I Peter 5:6

by Elder Tim Brown

1 Pet 5:6  Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time: 

To be a true believer we must live as humbled servants. To understand what it is to be humble we must begin looking at what being humble is not. To be humble is not to emphasize self more than emphasize God. We become entangled in emphasizing self when we deceive ourselves in believing we are stronger than we are or finding refuge in our weakness for the sake of self-pity. To be humble is to remove all emphasis (over emphasizing something or someone can only be defined as worship), of anything that is not God. Any emphasis other than God is sin and that emphasis is the worship of sin. 

Emphasizing one’s strength or self –confidence is easily seen as being not humble. The sin of self-strength and or Strong self will as the world defines it and relies on it to accomplish all things. Being proud of strong will and self-strength flies in the face of God. To espouse to the false doctrine of strong-will is to deny all that believers are called to be. Believers are divine prisoners held captive by the most Holy and just authority of the Hand of God. To deny the truth is to believe you are free to be all you believe you can be and this is completely contrary to the Word of God. The truth is no one is free, they are either in debtor’s prison to the unjust ruler of sin or held gloriously captive as a prisoner to the most high and just God. When you succumb to the belief you can achieve all, if you want it and work for it, you fall in the prison cell of not only rejecting humbleness but, oh so much more behind the bars of pride.  You are deceived in believing hope is found in yourself and not in the place where hope only exists in Jesus Christ. 

It is easy to discern the sin in being strong-willed and prideful due to not being humbled but it is also as sinful to be weak for the purpose of self-pity although it may be construed as being humble. When we emphasize our weakness and it is not derived from the realization of who we are in respect to God, we sin. The sin is not the strength or the weakness, the sin is found in what is being worshipped. Putting on the façade of humbleness when in actuality it is still self-worship, is still regarded as sin in the eyes of God for that which is being worshipped is not God for it is the worship of self. 

Mat 23:12 And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted. We are called to be humble in order to be exalted. The humbleness given to a believer is one nort of pride or of weakness. It is a humbleness strong on the foundation of hope in God and weak in the emphasis of self but exalted in the worship of the Omnipotent God of all. To be humble is to sacrifice thyself for the more honorable position of a prisoner resigned and persuaded to be a vessel that was purposed to honor and not a vessel purposed to dishonor. So believers stand humble before God that you may be strong, which are found weak by the Grace of the Omnipotent and Sovereign God.