“And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up
so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be
merciful to me a sinner.” Luke 18:13
When you examine the character of Jesus Christ you will find in
him every desirable virtue, among which: love, compassion, courage,
discernment, as well as, humility.
Humility is essential to the Christian.
We must have it in our walk with Christ, and have it to begin our walk
with Christ (i.e. conversion and sanctification, the beginning). You cannot be converted and remain determined
to be a sinner. At some point, in order
to make it to heaven, one must say “I am wrong.” To repent of your sins is (amongst other
things) to admit you are wrong. This
takes humility, this takes the abandonment of personal pride and strength, and
the acceptance/belief that God is all in all.
Godly sorrow that worketh to repentance is not something to be
repented of. (2 Cor 7:10) When the Holy Ghost convicts and convinces you that
you are a sinner. It is a both a
blessing and an act of grace. You have
reached a point where you understand that you are wrong and need to change. You have reach a wonderful realization; a
realization that you are lost. Think,
what if conviction was as the lottery.
Only those, a select few, randomly have their number drawn and come to
realize that they are lost; imagine if we never knew that we were lost. If we never knew that we were sinners. We would go through our whole life thinking
that we were “ok”; living our life as it pleased us, only to die and meet God a
condemned sinner bound for an eternity in hell.
What a tragedy! Though we
obtained the world’s rich’s it would be far better to obtain genuine Holy Ghost
conviction and have the opportunity to decide to follow Christ. I am confident to say that many have felt
conviction from God, and reasoned themselves away from it, because they were
unwilling to admit that they are wrong.
It is in this light that we find the ugliness of pride
revealed. When you are so confident in
your strength and the reasoning of your own mind; you are unwilling to listen
to the counsel of God, and a state of repentance will be forever lost to you. There are far more who will go to hell
because of pride than ever did because of drinking, rioting, and such
like. There are many who sit in church,
dressed in the finest clothes, driving the finest cars, and are whole heartily
convinced that they are righteous; because of pride they cannot see or rather
are unwilling to look at the true state of their soul and “examine themselves
to see if they are in the faith or not.”
Pride will blind the eyes to the path of God and blind the mind to the
counsel of God; pride will condemn the soul as sure as any “substance” sin ever
would. The scripture says “let the
wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts.” That tells me, all you have to do to be
wicked is want your way over God’s.
Friend, we stand in constant need of humility.
When you decide to follow Jesus, admit you were wrong, repent
and become sanctified. It does not leave
a bitter taste in your mouth. It does
not bring turmoil and bondage; far from it, it brings liberty. It takes the pressure off of you and allows
you to live in fellowship with God the Father, and in His will he can bring you
into every desirable virtue that the man of Christ embodied. Perhaps not in one single prayer, it might take
a lifetime, but as my minister once told me: “the joy is in the seeking.”
However this cannot begin unless one finds a place of humility and admits they
are wrong.
