Humbling Human Arrogance

Humbling Human Arrogance by Coty Pinckney

[This devotion is taken primarily from the third section of the July 21 sermon, “The Reasonable Foolishness of Christ Crucified.” Audio of that sermon will be available soon at this link.]

The haughty looks of man shall be brought low,
and the lofty pride of men shall be humbled,
and the LORD alone will be exalted in that day.
Isaiah 2:11

“Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children,
you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Whoever humbles himself like this child
is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew 18:3-4

God promises to humble all human arrogance. He will show Himself to be the only Being worthy of praise, as the Father exalts the Son, the Son exalts the Father, and the Spirit exalts both Father and Son. We must humble ourselves, therefore, if we are to be part of the summing up of all things in Christ (Ephesians 1:10), when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of the Father (Philippians 2:10-11).

In 1 Corinthians 1:26-2:5, the Apostle Paul shows how God’s humbling purposes have been manifested in his readers’ experience. He asks:  Who is part of this church? Who has come to faith in Christ crucified?

If coming to faith were dependent on our being able to figure God out on our own, then you would have to be at least reasonably bright to be saved. Indeed, those who are of high intelligence would then be over-represented in the church.

Alternately, if you were able to get into the family of God the way many get employment – through connections, networking, and influence – then you would expect to find that most saved people come from prominent backgrounds.

In either of those cases, there would be some basis for our boasting:

  • “We are in the church because we’re smarter than those folks outside!”
  • Or, “We are here because of our ancestry, because of how important our families are!”

But Paul tells the Corinthians (and us): Look around. What do you see? Are the believers especially intelligent? Are they predominantly from prominent families?

No. Not many of the Corinthian believers were wise by the world’s standards; not many were born to privileged positions. Instead, God chose and called predominantly those who seem foolish, those who seem weak, those who are not honored, even those who may seem deplorable – to humble the supposedly wise and strong and influential. This is in accord with what Jesus prays in Luke 10:21:

“I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.”

God is the active agent in salvation. And He chooses not primarily the most intelligent, not primarily the most prominent – why? 1 Corinthians 1:29: “So that no human being might boast in the presence of God.” That’s the bottom line. God humbles us – who, sinful as we are, need to be humbled. And He exalts Himself, He exalts Jesus the Son – the One worthy of all exaltation.

So rather than boast in ourselves, we are (1 Corinthians 1:31) to boast in Jesus, in the cross. For it is because of God and His great plan that we are in Christ Jesus and therefore receive God’s wisdom in the Gospel – righteousness, holiness, and redemption through Jesus’ death on the cross.

Then in 1 Corinthians 2:1-5, the Apostle Paul tells us that even he – capable as he was of wowing folks with his intellect – did not do that. He didn’t think, “Ok, I’ll get their attention with my rhetoric, draw them in with my learning, then convince them with my powerful arguments.” Why not? He tells us in verse 5: “So that your faith might not be based on the wisdom of men” – not even on the wisdom of the Apostle Paul!  – “but on the power of God.”

Paul did not want to make disciples of Paul. He wanted God to make disciples of Jesus as he preached and lived out the Gospel. If he was drawing attention to himself, he was undercutting the Gospel, not faithfully proclaiming it.

So as the Holy Spirit performed that mighty miracle in Corinth – the same miracle He has performed in so many of our hearts:

  • removing our hearts of stone and replacing them with hearts of flesh
  • circumcising our hearts
  • opening blind eyes to see the beauty of Jesus
  • granting faith and making of each changed person a new creation

God the Father was glorified. God the Son was honored. And these new believers could see: Paul was just a messenger. He was just an ambassador. The honor, praise, and thanks goes to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Human arrogance was humbled. God was shown to be all in all.

That is our goal and desire within Desiring God Community Church:

  • To humble our own natural arrogance
  • To stifle our own inclination to boast
  • To honor the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as worthy of all praise and glory

Yes, the cross, the Gospel, God’s entire plan seems foolishness in the eyes of those who are perishing (1 Corinthians 1:18). But when we behold our God,

  • When we see Him for Who He is
  • When we see Him as the only being worthy of worship
  • When we see the goal of the Father to exalt the Son He loves
  • When we see Jesus dying for the glory of the Father
  • When we glimpse the coming marriage supper of the Lamb, and our own joint role as Bride of Christ

Then we see: This all makes sense. This is all perfectly reasonable. I was blind, thinking the cross was foolishness. I was arrogant, thinking I could figure God out. But now I see: He alone is to be exalted. I bow before Him and gladly give Him the worship and honor He deserves.

 

Bonhoeffer on Confession, Counseling, and the Cross

Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

Anybody who lives beneath the Cross and who has discerned in the Cross of Jesus the utter wickedness of all men and of his own heart will find there is no sin that can ever be alien to him. Anybody who has once been horrified by the dreadfulness of his own sin that nailed Jesus to the Cross will no longer be horrified by even the rankest sins of a brother. Looking at the Cross of Jesus, he knows the human heart. He knows how utterly lost it is in sin and weakness, how it goes astray in the ways of sin, and he also knows that it is accepted in grace and mercy. Only the brother under the Cross can hear a confession.

It is not experience of life but experience of the Cross that makes one a worthy hearer of confessions. The most experienced psychologist or observer of human nature knows infinitely less of the human heart than the simplest Christian who lives beneath the Cross of Jesus. The greatest psychological insight, ability, and experience cannot grasp this one thing: what sin is. Worldly wisdom knows what distress and weakness and failure are, but it does not know the godlessness of man. And so it also does not know that man is destroyed only by his sin and can be healed only by forgiveness. Only the Christian knows this. In the presence of a psychiatrist I can only be a sick man; in the presence of a Christian brother I can dare to be a sinner. The psychiatrist must first search my heart and yet he never plumbs its ultimate depth. The Christian brother knows when I come to him: here is a sinner like myself, a godless man who wants to confess and yearns for God’s forgiveness. The psychiatrist views me as if there were no God. The brother views me as I am before the judging and merciful God in the Cross of Jesus Christ.

Life Together (published in German in 1939; English edition: Harper and Row, 1954), p. 118-119.