Some people think of themselves as God’s gift to the world. However, a meek person is not this way at all. Listen carefully to this story about an American general. General Grant was stricken with a fatal illness. As he approached the end of his life, he felt his need of the Saviour and His sustaining presence. He called for a minister. Simply the minister presented the gospel to him. “General,” he said, “God in love sent the Saviour to seek and to save that which was lost. If you will sincerely call upon Him from your heart, you will receive from Him mercy and abundant pardon!” When the minister knelt and prayed, God opened the heart of the general and he was joyfully converted. God cleansed his heart from sin. The minister was elated. “God’s kingdom has gained a great acquisition in your conversion, General,” said the minister. Immediately General Grant protested, saying, “God does not need great men, but great men need God! There is just one thing that I now greatly desire since Christ’s great peace has come to me …” “What’s that, General?” asked the minister. “I would like to live one year more so that I might tell others of this wonderful gift of God’s love!” Strength is always found in true meekness. Meekness is not weakness; rather it is the proper way to demonstrate strength and resolve.¹ But how do you develop in humility? How do you put it on?

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Accept the Challenge

Each week’s podcast contains a call to action. The Word of God will not produce in your life unless you put into operation.
This week’s call is:

Humility is a fruit of the Spirit that we are instructed to put on. Start out your day reminding yourselves that the way up in God is down. Remember that the way of humility is not just your relationship with God but your relationship with others.

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Each week’s podcast also contains a question designed to encourage testimony. Testimony is vital to a believer’s life. We overcome by it (Rev. 12:11).
This week’s question is:

Question: What have you gone about incorporating the fruit of the spirit in your life? What did you do to consciously develop it?  Please leave a comment in the comments section below.

About Emery

Emery committed his life to the Lord Jesus Christ over 40 years ago and has served as both a full-time pastor and an itinerant minister. Both he and his wife Sharon of 35 years emphasize personal growth and development through the Word of God. The ministry of the Holy Spirit is both the focus and the hallmark of their mission. Read more about them here.

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Podcast Notes

A Look at the Two Main Words for Humility

Galatians 5:22–23 (KJV) — 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, 23 Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.

• The word ‘meekness’ in verse twenty-three is the Greek word ‘prautes’.
  • It means the quality of not being overly impressed by a sense of one’s self-importance, gentleness, humility, courtesy, considerateness, meekness ²
• According to this word humility, when it’s on display, is gentle, mild and even-tempered in its dealings with others.

Acts 20:19 (KJV) — 19 Serving the Lord with all humility of mind, and with many tears, and temptations, which befell me by the lying in wait of the Jews:

• The Greek word here for humility is a different word than the one for meekness.
• This word in Greek is ‘tapeinophrosynē’ and it means the disposition of valuing or assessing oneself appropriately.

What Humility Is and What It Isn’t

• From these two definitions, what can we understand about humility?

Humility is valuing your self appropriately

• Humility is a right evaluation of yourself.
• Being humble is not devaluing yourself.
• It is not belittling yourself.
• It’s not taking down about yourself.
• So, what is the right way to value yourself?
• The right value to possess is the ‘real truth about yourself.’
• Saying this a different way.

What is the real truth about your talents?

• Where did they come from?
• Who gave them to you?
• Were there people who inputted into your life and helped you develop?
• Or, was that all just you?
• If you are taking all the credit for how wonderful you are, is that really credit you deserve?
• Is that the real truth?
• Is all that you are today simply because of you?
• Do you mean to think that you didn’t have any help along the way?
• Didn’t God give you the breath you breathe?
• Didn’t He give you the personality you now possess?
• What about your DNA that makes you uniquely you?
• Did you pick that up at Walmart?
• What about all the people in your life who invested in you?
• Invested time to nurture you?
• Time to mentor you?
• What about the money which has been poured into your life.
• Someone worked hard to get that money to sow into your life.
• Friends, mentors, significant God ordained contacts invested in you so you can have a chance at success.
• What about all those people who set success examples in front of you to see and build on?
• We haven’t even gotten yet to your loved ones who raised you?
• What about them?
• So, just ask yourself again, is the real truth that all of who you are is just because you’re so terrific?
• Or is the real truth that ‘wonderful you’ had a whole lot of help becoming wonderful you?
• Acknowledging that, that you are a by-product of God’s grace and workings is what humility is.

Humility is Modesty without Arrogance

• What else is humility?
• Well, we can look at some of the companions of pride and understand from the negative what humility is.
• Let’s look at arrogance from a scriptural standpoint.

