How to be the greatest through humility

“Whosoever would be greatest among you, shall be your servant” (Matthew 23:11)

Humility is nothing but the disappearance of self in the vision that God is all. Humility means the giving up of self and becoming perfect nothingness before God.

 Gleanings from Humility by Andrew Murray

   “Whosoever would be greatest among you, shall be your servant” (Matthew 23:11). Jesus simply taught us the blessed truth that there is nothing so divine and heavenly as being the servant and helper of all. The faithful servant who recognized his position finds a real pleasure in supplying the wants of the master or his guests. When we see that humility is something infinitely deeper than contrition, and accept it as our participation in the life of Jesus, we will begin to learn that it is our true nobility. We will begin to understand that being servants of all is the highest fulfillment of our destiny, as men created in the image of God. (pg. 7)

   Our purpose for being…”…Thou has created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created” (Revelation 4:11) (pg 9)

   Humility, the place of entire dependence on God, is, from the very nature of things, the first duty and the highest virtue of man. It is the root of every virtue.

   And so pride, or the loss of this humility, is the root of every sin and evil. (pg 10) …evil can have no beginning but from pride, and no end but from humility. (pg 97)

   Humility is the only soil in which the graces root; the lack of humility is the sufficient explanation of every defect and failure. Humility is not so much a grace or virtue along with others, it is the root of all, because it alone assumes the right attitude before God and allows Him as God to do all….It is simply the sense of entire nothingness, which comes when we see how truly God is all, and in which we make way for God to be all. (pg 12)

   …the first and chief mark of the relationship of man with God, the secret of his blessedness, is the humility and nothingness which leaves God free to be all. (pg 13)

   It is from our pride we need, above everything, to be redeemed. (pg 16)

   Even as we need to look to the first Adam and his fall to know the power of the sin within us, we need to know well the Second Adam and His power to give within us a life of humility as real and abiding and overmastering as has been that of pride. We have our life from and in Christ…(pg 17)

   Christ found this life of entire self-renunciation, of absolute submission and dependence upon the Father’s will, to be one of perfect peace and joy. He lost nothing by giving everything to God…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. He was able to be the Servant of all. His humility was simply the surrender of Himself to God, to allow the Father to do in Him what He pleased, no matter what men around might say of Him, or do to Him. (pg 23)

   He teaches us where true humility takes its rise and finds its strength-in the knowledge that it is God who works all in all, that our place is 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 in God that comes through death to sin and self. (pg 24)

   “Whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant.” God wants us to believe that Jesus means this! We all know what the character of a faithful servant or slave implies. Devotion to the master’s interests, thoughtful study and care to please him, delight in his prosperity and honor and happiness. There are servants on earth in whom these dispositions have been seen, and to whom the name of servant has never been anything but a glory.

   To many of us it has been a new joy in the Christian life to know that we may yield ourselves as servants, as slaves to God, and to find that His service is our highest liberty - the liberty from sin and self. (pg 31)