Is God Humble?

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - Is God humble?

00:00:06.280 | Is God humble?

00:00:08.180 | It seems like such a simple question.

00:00:09.680 | It's actually a pretty simple question,

00:00:11.080 | but the answer is not.

00:00:12.740 | It's a great question,

00:00:13.960 | exactly the kind of question we've come to expect

00:00:16.160 | from our perceptive listeners out there,

00:00:18.160 | this time from a listener named Tanner.

00:00:20.440 | Hello, Tony and Pastor John.

00:00:21.880 | Thank you for your faithful service to God

00:00:23.520 | and to his people across the world through this podcast.

00:00:25.960 | I was recently thinking about how the pursuit

00:00:27.880 | of good character is the pursuit to better imitate

00:00:30.520 | the inherent goodness of God.

00:00:32.560 | But I hit a mental hurdle

00:00:33.720 | when I applied this framework to humility.

00:00:36.120 | Throughout your ministry,

00:00:37.480 | you have defined our humility

00:00:39.320 | as knowledge of our own fallibility.

00:00:42.120 | This cannot work for God, obviously,

00:00:44.000 | so perhaps God cannot be humble because he's infallible.

00:00:48.480 | Is God humble at all, or can we imitate him or not?

00:00:52.880 | Or is humility reserved for creatures?

00:00:55.840 | Pastor John, what would you say to Tanner?

00:00:57.600 | Tanner has put his finger on a concern

00:01:01.360 | that I have had for a long time,

00:01:04.160 | namely that we might make God imitation

00:01:09.160 | or even Christ imitation, like what would Jesus do?

00:01:13.480 | The bracelets we used to raise.

00:01:15.320 | We might make God imitation and Christ imitation

00:01:18.360 | too central in the way we think about the pursuit

00:01:21.280 | of holiness or virtue or love.

00:01:23.320 | And the reason I'm concerned is the very problem

00:01:27.400 | that Tanner has seen, namely, there is a lot about God

00:01:31.920 | we dare not imitate.

00:01:33.840 | Clearly, Paul says, "Be imitators of me as I am of Christ,"

00:01:38.840 | 1 Corinthians 11, 1.

00:01:42.320 | But Paul knows, and we know, that we dare not imitate Christ

00:01:47.320 | in some of his most glorious pursuits and achievements.

00:01:50.480 | Don't imitate Christ in his authority to forgive sins.

00:01:54.040 | Don't imitate Christ in his right to say,

00:01:57.040 | "Before Abraham was, I am."

00:01:59.120 | Don't imitate Christ in his glorious bearing of the sins

00:02:02.880 | of his people as the Lamb of God.

00:02:05.000 | Don't imitate Christ in his claim to have no sin in himself.

00:02:09.000 | Don't imitate Christ in his authority to say,

00:02:11.840 | "The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath."

00:02:14.400 | And clearly, Paul says, "Be imitators of God

00:02:18.760 | as beloved children," Ephesians 5.1.

00:02:21.400 | But Paul knows, we know, Satan knows,

00:02:26.000 | that the wrong kind of God imitation

00:02:29.160 | is not the height of godliness,

00:02:32.480 | but the height of rebellion against God.

00:02:35.040 | What was the essence of Satan's temptation

00:02:39.360 | that brought down the entire creation into misery?

00:02:42.520 | What was it?

00:02:43.360 | Genesis 3.5.

00:02:44.520 | God knows, this is Satan talking,

00:02:47.080 | God knows that when you eat of the forbidden tree,

00:02:51.800 | your eyes will be opened and you will be like God.

00:02:56.800 | Come on, come on, perfect, be a perfect imitator of God.

00:03:01.520 | So you can see why I'm concerned

00:03:03.680 | that we not make God imitation or Christ imitation

00:03:08.680 | too central in our pursuit of holiness.

00:03:12.440 | It is not, let me say this just purely biblically,

00:03:16.640 | it is not the dominant way in the New Testament

00:03:21.280 | or the Old Testament of pursuing godliness.

00:03:24.520 | It's not.

00:03:25.560 | It is there, to be sure, it is there, it is right.

00:03:28.840 | Be holy for I am holy, 1 Peter 1.15.

00:03:32.120 | But far more prominent, underline it, let me say it again,

00:03:35.520 | far more prominent in the Bible is obey God's word.

00:03:40.520 | Not his example, his word.