1 Samuel 2:3 (ESV) — 3 Talk no more so very proudly, let not arrogance come from your mouth; for the LORD is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.

• The Hebrew word for arrogance means an overbearing pride evidenced by a superior manner toward others.

Philippians 2:3 (KJV) — 3 Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves.

• The word ‘vainglory’ is the word for conceit.
• Strife gets mixed in with arrogance.
• Can you see it’s a bad Christian cocktail?
• Strife, conceit, arrogance, what’s the solution?
• In lowliness of mind esteem others better than yourselves.
• Lowliness of mind is the second Greek word we have already looked at, the word ‘tapeinophrosynē’; the disposition of valuing or assessing oneself appropriately.

Pride Is An Unreal Assessment of Yourself

• From all of this, you can really see what pride, the opposite of humility, is.
• If humility is a real assessment of yourself, then pride is an unreal assessment.
• Pride is not recognizing or acknowledging the real truth about yourself.
• Sometimes it’s a forgetful letting go of reality.
• It’s not remembering the bus you rode to get where you are.
• Johnathan Edwards, the great preacher of the Awakening said these words.

Nothing sets a person so much out of the devil’s reach as humility, and so prepares the mind for true divine light without darkness, and so clears the eye to look on things as they truly are.³

Humility Helps You to See Clearly

• Pride blinds.
• It doesn’t allow you to see things clearly.
• Arrogance becomes a mist over your perception.
• It’s like fog lamps on a car.
• Fog lamps, because of how they are mounted and tilted, produce a low beam of diffused light on the road.
• The light is angled in such a way as to reduce reflection off of fog.
• The point is the light has to be positioned low in order to see.
• You must humble yourself, get low in your estimation of yourself.
• When you do you can see.
• You can understand life.
• You can know God’s Word.
• Humility, or the downward path, is what allows you to see things as they are.

Humility Is Your Choice

• Now, we get to an important point about humility.
• We have the two main words defined.
• We have a sense of what it is.
• But how do we develop the fruit of humility in our everyday life?
• Well, I’m glad you asked.
• I was going to tell you anyway.
• A fourth-century Egyptian monk named Poemen uttered these words about humility.
• It speaks to the developmental mindset we should have about this fruit of the Spirit.

A man ought ever to be absorbing humility and the fear of God, as the nostrils breathe air in and out.⁴

• To develop humility, yes to develop any fruit of the Spirit, you always have to be working on it.
• We can learn something from Benjamin Franklin on this.

Lessons from Benjamin Franklin

• In his autobiography, Benjamin Franklin decided to work on his character.
  • He took the traits he wanted to develop like dedication, honesty, commitment, and put in his day-timer.
  • He set aside two months for each character trait figuring that by working on each trait, like six of them for a two month period each.
  • He thought by the end of the year his character would be fully developed.
  • What he discovered is that this way of going at it didn’t work.
  • And the reason why it didn’t work is that once he let go of working on one trait to switch to a different one, the one he worked on slid back to where it was originally.
• The point is, if you want to develop in humility, you have to have a right value of its importance.
• And then, you have to work on it all the time.
• Keep working on it.
• Keep studying it.
• Keep in the forefront of your thinking.
• Remember that Jesus humbled himself to obtain your redemption.
• You have to humble yourself to walk in it.
• As Andrew Murray states it in his book entitled Humility.

His humility is our salvation. His salvation is our humility.⁵

• Saying it from the reverse angle.
• It is pride which made redemption necessary.
• So, it is pride we need to be redeemed from.
• But, it’s all a choice.

The Way Up is Down: It’s All A Choice

Matthew 23:12 (ESV) — 12 Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

• Peter Wagoner has some insights into the Greek language in this passage.

In this short Scripture passage we find two parallel pairs of active and passive verbs. By active verbs, I mean actions that we must choose to initiate. If we do not decide to do this certain thing, it simply will not happen, regardless of what we may know theologically to be God’s perfect will.⁶

• The active verbs are the two words humbled and humbles.
• The passive verbs are the two words exalts and exalted.
• The point here is this; you do the active humbling of yourself and your exaltation will just happen.

