I have a new baby girl!!!! Briana and I are grateful for your prayers. God has heard well. Mom and baby are beautiful as could be.

In light of the last few Worship Wednesday posts regarding humility, I had one final thought.

A major component to true, genuine humility is entrusting God with exaltation and not trying to bring it about on our own. For years, I understood humility as being manifest when I thought of myself as the lowest of the low. That isn’t humility, that is false humility, or an alternate, more subversive form of pride. There is a place for denying oneself, but there is no place for degrading oneself.

Humility in the end is not about seeing yourself as lower or higher than you ought, but seeing yourself as you ought. The quintessential NT passage on humility is Philippians 2.

 ³ Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. ⁴ Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. ⁵  Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, ⁶  who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, ⁷ but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. ⁸ And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. ⁹  Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, ¹⁰ so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,¹¹ and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. 

Here, in the text, we find that we are to have the mind of Christ (verse 5). The mind that didn’t demand what he deserved, but subjected himself to the will of the Father. In due time, the Father brought exaltation (verse 9). In much the same way, we are to trust God to exalt us when he sees fit. Whether we deserve it or not isn’t the point. Exaltation is coming for all those who are in Christ. Some are exalted in various ways in this life, but we will all be exalted in the life to come.

When our life bears the fruit of humility, we wait patiently upon the Father’s timing, not comparing ourselves to others or to what we believe should be, but letting the peace of God reign in us. The hope we treasure and hide in our hearts ceases to be treasure when we boast in anything except the cross of Christ.