Humility And Death To Self

Jesus humbled Himself to death as a sign of total surrender to God, the Father. As people that Jesus Christ died for, we are therefore called upon to die to self to let humility lead and become our breath and joy.

"He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death" Philippians 2:8.

Humility is the path to death, because in death it gives the highest proof of its perfection.

umility is the blossom of which death to self, is the perfect fruit. Jesus humbled Himself unto death, and opened the path in which we too must walk. As there was no way for Him to prove His surrender to God to the very utmost, or to give up and rise out of our human nature to the glory of the Father but through death, so with us too.

Humility must lead us to die to self, so we prove how wholly we have given ourselves up to it and to God. Alone we are freed from fallen nature, and find the path that leads to life in God, to that full birth of the new nature, of which humility is the breath and the joy. We have spoken of what Jesus did for His disciples when He communicated His resurrection life to them. In the descent of the Holy Spirit, He, the glorified and enthroned meekness, actually came from heaven Himself to dwell in them.

He won the power to do this through death; in its inmost nature, the life He imparted was a life out of death, a life that had been surrendered to death, and been won through death. He who came to dwell in them was Himself One who had been dead and now lives for evermore. Jesus’ life, His person, and presence bear the marks of death and of being a life begotten out of death. That life in His disciples ever bears the death marks too. It is only as the Spirit of death, of the dying One, dwells and works in the soul, that the power of His life can be known.

The first and chief mark of the dying of the Lord Jesus, of the death marks that show the true follower of Jesus, is humility. For these two reasons, only humility leads to perfect death, and only death perfects humility. Humility and death are in their very nature. Humility is the bud; in death, the fruit is ripened to perfection.

Humility leads to perfect death. Humility means the giving up of self and taking the place of perfect nothingness before God. Jesus humbled Himself and became obedient unto death. In death, He gave the highest, the perfect proof of having given up His will to the will of God.

In death, Jesus gave up Himself, with his natural reluctance to drink the cup. He gave up the life He had in union with our human nature, He died to self, and the sin that tempted Him, and so, as man, He entered into the perfect life of God. If it had not been for His boundless humility, counting Himself as nothing except as a servant to do and suffer the will of God, He never would have died. This gives us the answer to the question so often asked, and of which the meaning is so seldom clearly apprehended. How can I die to self? Death to self is not your work; it is God's work.

In Christ, you are dead to sin, the life in you has gone through the process of death and resurrection, and you may be sure you are indeed dead to sin. But the full manifestation of the power of this death in your disposition and conduct depends upon the measure in which the Holy Spirit imparts the power of the death of Christ. And here it is that the teaching is needed if you would enter into full fellowship with Christ in His death, and know the full deliverance from self, and humble yourself. This is your one duty.

Place yourself before God in your utter helplessness, consent heartily to the fact of your impotence to slay or make alive yourself, and sink down into your own nothingness, in the spirit of meek and patient and trustful surrender to God. Accept every humiliation, and look upon every fellow man who tries or vexes you, as a means of grace to humble you. Use every opportunity of humbling yourself before your fellow men as a help to abide humbleness before God.

God will accept such humbling of yourself as the proof that your whole heart desires it, as the very best, pray for it, as your preparation for His mighty work of grace, when, by the mighty strengthening of His Holy Spirit, He reveals Christ fully in you, so that He, in His form of a servant, is truly formed in you, and dwells in your heart. It is the path of humility that leads to perfect death, the full and perfect experience that we are dead in Christ.

Then follows: Only this death leads to perfect humility. O, beware of the mistake so many make, who would fain be humble, but are afraid to be too humble. They have so many qualifications and limitations, so many reasonings and questionings, as to what true humility is to be and to do, that they never unreservedly yield themselves to it. Beware of this. Humble yourself unto death. It is in the death to self that humility is perfected. Be sure that at the root of all real experience of more grace, of all true advance in consecration, of all increasing conformity to the likeness of Jesus, there must be a deadness to self that proves itself to God and men in our dispositions and habits.

It is sadly possible to speak of the death-life and the Spirit-walk, while even the tenderest love cannot help but see how much there is of self. The death to self has no surer death mark than a humility which makes itself of no reputation, which empties itself out and takes the form of a servant. It is possible to speak much and honestly of fellowship with a despised and rejected Jesus, and of bearing His cross, while the meek and lowly, kind and gentle humility of the Lamb of God is not seen and is scarcely sought.