Humility Is Something You Put On

1 Peter 5:5 (ESV) — 5 Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

• Again you see in this passage in 1 Peter, that humbling yourself is something you do not something God does.
• Look at this ‘Spirit of God’ analogy that Peter uses.
• Peter says, “clothe yourselves.”
• The Greek word for “put on” is derived from a noun which is the apron of a slave fastened to his undergarments⁷
• Humility is something you put.
• It’s like a coat you wear in the winter.
• Or, a robe you put on when you wake up in the morning.
• Anything you wear is with intention.
• You intentionally put on a coat or a garment.
• Humility is the same way.
• You intentionally put on humility.
• You purposefully set your insides to dial pride down.
• This is a wonderful truth Holy Spirit truth.
• Humility is not something you work up, it’s something you put on.
• It’s something you clothe yourself with.
• It’s a mindset and an attitude that you choose to wear.

Clothing Yourself Via the Inner Man

1 Peter 3:3–4 (ESV) — 3 Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— 4 but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious.

• The Greek word ‘adorning’ here means that extra piece of decorative thing that you put on to give the extra pop in your appearance.
• Some people put on jewelry to get a little extra pop.
• Some ladies put on a scarf.
• Some men put on a fancy belt or that extra sharp pair of shoes to get that pop.
• But, according to Peter, the pop shouldn’t come from the external, it should come from the internal.
• It should come from the hidden person of the heart, your spirit man.
• The glitter of a God-fearing man or women should come from a gentle and quiet spirit.
• The word King James word ‘gentle’ is the first definition we gave for the word humility, the word ‘prautes’, the word for meek.

Garments of Salvation

Isaiah 61:10 (ESV) 10 I will greatly rejoice in the LORD; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

• You see, it’s in the Hebrew also, this idea of spiritual attributes as clothing that one puts on.
• Here in Isaiah, we have garments of salvation.
• You have a robe of righteousness.
• Righteousness is an attitude that you put on.
• You have to put these garments on.

Romans 13:14 (ESV) 14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

Colossians 3:12 (ESV) Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience,

How Do You Put on Humility?

• All of these spiritual attributes, compassion, humility, meekness, and patience, yes and all of the rest of the fruits of the spirit in Galatians five are attitudes you can put on.
• But how do you put them on?
• Think of the idea of wardrobe and getting dressed.
• What process do you go through?
• Don’t you think about what you are going to wear?
• Everybody does in one measure or another.
• Some think about it a great deal, putting severe effort into clothing and it’s coordination.
• Smith Wigglesworth, the great apostle of faith was always immaculately dressed in a dark suit.
• It was part of his belief that the Lord looked after His own.
• Biographer W. Hacking said these words about Smith.

I have heard him say that if he ever came to a place where he had less than three decent suits, he would know that the Lord wanted him to go back to plumbing.⁸

• He also said that he did not consider himself dressed unless he had a copy of the New Testament on him and would pay a significant reward if anyone found him without one.⁹

Adam and Eve Undressed

• Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, before the Fall, were naked and not ashamed.
• Their first action after they sinned and realized that they were naked was to cover themselves with fig leaves.
• Instead of listening to God they listened to the serpent.
• They preferred to get over into the pride of disobedience instead of humbling themselves to the Word of the Lord.
• But, how were they clothed before the Fall?
• You always artist rendition of Adam and Eve in the Garden, hiding their naked bodies behind some bush.
• Were they really naked prior to the Fall like we understand the word today?
• Or, where they clothed in something else?
• Something which vanished when they sinned?
• You know they were.
• Adam was clothed in the light of God.
• That was their suit of clothes.
• Talk about something that popped!
• God is light, the Bible says He is and in Him is no darkness at all – 1 John 1:5.
• God is clothed in glory.
• That’s the suit He wears.
• So what God did when He created man was reach into His personal wardrobe and pulled out a suit and a dress for Adam and Eve.
• The clothes from God’s closet was made of brilliant light.
• So brilliant, that Adam and Eve didn’t even know what naked was.
• When they sinned, they lost their light suit.
• It vanished.
• It disappeared.
• The glory lifted.
• The suit and dress went back into God’s closet.
• They realized their naked state.
• So, remember that in the natural realm, clothing is a reminder of sin.
• It’s not a reminder of status.
• Remember that the next time you allow yourself to get caught up in the tidal wave of the latest fashion craze.
• Now, consider these verses which we have already looked at.
• These verses in the New Testament which tell you to put on spiritual attributes.
• Put on humility.
• Put on meekness.
• Put on righteousness.
• What happens if you don’t put them on?
• All you are really doing is showing your nakedness.
• Are you streaking?
• Or, are you putting on the Lord Jesus Christ?

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