00:03:46.080 | 100 times more often in the Bible

00:03:49.120 | are we called to bring our lives in conformity to God's word

00:03:53.360 | and to act in a way that accords with the gospel

00:03:56.520 | and that flows from faith.

00:03:58.360 | These are the great guidelines for behavior,

00:04:01.880 | more prominent than imitation of God or Christ.

00:04:06.880 | If we pay attention to the context of each place

00:04:12.080 | where God imitation or Christ imitation is referred to,

00:04:16.240 | we will be protected from most abuses.

00:04:20.360 | For example, Ephesians 5, one where it says,

00:04:23.240 | be imitators of God as beloved children

00:04:27.680 | and walk in love as Christ loved us.

00:04:32.680 | That helps, I mean, that puts a point on it

00:04:35.360 | and a guidance to it.

00:04:36.840 | When a child imitates daddy or mommy,

00:04:40.680 | the child has no thought of being daddy.

00:04:44.480 | I'm gonna become daddy.

00:04:46.440 | He doesn't wanna be daddy.

00:04:48.680 | There are dozens of attributes that mommy and daddy have

00:04:52.500 | that the child neither wants nor has,

00:04:55.080 | but desperately needs them to have.

00:04:57.440 | He wants to be dependent on mommy and daddy,

00:05:01.920 | but he does learn most of what makes him get along

00:05:06.820 | in the world by watching mommy and daddy.

00:05:09.800 | That's the context.

00:05:11.120 | Then Paul points to Christ in those verses in Ephesians 5

00:05:15.920 | as the way God loved us.

00:05:19.240 | Now to Tanner's more specific question,

00:05:21.560 | perhaps God cannot be humble because he's so infallible.

00:05:26.200 | Is God humble, he asks.

00:05:28.080 | Can we imitate him here

00:05:30.480 | or is humility reserved for creatures?

00:05:33.180 | Now that's a tricky question.

00:05:34.840 | - Yeah.

00:05:35.680 | - So many questions are tricky.

00:05:37.160 | It's tricky because language does surprising things.

00:05:42.160 | The problem with saying that God is not humble

00:05:47.680 | is that we usually think of the opposite of humility

00:05:51.880 | as a kind of insecure braggart or show-off or windbag.

00:05:56.880 | At the human level, someone who makes it his aim

00:06:01.720 | to have his name exalted is morally defective.

00:06:06.280 | And yet throughout the whole Bible,

00:06:08.760 | God does that very thing.

00:06:12.280 | He seeks to exalt his name so that it is known

00:06:16.640 | and loved and praised and honored.

00:06:18.840 | Isaiah 48, 11, "For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it.

00:06:23.280 | "How should my name be profane?

00:06:25.420 | "My glory I will not give to another."

00:06:29.680 | If a mere man were to talk like that,

00:06:32.740 | we'd call him a megalomaniac.

00:06:35.840 | But the solution to that is not to say God is humble.

00:06:40.840 | The solution is to say God is loving.

00:06:44.880 | When God exalts his name,

00:06:49.020 | he's exalting the most beautiful,

00:06:50.780 | the most valuable reality in the universe,

00:06:53.800 | namely himself, precisely for the enjoyment

00:06:58.240 | of his believing creatures.

00:07:01.000 | God is in a class by himself.

00:07:03.800 | We cannot follow him in this.

00:07:06.960 | His most loving act is to exalt himself

00:07:11.960 | as the all-satisfying one

00:07:15.640 | for his people's everlasting pleasure.

00:07:19.160 | And he does it at the cost of the life of his son.

00:07:23.800 | Nobody else can love like this,

00:07:26.800 | cannot imitate that, offering themselves,

00:07:31.240 | offering ourselves as the all-satisfying treasure

00:07:35.480 | in the universe.

00:07:36.320 | We don't imitate God by exalting ourselves

00:07:39.400 | the way God exalts himself.

00:07:41.120 | We imitate God rightly by exalting God

00:07:46.080 | the way God exalts God,

00:07:48.480 | because we're not God and we can't be God.

00:07:50.720 | We shouldn't want to be God.

00:07:53.200 | But that means we are humble in precisely this sense

00:07:59.640 | which he cannot be.

00:08:01.440 | Humility for us at its heart

00:08:05.520 | is to feel and think and say and act

00:08:09.880 | in a way that shows I am not God.

00:08:14.880 | I try to get on my knees once a day

00:08:20.000 | just for 10 seconds or longer and say,

00:08:23.760 | just wanted to remind myself, Lord,

00:08:26.680 | I'm not God and I'm glad.

