The California Collection/TheCaliforniaCollection.cdr/his101/bibl30.arj/BIBL30.TXT

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                "THE POWER TO LIVE THE CHRISTIAN LIFE"
                      HUMILITY, BY ANDREW MURRAY

"I am in the midst of you as he that serveth." (Luke 22:27)

.    In the Gospel of John we have the inner life of our Lord laid
open to us.  Jesus speaks frequently of His relation to the Father, of
the motives by which He is guided, of His consciousness of the power
and spirit in which He acts.  Though the word humble does not occur,
we shall nowhere in Scripture see so clearly wherein His humility
consisted.

.    We have already said that this grace is in truth nothing but the
simple consent of the creature to let God be all, in virtue of which
it surrenders itself to His working alone.  In Jesus we shall see how
both as the Son of God in heaven, and as a man upon earth, He took the
place of entire subordination, and gave God the honor and the glory
which is due to Him.  And what He taught so often was made true to
Himself: 'He that humbleth himself shall be exalted.'  As it is
written, 'He humbled Himself, therefore God highly exalted Him.'

.    Listen to the words in which our Lord speaks of His relation to
the Father, and see how unceasingly He uses the word 'not', and
'nothing' of Himself.  The 'not I', in which Paul expresses his
relation to Christ, is the very spirit of what Christ says of His
relation to the Father.

'The Son can do nothing of Himself.' (John 5:19)

'I can of My own self do nothing; My judgment is just, because I seek
not Mine own will.' (John 5:30)

'I receive not glory from men.' (John 5:41)

'I am come not to do Mine own will.' (John 6:38)

'My teaching is not Mine' (John 7:16)

'I am not come of Myself' (John 7:28)

'I do nothing of Myself' (John 8:28)

'I have not come of Myself, but He sent Me.' (John 8:42)

'I seek not Mine own glory' (John 8:50)

'The words that I say, I speak not from Myself' (John 14:10)

'The word which ye hear is not Mine.' (John 14:24)

.    These words open to us the deepest roots of Christ's life and
work.  They tell us how it was that the Almighty God was able to work
His mighty redemptive work through Him.  They show what Christ counted
the state of heart which became Him as the Son of the Father.  They
teach us what the essential nature and life is of that redemption
which Christ accomplished and now communicates.

.    It is this: He was nothing, that God might be all.  He resigned
Himself with His will and His powers entirely for the Father to work
in Him.  Of his own power, His own will, and His own glory, of His
whole mission with all His works and His teaching, - of all this He
said, It is not I; I am nothing; I have been given Myself to the
Father to work; I am nothing, the Father is all.

.    The life of entire self-abnegation, of absolute submission and
dependence upon the Father's will, Christ found to be one of perfect
peace and joy.  He lost nothing by giving all to God.  God honored His
trust, and did all for Him, and then exalt Him to His own right hand
in glory.  And because Christ had thus humbled Himself before God, and
God was ever before Him, He found it possible to humble Himself before
men too, and to be the Servant of all.

.    His humility was simply the surrender of Himself to God, to allow
Him to do in Him what pleased, whatever men around might say of Him,
or do to Him.

.    It is in this state of mind, in this spirit and disposition, that
the redemption of Christ has its virtue and efficacy.  It is to bring
us to this disposition that we are made partakers of Christ.  This the
true self denial to which our Savior calls us, the acknowledgment that
self has nothing good in it, except as an empty vessel which God must
fill, and that its claim to be or do anything may not for moment be
allowed.  It is in this, above and before everything, in which the
conformity to Jesus consist, the being and doing nothing of ourselves,
that God may be all.

.    Here we have the root and nature of true humility.  It is because
this is not understood or sought after, that our humility is so
superficial and so feeble.  We must learn of Jesus, how He is meek and
lowly of heart.  He teaches us where true humility takes its rise and
finds its strength - in the knowledge that it is God who worketh all
in all, that our place it to yield to Him in perfect resignation and
dependence, in full consent to be and to do nothing of ourselves.
This is the life Christ came to reveal and to impart - a life to God
that came through death to sin and self.

.    If we feel that this life it too high for us and beyond our
reach, it must but the more urge us to seek it in Him; it is the
indwelling Christ who will live in us this life, meek and lowly.  If
we long for this, let us, meantime, above everything, seek the holy
secret of knowledge of the nature of God, as HE every moment works all
in all; the secret, of which all nature and every creature, and above
all, every child of God, is to be the witness - that it is nothing but
a vessel, a channel, through which the living God can manifest the
riches of His wisdom, power, and goodness.

.    The root of all virtue and grace, of all faith and acceptable
worship, is that we know that we have nothing but what we receive, and
bow in deepest humility to wait upon God for it.

.    It was because this humility was not only a temporary sentiment,
wakened up and brought into exercise when He thought of God, but the
very spirit of His whole life, that Jesus as just as humble in His
intercourse with men as with God.  He felt Himself the Servant of God
of the men whom God made and loved; as a natural consequence, He
counted Himself the Servant of men, that through Him God might do His
work of love.  He never for a moment thought of seeking His honor, or
asserting His power to vindicate Himself.  His whole spirit was that
of a life yielded to God to work in.  It is not until Christians study
the humility of Jesus as the very essence of His redemption, as the
very blessedness of the life of the Son of God, as the only true
relation to the Father, and therefore as that which Jesus must give us
if we are to have any part with Him, that he terrible lack of actual,
heavenly, manifest humility will become a burden and a sorrow, and our
ordinary religion be set aside to secure this, the first and chief of
the marks of the Christ within us.

Brother, are you clothed with humility?

.    Ask your daily like.  Ask Jesus.  Ask your friends.  Ask the
word.  And begin to praise God that there is opened up to you in Jesus
a heavenly humility of which you have hardly known, and through which
a heavenly blessedness you possibly have never yet tasted can come in
to you.