“For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?” 1 Corinthians 4:7 (NIV)
To be sure, the proper posture for a child of the King is humility. We ought not to be riding on our high horses, snubbing our noses and exalting ourselves over others. If we do, we had better be preparing ourselves for a great fall. Seriously, if pride could cause the highest angelic creature to become a devil how much more so for it to be our downfall as well? As the Apostle Paul writes in our verse today – “What do you have that you did not receive?” The answer to that query is a resounding “Nothing”!
We must learn to reject pride as we have no grounds for it. Arrogance and pride are to have no place in the life of the child of the King as all we have comes from His mighty hand. Indeed, arrogance is a stench in God’s nostrils as the only thing we can rightly call our own is our sin and misery. And remember as well, Scripture says those who walk in pride God is more than able to humble. He so often brings us low so that we will finally look up.
It is God’s desire for us to humble ourselves under His mighty hand that He might lift us up in due time. In His perfect way, humility comes before honor. We must stoop low in our climb to heaven. Also, God’s greatest resources for kingdom works are given over as a gift to the soul that is humble enough not to grow proud because of them. Humility prepares us to be blessed by the God of all grace and mercy. Indeed, God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. When a man is truly humble and skirts the praise of man – living his life for an audience of One - there remains scarcely a limit of what God will do in and through that person. Humility allows us to deal rightly with one another as well. We all stand on level ground before the cross, Amen? Humility is the proper ingredient with which we may season every area of life and experiencing improvement in every instance. The humble soul will also possess an acute sense of their unworthiness compared to a Holy God. It is a wonder, they muse, that the Lord Jesus should set His heart’s affections upon them. If our Lord Jesus humbled Himself, how much more so should we?
“Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death-- even death on a cross!” Philippians 2:5-8 (NIV)