00:08:28.960 | That may seem strange, but there it is.

00:08:30.960 | I think the very essence of humility

00:08:33.400 | is to say and act in a way that says I'm not God.

00:08:37.240 | That is the heart of humility for created humans.

00:08:40.800 | I'm not God, I'm under God.

00:08:42.600 | 1 Peter 5, 6, humble yourselves therefore

00:08:47.080 | under the mighty hand of God.

00:08:51.480 | Humility for us at its essence is what God cannot do.

00:08:56.800 | He can't be humble like this.

00:08:59.520 | Namely, he cannot gladly say I'm not God, hooray.

00:09:04.520 | God can't say that.

00:09:06.080 | It would be the undoing of the universe.

00:09:10.560 | But let's end like this,

00:09:12.160 | 'cause this is what he's really getting at.

00:09:13.880 | And I think it's the right answer.

00:09:15.400 | I was asked this question one time at an ETS meeting

00:09:18.040 | after I gave a big talk on God's pursuit of his own glory.

00:09:20.800 | Somebody stood up and said,

00:09:21.720 | so there's no humility in God, right?

00:09:24.240 | And here's more or less what I said.

00:09:27.320 | Since perfect humility, that is perfect happy eagerness,

00:09:32.320 | not to be God, but to trust God,

00:09:35.720 | depend upon God, treasure God,

00:09:38.280 | that perfect humility is required of all human beings.

00:09:42.200 | It was required of Adam, he failed.

00:09:44.920 | It's required of us and we have failed.

00:09:47.640 | Now, God loves such humility.

00:09:51.200 | It is in his nature to consider humility,

00:09:56.200 | human humility, a beautiful thing.

00:09:59.840 | It's in his nature to delight in it.

00:10:01.960 | And he means to have it from his people whom he possesses

00:10:06.960 | and who will possess it, that kind of humility,

00:10:10.120 | as his children forever.

00:10:12.000 | So he does the unthinkable.

00:10:13.840 | He takes on human nature.

00:10:15.960 | The son of God becomes the God-man

00:10:18.200 | precisely to do what God as God cannot do.

00:10:23.160 | Be perfectly humble in his human nature.

00:10:27.360 | Christ perfectly trusted his father,

00:10:30.000 | perfectly depended on his father.

00:10:33.480 | And in his dependence,

00:10:34.920 | he did what only a perfect human in union with God could do.

00:10:39.040 | Philippians 2.8, being found in human form,

00:10:42.360 | he humbled himself by becoming obedient

00:10:47.400 | to the point of death, even death on a cross.

00:10:51.680 | So here's my conclusion.

00:10:54.040 | God, considered absolutely as God, cannot be humble,

00:10:59.040 | though he can be and is loving.

00:11:03.160 | But the God-man in his perfect humanity

00:11:07.880 | could be humble and was, and in that sense,

00:11:11.760 | has taken the beauty of humility into the Godhead

00:11:17.080 | for Christ, the God-man,

00:11:20.160 | will always be God and man forever.

00:11:25.160 | - Amen, the mystery of mysteries, God become flesh,

00:11:28.000 | Christ taking up human nature and thus taking up humility.

00:11:31.880 | Well, there's a lot more to say here.

00:11:33.600 | I'm reminded of episode 1111 in this podcast series.

00:11:37.680 | It's one of my all-time favorites.

00:11:39.600 | Is God a megalomaniac?

00:11:41.920 | That's episode 1111,

00:11:43.880 | and it maps onto what we're talking about here very nicely.

00:11:47.680 | Thanks for listening.

00:11:48.520 | If you haven't done so, you can get the latest episodes

00:11:51.040 | by subscribing to Ask Pastor John

00:11:52.760 | in your favorite podcast app or in Spotify,

00:11:54.880 | or by subscribing to DG's YouTube channel.

00:11:57.400 | And to find other episodes in our archive, like 1111,

00:12:00.840 | or to submit a question of your own to us,

00:12:02.640 | go online to desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.

00:12:07.440 | I am your host, Tony Reinke.

00:12:08.760 | We return on Monday.

00:12:10.120 | Have a wonderful weekend.

00:12:11.200 | We'll see you then.

00:12:12.120 | (upbeat music)

00:12:14.720 | (upbeat music)

00:12:17.320 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Is God Humble?

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