The Lamb of God means two things: meekness and death. Let us seek to receive Him in both forms. In Him, they are inseparable; thus, they must be in us too. What a hopeless task if we had to do the work! Nature can never overcome nature, not even with the help of grace. Self can never cast out self, even in the regenerated man. Praise God! The work has been done and finished, and perfected forever. The death of Jesus, once and forever, is our death to self. And the ascension of Jesus, His entering once and forever into the Holiest, has given us the Holy Spirit to communicate to us in power and make our very own, the power of the death-life.

As the soul, in the pursuit and practice of humility, follows in the steps of Jesus, its consciousness of the need for something more is awakened. Its desire and hope are quickened, its faith is strengthened, and it learns to look up and claim and receive that true fullness of the Spirit of Jesus, which can daily maintain His death to self and sin in its full power, and make humility the allpervading spirit of our life. (See note "C" at the end of this chapter.) Romans 6:3 says: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?”

Romans 6:11 says: “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” The whole self-consciousness of the Christian is to be imbued and characterised by the spirit that animated the death of Christ.

One has ever to present himself to God as one who has died in Christ, and in Christ is alive from the dead, bearing about in his body the dying of the Lord Jesus. His life ever bears the two-fold mark, its roots striking in true humility deep into the grave of Jesus, the death to sin and self, its head lifted in resurrection power to the heaven where Jesus is.

Believer, claim in faith the death and the life of Jesus as yours. Enter into His grave into the rest from self and its work, the rest of God. With Christ, who committed His spirit into the Father's hands, humble yourself and descend each day into that perfect, helpless dependence upon God.

God will raise you and exalt you. Sink every morning in deep, deep nothingness into the grave of Jesus; every day the life of Jesus will be manifest in you.

Let a willing, loving, restful, happy humility be the mark that you have indeed claimed your birthright, the baptism into the death of Christ. "For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified." Hebrews 10:14. The souls that enter into His humiliation will find in Him the power to see and count self-dead, and, as those who have learned and received of Him, to walk with all lowliness and meekness, forbearing one another in love. The death-life is seen in meekness and lowliness like that of Christ.

NOTE C To die to self, or come from under its power, is not, cannot be done by any active resistance we can make to it by the powers of nature. The one true way of dying to self is the way of patience, meekness, humility, and resignation to God. This is the truth and perfection of dying to self. For if I ask you what the Lamb of God means, must you not tell me that it is and means the perfection of patience, meekness, humility, and resignation to God? Must you not, therefore, say that a desire and faith of these virtues is an application to Christ, is a giving up yourself to Him, and the perfection of faith in Him? And then, because this inclination of your heart to sink in patience, meekness, humility, and resignation to God is truly giving up all that you are and all that you have from fallen Adam, it is perfectly leaving all you have to follow Christ. It is your highest act of faith in Him. Christ is nowhere but in these virtues; when they are there, He is in His own kingdom. Let this be the Christ you follow.

"The Spirit of divine love can have no birth in any fallen creature, till it wills and chooses to be dead to all self, in a patient, humble resignation to the power and mercy of God." I seek all my salvation through the merits and mediation of the meek, humble, patient, suffering Lamb of God, who alone has the power to bring forth the blessed birth of these heavenly virtues in my soul. There is no possibility of salvation but in and by the birth of the meek, humble, patient, resigned Lamb of God in our souls.

When the Lamb of God has brought forth a real birth of His own meekness, humility, and full resignation to God in our souls, then it is the birthday of the Spirit of love in our souls, which, whenever we attain, will feast our souls with such peace and joy in God as will blot out the remembrance of everything that we called peace or joy before. "This way to God is infallible. This infallibility is grounded in the twofold character of our Saviour.

1. As He is the Lamb of God, a principle of all meekness and humility in the soul.

2. As He is the Light of heaven, and blesses eternal nature, and turns it into a kingdom of heaven when we are willing to get rest to our souls in meek, humble resignation to God, then it is that He, as the Light of God and heaven, joyfully breaks in upon us, turns our darkness into light, and begins that kingdom of God and of love within us, which will never have an end."

See Wholly For God. (The whole passage deserves careful study, showing most remarkably how the continual sinking down in humility before God is, from man's side, the only way to die to self).