The Shaping Virtues - Humility

The Lord promises to bless the one “who is humble and contrite in spirit” (Isaiah 66:2). Humility is foundational to all our other shaping virtues, because without humility we will experience neither the desire nor the grace necessary to cultivate them. The great enemy of all these virtues is pride. Their greatest friend is humility. Jerry Bridges said, “Humility opens the way to all other godly character traits. It is the soil in which the other traits of the fruit of the Spirit grow” (The Fruitful Life, 49).

Humility comes from “honestly assessing ourselves in light of God’s holiness and our sinfulness” (Humility, 22). In the gospel of Christ, we are humbled as we recognize that, as sinners, our salvation isn’t merited in any way, but is given freely by grace and grace alone – “by grace you have been saved through faith.  And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). The gospel continues to humble us as we increasingly recognize that the only way we both relate to and receive from God is grace, and not anything we do or don’t do. 

The message of grace also humbles us in relation to one another, lowering our view of our own importance and raising our view of others. We are consistently exhorted to this humility in Scripture: “I therefore…urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility” (Ephesians 4:1-2);  “put on then, as God’s chosen ones…humility” (Colossians 3:12); “humble yourselves before the Lord (James 4:10); “clothe yourself, all of you, with humility toward one another” (1 Peter 5:5). Note that humility isn’t simply a way we feel but a way we act toward others. It invites and pursues correction.

Finally, the gospel provides both the model and the motive for considering others better than ourselves.  Paul’s exhortation to “Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves” and to “look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:3-4) is rooted in Jesus’ stunning example of humility in Philippians 2:5-8.