Clothed In Humility - 1 Peter 5:5b Series

1 Peter 5:5 Young men, in the same way be submissive to those who are older. All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." 6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. 7 Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

Introduction

Listen very carefully to these words I am about to read because Jesus said your eternal destiny depends on whether you understand them.

Matthew 18:1 At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" 2 He called a little child and had him stand among them. 3 And he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

When you think about what the big, important, essential things are in Scripture, it does not get any bigger or more essential than humility. Whether or not you are humble determines whether you will go to heaven or hell, because it determines whether or not you can know God. Jesus started the greatest sermon ever preached by saying, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs (and theirs alone) is the kingdom of heaven.” If you have not been to church in a while you picked a good day to come because there is not any topic more crucial for knowing God than humility.

We have been studying verse by verse through the book of 1 Peter and the last several weeks we have been looking at the beginning of chapter 5. First he addressed elders, then the congregation, and now in verse 5:

5 ...All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another

Whether elder or non-elder, authority or subordinate, no matter who we are or what our position in the church, every one of us must clothe ourselves with humility. God requires humility every bit as much from elders and those in authority as from anyone else. There is no difference. If being humble and in charge seem to you like a contradiction, you do not understand the concept of biblical leadership. In the kingdom of God, being in authority and being humble are not the slightest bit in tension. The most humble man who ever lived was also the greatest authority who ever lived - the Lord Jesus Christ. So whatever your role or position, every one of us has the same responsibility to clothe ourselves with humility.

There are two sides to humility - humility toward God and humility toward people. Peter focuses on humility toward people in verse 5 (clothe yourselves with humility toward one another) and then toward God in verse 6 (humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God). For today we will just focus on verse 5 - humility toward people.

The Meaning of Humility

So let’s start with a definition - what is humility, exactly? I am going to go way out on a limb and suggest that it is the opposite of pride. So what is pride? Again, there are two sides to it - pride toward God and pride toward men.

The Opposite of Pride

Pride toward God is when you put yourself in God’s place. Pride toward men is when you have an inflated conception of your own importance compared to other people. Imagine you are standing in line somewhere, and someone comes walking up and steps right in front of you in line. And he turns to you and says, “I am a very important person. I’m much more important than you, and so it would be ridiculous for me to stand in line behind someone like you.” That would be a little on the obnoxious side, wouldn’t you say? Even if he did not actually say that, but he had that attitude, still, that would be an incredibly obnoxious attitude to have – “I’m more important than you.” I think that is about as good a definition for pride as there is. Pride is when you are wearing your “I’m important” badge. And I don’t mean you consciously think that. It is not that you are walking around consciously thinking, “I’m so important.” That would be too obvious. Satan is much more subtle than that. This is not a conscious thought – it is an attitude, hidden deep down inside where you are not even aware that it is there. And so the only way to detect it is by the symptoms. And that is not even easy because there are so many different symptoms.

Symptoms of Pride

That “I’m important” attitude can be one of the hardest sins to diagnose, because it takes so many different forms. As soon as you deal with it in one form, it pops up in your heart in a completely different form. If a disease has 100 different possible symptoms, and you only have one or two of them, you might conclude that you don’t have the disease because you don’t have those other 98 symptoms. I think pride may be the spiritual disease that has the widest variety of symptoms.