In his book Good to Great, author Jim Collins “identified two specific character qualities shared by the CEOs of these good-to-great companies. The first was no surprise: These men and women possessed incredible professional will – they were driven, willing to endure anything to make their company a success. But the second trait these leaders had in common wasn’t something the researchers expected to find. These driven leaders were self-effacing and modest. They consistently pointed to the contribution of others and didn’t like drawing attention to themselves. ‘The good-to-great leaders never wanted to become larger-than-life heroes,’ Collins writes. ‘They never aspired to be put on a pedestal or become unreachable icons. They were seemingly ordinary people quietly producing extraordinary results.’
When Collins interviewed people who worked for these leaders, he says they ‘continually used words like quiet, humble, modest, reserved, shy, gracious, mild-mannered, self-effacing, understated, did not believe his own clippings; and so forth’ to describe them.” Taken from C.J Mahaney: Humility, True Greatness, p.18
God has a lot to say about humility, about the excellence of having it, and the folly of being bereft of it. The text I’d like to begin with is Philippians 2:3-11 “Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Consider that Jesus and the Father and the Holy Spirit were perfectly happy in their union, and did not need anyone nor anything to help make their day, and yet Jesus condescended to come to earth, to this cesspool of pain and degradation, pour His glory into the teeny weeny casing of a human body, live here for thirty three years, minister relentlessly for three of those years, endure opposition from almost every quarter, and die a criminal’s death for people who really deserve to die as He did. Jesus is fully God and yet made Himself fully man. Think of this; Jesus “upholds the universe by the word of His power,” (Hebrews 1:3) meaning He towers over everything that He has made. He owns it all! It’s all His! And yet “the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.”(Matthew 20:28) The greatest example of humility we have is Christ, and He therefore is the most compelling reason for us to strive after humility in our own lives.
I wonder if Christ is most clearly seen in us when we exhibit this rare jewel, and I wonder if when people do not see much of Christ in us, it is precisely because deep humility is absent, and the weeds of self-promotion, self-exaltation, and the desire to be made much of, are growing unabated deep in the heart.
Would it not be a sweet thing though to have others say of us at our funeral, “s/he was such a humble person. Humble and therefore free from so much of the clamoring that too many of us poor humans claw after.”
Jonathan Edwards once wrote, “The pleasures of humility are really the most refined, inward, and exquisite delights in the world.” March 2, 1723 diary entry found in the Memoir of Jonathan Edwards.
Are you enjoying those pleasures today?
I fully agree that humility must be crucial part of our everday life, at the same time realizing that’s easier said than done. Thank you for the reminder and encouragement!