Humility is a character trait that God loves. The Bible tells us that God is totally against human pride and boastfulness, and wants all of His people to be humble. It is imperative, then, that all who call themselves Christian work on being humble.
The Bible tells us that "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble" (James 4:6).
We understand that pride doesn't give us plus points with God; rather it gives Him more reason to resist us. Instead, what we must do is to "[h]umble [ourselves] in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift [us] up" (James 4:10).
One verse to keep us humble
To be proud means to have an excessively high opinion of ourselves. Usually, a proud person imposes their self-importance on others, which is what we call bragging. Proud people who love to brag about themselves need not be proud of their financial or material achievements. They can also be proud of how "holy" or "righteous" they are compared to others.
This kind of character, no matter how much proud people try to justify it, is plain wrong. The Lord Jesus Himself rebuked certain people for being so self-righteous, and what He said will help all of us to stay away from being proud of ourselves:
"Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye." (Matthew 7:5)
Self-checking
Many of us have grown proud without noticing it. We see the faults that other people have. We see their mistakes. We hear how they talk or sing bad. We laugh at them as they make unintended blunders. We criticise them for the way they walk. We look down on them based on how they look.
Simply put, we look down on others because we think we're better. Are we really?
We need to check ourselves if we have grown proud. We might be Christian in name, but our character stinks far worse than that of a criminal. We could go to church and confess to love all men on Sundays, but we can't even extend a gracious hand to that quiet homeless man sitting outside the church building on weekdays.
We need to evaluate ourselves in light of God's standards in Scripture. Do we pass? No one passes, because "[t]here is none righteous, no, not one" (see Romans 3:10). Only Christ is righteous. Only God is good.
Work on yourself
Friends, if we want to be humble, we should stop looking at the faults and failings of others and start working on ourselves. We're no better than anybody if all we ever do is convince ourselves that we're better when in fact we're not. Let's work on being humble.
