your real height against some higher nature that will show you what the real smallness of your greatness is.

Phillips Brooks

He that is down need fear no fall.

John Bunyan

Humility is nothing else but a right judgment of ourselves.

William Law

Two of the most godly and disarming ways to display humility are accountability and correctability.

Mark Dever and Paul Alexander

We cannot have one spark of real humility till we are abased before God, as guilty, helpless, and undone creatures, who have no hope but in the tender mercy of God in Christ Jesus.

Charles Simeon

He is truly great who is little in his own eyes and makes nothing of the highest honor.

Thomas a Kempis

I used to think that God’s gifts were on shelves one above the other; and that the taller we grew in Christian character the easier we could reach them. I now find that God’s gifts are on shelves one beneath the other; and it is not a question of growing taller but of stooping lower; and that we have to go down, always down, to get His best gifts.

F.B. Meyer

Growth in grace is growth downward. It is the forming of a lower estimate of ourselves. It is a deepening realization of our nothingness. It is a heartfelt recognition that we are not worthy of the least of God's mercies.

A.W. Pink

A man can counterfeit love, he can counterfeit faith, he can counterfeit hope and all the other graces, but it is very difficult to counterfeit humility.

D.L. Moody

A believing man will be a humble man. He will think little and speak little about himself. True faith carries us above this pride, self-esteem, and vainglory… He will…refrain from giving prominence to self in any of his proceedings. His great object will be to hide self; and not only to forget it himself, but to make others forget it too. The man that is still proud, boastful, vainglorious, self-confident has good reason to suppose that he has never yet believed.

Horatius Bonar

Looking to the Cross, Preface, 1851.

But the greater (a person) appears to be; the more humble he ought to be, and the more ready to seek the common good in preference to his own.

Clement

Clement's First Letter, 48:6-49:1.