Humility Contests

Some of you know that several years ago Julie made a comment that one of our members was “the humblest man she had ever met”. Of course I said “what… more humble than me?” And told her I could be the humblest guy at church and started a humility contest with the other guy.

In retrospect, maybe that humility contest thing is not such a bad idea and what would that look like anyway? A lot of people have the wrong idea about what humility is and think that humility is incongruous with a strong personality or a lot of confidence in ones abilities. So before we can see what a humility contest looks like we first have to understand the Bible definition of humility.

Phillipians 2:5-11 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.

Jesus Christ our supreme example in everything was also supreme in the attribute of humility. He had a strong personality, strong self- confidence and was very forthright in his speech and yet… humble.

Jesus Christ was humble because he served others. He gave up his rights and his life to serve humanity.

So get this… humility has nothing to do with a quiet nature/personality but has everything to do with helping and serving others. So what would a humility contest look like? It would look like people sacrificing their time, energy and resources to help other people out.

That original humility contest thing was a big joke because the motivation was misplaced. Our real motivation to be humble is to serve God and defeat Satan. We do that by killing the self-serving pride in our lives and by cultivating and nurturing selfless humility.