The pre-eminence of humility
I make so bold as to claim, in this brief postscript, that the supreme quality which the evangelical faith engenders (or should do) is humility. Already I think I can see the wry smile on my readers’ faces. For we have to confess that our reputation is very different. Evangelical people are often regarded as proud, vain, arrogant and cocksure.
What I mean, however, is that the principal tenets which evangelical Christians cherish, if they are correctly understood, inevitably tend towards humility. As Cranmer’s Homily on Salvation put it, evangelical convictions set forth the true glory of God, and are bound therefore to beat down the vainglory of human beings. Let me explain further.
I have been at pains to argue that evangelical Christianity is trinitarian Christianity. We hold the three ‘Rs’ – revelation, redemption and regeneration, associating revelation with the Father, redemption with the Son and regeneration with the Holy Spirit. We desire above all else to bear witness to the supreme authority of the Word of God, the atoning efficacy of the cross of Christ and the indispensable ministries of the Holy Spirit.
Yet the more the three persons of the Trinity are glorified, the more completely human pride is excluded. To magnify the self-revelation of God is to confess our complete ignorance without it. To magnify the cross of Christ is to confess our utter lostness without it. To magnify the regenerating, indwelling and sanctifying role of the Holy Spirit is to confess our abiding self-centredness without it.
The Word, the cross and the Spirit, as we have seen, have a special place of honour in our thinking. We kneel before God the Father, with the Bible open before us, emphatically not because we are bibliolaters, but because we desire humbly to hear God’s Word. We kneel in imagination at the feet of the crucified and resurrected Lord (as when we come to the Communion table) because we desire humbly to receive that full and free forgiveness which only he can give. We kneel also before the Holy Spirit, because we desire humbly to ask him to fill our emptiness and to cause his fruit to ripen in our lives.
Without the Bible we would grope and stagger in thick darkness. Without the cross we would flounder in the deep waters of guilt and alienation, with no mercy, no redemption, no forgiveness and no hope. Without the indwelling Spirit we would be the helpless victims of indwelling sin, of pathetic self-effort and so of unremitting failure.
It is in this way that we understand why Jesus gave us the model of a child’s humility.
At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, ‘Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?’
2He called a little child and had him stand among them. 3And he said: ‘I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.’
(Matt. 18:1–4)
Many people are perplexed by Jesus’ references to the ‘humility’ of a child. For in our experience children are usually headstrong and proud. So Jesus was alluding not to the character or conduct of children, but their status. Everything children possess they have been given, and everything they know they have been taught. It is right therefore to call them ‘dependants’.
Just as children depend totally on their parents, so we depend on God, not least in the three spheres mentioned.
First, on one occasion Jesus said, ‘I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children’ (Matt. 11:25). This is not obscurantism. It is rather to acknowledge that God hides from the intellectually arrogant and reveals himself only to ‘babies’ (as the word here means), that is, to those who are sincere and humble in their approach.
Secondly, on another occasion, when Jesus invited children to come to him, he added that ‘anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it’ (Mark 10:13–16). Thus the kingdom of God, a synonym in Jesus’ teaching for salvation or eternal life, could not be earned or deserved. It could only be ‘received’, as a child receives a gift, freely and gratefully – not like an adult who proudly insists on paying for it.
In the case of our third dependency, namely for holiness, Jesus did not use the simile of the child, but he taught the same truth differently. In developing his allegory of the vine he said, ‘apart from me you can do nothing’ (John 15:5). This ‘nothing’ cannot be interpreted as an absolute, for people can do many things without abiding in Christ or relying on the Holy Spirit. Unregenerate people get up, wash and dress, have their breakfast and go to work, without any conscious dependence on Christ or his Spirit. His ‘nothing’ must therefore be interpreted in relation to its context of ‘fruitfulness’. It is logically impossible to bear the fruit of the Spirit if we are not indwelt by the Spirit whose fruit it is.
There is here a fundamental conflict between liberal and evangelical Christianity. During the 1960s, under the influence of extreme liberals like Bishop John Robinson (UK) and Paul van Buren (USA), a so-called ‘secular’ theology was born, which proclaimed that ‘man has come of age’ and can therefore dispense with the traditional notions of God and of salvation. But it is impossible to reconcile this call to independence with Jesus’ teaching about our dependence on God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
At least in our Christian hymnody, if not always in our theology, we express our humble dependence on the Trinity. Our dependence on God and his Word:
Word of the ever-living God,
Will of his glorious Son,
Without thee how could earth be trod
Or heaven itself be won?
Lord, grant that we aright may learn
The wisdom it imparts,
And to its heavenly teaching turn
With simple, childlike hearts.
(Bernard Barton, 1784–1849)
Our dependence on Christ and his cross:
Nothing in my hand I bring;
Simply to thy cross I cling;
Naked, come to thee for dress;
Helpless, look to thee for grace;
Foul, I to the fountain fly,
Wash me, Saviour, or I die.
(Augustus M. Toplady, 1740–78)
Our dependence on the Holy Spirit and his work:
And every virtue we possess,
And every victory won,
And every thought of holiness
Are his alone.
Spirit of purity and grace,
Our weakness, pitying, see;
O make our hearts thy dwelling-place,
And worthier thee.
(Harriet Auber, 1773–1862)
Worship on earth anticipates worship in heaven. For throughout eternity the redeemed will attribute their salvation to him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb. There is no place for human boasting. ‘Let him who boasts boast in the Lord’ (1 Cor. 1:31). Our place is on our faces, prostrate before God, and our only appropriate anthem is the Gloria:
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the
Holy Spirit.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen.