"First Humility, Second Humility, Third Humility"

 

Some of you have asked for this passage I quoted last Sunday in the sermon. John Calvin and Jonathan Edwards added their own “Amen” to Augustine’s statement in their day. And it really is a special statement. I have been pondering it since last week.

Augustine wrote a letter (Letter No. 118) to Dioscorus, a young Greek scholar. In that dispatch Augustine upholds humility as the condition and foundation for Christian living. He wrote:

“To [Christ) ... I wish you to submit with complete devotion, and to construct no other way for yourself of grasping and holding the truth than the way constructed by Him who, as God, saw how faltering were our steps. This way is first humility, second humility, third humility, and however often you should ask me I would say the same, not because there are no other precepts to be explained, but if humility does not precede and accompany and follow every good work we do, and if it is not set before us to look upon, and beside us to lean upon, and behind us to fence us in, pride will wrest from our hand any good deed we do while we are in the very act of taking pleasure in it.”

Was the beloved African pastor correct? I think Scripture bears him out from one end to the other.

• “When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with the humble is wisdom.” (Proverbs 11:2)
• “Before destruction a man’s heart is haughty, but humility comes before honor.” (Proverbs 18:12)
• “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)
• “… But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.” (Isaiah 66:2)
• “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke 14:11)
• “Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.” (1 Peter 5:5b-7)

As the old Sony and Cher song I grew up with, put it: “The beat goes on, the beat goes on, Drums keep pounding a rhythm to the brain, La de da de de, la de da de da.”

 

Pastor Mike