The Glory Of The Creature

With humility, God dwells in the creature while pride, failure and defects await the creature.

For God to dwell in the creature, the creature has to present itself to the creator as an empty vessel which the creator will fill and manifest his power and goodness.

"Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created." Rev. 4:11.

When God created the universe, it was with the one object of making the creature partaker of His perfection and blessedness, and so showing forth in it the glory of His love, wisdom, and power. God wished to reveal Himself in and through created beings by communicating to them as much of His own goodness and glory as they were capable of receiving. But this communication was not giving to the creature something which it could possess in itself, a certain life or goodness, of which it had the charge and disposal. By no means. But as God is the ever living, ever-present, ever-acting One, who upholds all things by the word of His power, and in whom all things exist, the relation of the creature to God could only be one of unceasing, absolute, and universal dependence. As truly as God by His power once created, so truly by that same power must He maintain every moment.

The creature not only has to look back to the origin and first beginning of existence, and acknowledge that it there owes everything to God its chief care, its highest virtue, its only happiness, now and through all eternity, but also present itself as an empty vessel, in which God can dwell and manifest His power and goodness.

The life God bestows is imparted not once for all, but each moment continuously, by the unceasing operation of His mighty power. Humility, the place of entire dependence on God, is, from the very nature of things, the first duty and the highest virtue of the creature, and the root of every virtue.

And so pride, or the loss of this humility, is the root of every sin and evil. It was when the now fallen angels began to look upon themselves with self-complacency that they were led to disobedience, and were cast down from the light of heaven into outer darkness. Even so, it was when the serpent breathed the poison of his pride, the desire to be as God, into the hearts of our first parents, that they too fell from their high estate into all the wretchedness in which man is now sunk. In heaven and earth, pride and self-exaltation are the gates and the birth, and the curse of hell.

Nothing can be our redemption but the restoration of the lost humility, the original and only true relation of the creature to its God. And so Jesus came to bring humility back to earth, to make us partakers of it, and by it to save us. In heaven, He humbled Himself to become man. The humility we see in Him possessed Him in Heaven, it brought Him and He brought it from there. Here on earth "He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death" (Philippians 2:8); His humility gave His death value, and so became our redemption. And now the salvation He imparts is nothing less and nothing else than a communication of His own life and death, His own disposition and spirit, His own humility, as the ground and root of His relation to God and His redeeming work.

Jesus Christ took the place and fulfilled the destiny of man, as a creature, by His life of perfect humility. His humility is our salvation and His salvation is our humility. The life of the saved ones and that of the saints must bear this stamp of deliverance from sin, and full restoration to their original state; their whole relation to God and man marked by an all-pervading humility. Without this, there can be no true abiding in God's presence, or experience of His favour and the power of His Spirit, but rather, the absence of abiding faith, love, joy, and strength.

Humility is the only soil in which the graces root. Therefore, the lack of humility is a sufficient explanation for 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 is the right attitude before God, and allows Him to do all as God. God has so constituted us as reasonable beings that the truer the insight into the real nature or the absolute need of a command, the readier and fuller will be our obedience to it. The call to humility has been too little regarded in the Church because its true nature and importance have been too little apprehended.

It is not something which we bring to God, or He bestows; 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. When the creature realizes that this is the true nobility and consents to be with his will, his mind and affections form the vessel in which the life and Glory of God are to work and manifest themselves. He sees humility as simply acknowledging the truth of his position as creature and yielding to God.

In the life of earnest Christians, of those who pursue and profess holiness, humility ought to be the chief mark of their uprightness. It is often said that it is not so. May not one reason be that in the teaching and example of the Church, it has never had that place of supreme importance that belongs to it. And that this, again, is owing to the neglect of this truth, that strong as sin is as a motive to humility, there is one of still wider and mightier influence, that which makes the angels, that which made Jesus, that which makes the holiest of saints in heaven, so humble.

The first and chief mark of the relation of the creature and the secret of his blessedness is the humility and nothingness which leaves God free to be all. I am sure there are many Christians who will confess that their experience has been very much like my own in this, that we had long known the Lord without realizing that meekness and lowliness of heart are to be the distinguishing feature of the disciple as they were of the Master. Further, that this humility is not a thing that will come of itself, but that it must be made the object of special desire, prayer, faith, and practice.

As we study the word, we shall see the very distinct and oft-repeated instructions Jesus gave His disciples on this point, and how slow they were in understanding Him. Let us, at the very commencement of our meditations, admit that there is nothing as natural to man, nothing as insidious and hidden from our sight, nothing as difficult and dangerous as pride.

Let us feel that nothing but determination and perseverance, while waiting on God and Christ, will discover how lacking we are in the grace of humility, and how impotent to obtain what we seek.

Let us study the character of Christ until our souls are filled with the love and admiration of His lowliness. And let us believe that, when we are broken down under a sense of our pride, and our impotence to cast it out, Jesus Christ Himself will come in to impart this grace too, as a part of His wondrous life within us.

NOTE A All this is to make it known the region of eternity that pride can degrade the highest angels into devils, and humility raise fallen flesh and blood to the thrones of angels. Thus, this is the great end of God raising a new creation out of a fallen kingdom of angels. For this end, it stands in its state of war between the fire and pride of fallen angels, and the humility of the Lamb of God, that the last trumpet may sound the great truth through the depths of eternity, that evil can have no beginning but from pride, and no end but from humility.

The truth is this, pride may die in you or nothing of heaven can live in you. Under the banner of the truth, give yourself up to the meek and humble spirit of the Holy Jesus. Humility must sow seed, or there can be no reaping in Heaven. Look not at pride only as an unbecoming temper, nor at humility only as a decent virtue: for one is death, and the other is life, one is all hell and the other is all heaven. So much as you have pride within you, you have of the fallen angels alive in you, so much as you have true humility, and so much you have the Lamb of God within you.

Could you see what every stirring of pride does to your soul, you would beg of everything you meet to tear the viper from you, though with the loss of a hand or an eye. Could you see what a sweet, divine, transforming power there is in humility, how it expels the poison of your nature, and makes room for the Spirit of God to live in you, you would rather wish to be the footstool of all the world than want the smallest degree of it." --Spirit of Prayer, Pt.II, p.73, Edition of Moreton, Canterbury, 1893.