Humility

At long last, I have finished Andrew Murray's little book, Humility. It is well worth reading slowly and re-reading.

Reading Andrew Murray is unlike reading most contemporary authors. In writing, he assumes that Christianity that is not experiential is not real Christianity. So he is after truth, and deep personal experience of that reality.

That is the context in which he casts humility: It is our being nothing before the God who is everything. It is the experience of Him being all in all.

Whereas many authors take our fallen condition as the ground for humility (i.e. God is holy, and we are sinful), Murray takes a step further back. He argues persuasively that humility is part of the creation order. In God's design before the Fall, we were to be utterly dependent on Him:

But as God is the ever-living, ever-present, ever-acting One, who upholds all things by teh word of His power, and in whom all things exist, the relation of the creature to God could only be one of unceasing, absolute, universal dependence. . . . Humility, the place of entire dependence on God, is, from the very nature of things, the first duty and highest virtue of the creature. In fact, it is the root of every virtue. . . . Hence it follows that nothing can be our redemption but the restoration of the lost humility, the original and only true relation of the creature to its God. And so Jesus came to bring humility back to earth, to make us partakers of it, and by it to save us (12, 13).

What is this humility?

It is not something which we bring to God, or which He bestows; it is simply the entire nothingness which comes when we see how truly God is ALL, and in which we make way for God to be ALL (14).

Murray clarifies what he means:

If this leads us to utter despair of ever conquering or casting [pride] out, it will lead us all the sooner to that supernatural power in which alone our deliverance is to be found - the redemption of the Lamb of God (19).

With rich metaphors, Murray communicates the ways of God:

Just as water ever seeks and fills the lowest place, so the moment God finds the creature abased and empty will His glory and power flow in to exalt and to bless (36).

The humility that Murray puts forth is not that of the hermit:

Our humility before God has no value except as it prepares us to reveal the humility of Jesus to our fellow men (49).

Though he sees humility as a creation order, Murray speaks insightfully to humility in sinfulness:

It is not sin, but grace that will make me indeed know myself a sinner, and make the sinner's place of deepest self-abasement the place I never leave. . . . It is the revelation of God, not only by the law condemning sin but by His grace delivering from it, that will make us humble. . . . Not to be occupied with your sin, but to be occupied with God, brings deliverance from self (68, 69, 70).

Amidst all the wisdom that Murray offers, there was one insight that has more shaken me than any other: Grace not only can come at the cost of my pride; it comes only at that price. The only way to seek grace is to seek humility, that God may be ALL; for God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.

I have many times prayed for God to draw me to Himself in ways that didn't humble me. Now I am beginning to see the folly of those requests, and why He wisely gives grace only to the humble.