My friend Tammy often reminds me that the things that bother us the most in other people are usually our own sin problems staring us back in the face. “The conceited way that person talks to me drives me over the edge . . . The way ‘those people’ have to have everything ‘their way’ gets on my nerves . . .” Ironic, isn’t it?
In Mere Christianity C.S. Lewis writes, “here is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which everyone in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else’ and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves. . . . There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. And the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others.
The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit: and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals, is called Humility. . . . Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind. . . . In fact, if you want to find out how proud you are the easiest way is to ask yourself, ‘How much do I dislike it when other people snub me, or refuse to take any notice of me, or shove their oar in, or patronise me, or show off?’ The point is that each person’s pride is in competition with every one else’s pride” (ch 8).
I’m a prideful human being, and in that pride I want to be able to fix myself, my “issues,” my sin. I want to be more patient, more loving, gentler, kinder, slower to anger. I want to be supermom and deeply engaged with my children in so many ways in one moment, and the next I’m just wanting my children to go find a book, read it to each other, and let me hide in the bathroom for five minutes. Even in my attempts at supermom moments, my arrogance can often rear its ugly head. It’s a good thing to want to be gentler, kinder, slower to anger; the problem comes when I want to do all that in my own strength rather than fall at the feet of Jesus and admit that I literally CANNOT DO IT on my own.
This Lenten season (that’s the 40 days of fasting and prayer before Easter) my heart and mind are drawn to Jesus’ humility, the complete antithesis of my pride. The God of the universe, the God who always was and always will be, wrapped Himself in human flesh, constrained Himself in a human body, and entered the greatest mess, our sin sickness, on our behalf, the One “who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by 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” (Phil. 2:6-8).
I ponder Him; I pray . . . my mind cannot conceive. My beloved seminary professor and New Testament scholar Dr. Gary Cockerill often said that Jesus more than humbled himself; he humiliated Himself—taking the very lowest form of a servant when he washed His disciples’ feet the night before His crucifixion. We identify with Peter’s initial reaction to Jesus when he says, “You will never ever wash my feet!” (John 13:8). Me too, Peter! “No, Jesus, I’m too dirty, and you’re too holy; furthermore, if your example is for me to be a lowly slave, I don’t want to go there either.” Both directions are rooted in pride. I don’t want Jesus to clean me up; I will just keep trying and trying to clean myself up. Then, when I finally “arrive,” I will say as all children do, “I did it myself!” Of course, the irony is that in all my striving, I will never be able to “do it myself.” Likewise, my pride and arrogance keep me from being willing to be humiliated. In that place, I don’t want him to save me for me, and I also don’t want him to save me from me! But actually I do. When the pride and arrogance are stripped away, there’s nothing I want more. The Greek word for gospel (euangelion) means “good news” (…I will never understand why some folks have spun it as “bad news”), and here is the best news you’ve ever heard, y’all . . . The only way to be saved from my self and my sin is for Jesus to do the saving—not me! This is the good news! In the Bible belt, despite that we’ve heard the gospel a thousand times, we keep trying to save ourselves. Somehow, the wonder and beauty, simplicity, and freedom of the good news are lost on us because of that pride thing.
I’m not one for throwing Bible verses around out of their context (so go and read the context around these verses), but here are a few snippets of this good news:
“Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life” (John 5:24 NIV).
“And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.” (Ephesians 1:13, 14).
“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them” (Eph. 2:8, 9).
“But when Christ came as high priest of the good things that are now already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not made with human hands, that is to say, is not a part of this creation. He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God! For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant. . . . [Moses] said, “This is the blood of the covenant, which God has commanded you to keep.” In the same way, he sprinkled with the blood both the tabernacle and everything used in its ceremonies. In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. It was necessary, then, for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with human hands that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence. Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. Otherwise Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him” (Hebrews 9:11-15, 20-28).
Well, that last passage was more than a “snippet,” but it tells the whole story. Every good story has a conflict and resolution—in this true story, the best ever told, the conflict has raged not only among us but within us, but the Resolution is found not in philosophies but in a Person, the Protagonist of all protagonists . . . Jesus, the One and Only. Thank God, the resolution does not lie within myself.
