The Necessity of Humility

This week I'm preaching on Acts 9-10 - Peter's education in regards to the gospel going to the Gentiles. I have been reminded once again that one of the fertilizers for spiritual growth is humility. In my web wandering I came across the following which just reiterated what I was learning.

Professor Tim Huffman writes about the great reformer Martin Luther and the need for humility as we seek to follow Jesus:

“For Luther, the enemy of the grace of God was not irreligion but religion itself, not one’s distance from God but a confidence in one’s nearness to God. The cross, as Forde (Gerhard Forde - “On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation, 1518”) puts it, “reveals that the real seat of sin is not in the flesh but in our spiritual aspirations, in our ‘theology of glory’.” (p. 1) The “theology of the cross…attacks what we usually consider the best in our religion.” (p.2) “The delicate thing about it is that it attacks the best we have to offer, not the worst.” (p.3) It is the most religious, the most pious, the most virtuous of Christians for whom the message and impact of the theology of the cross are hardest to hear and to appropriate. Its message is that our devotion, our piety, our deep religious commitment are the hardest barriers of all for the message of the cross of Christ to break through. Yet, our only hope is not to rely at all on what we do, not even the best we do; nor on what we avoid doing, not even the hardest work of self-denial; nor on how much we conform ourselves to what we take to be God’s will—because all of these finally constitute works of self-righteousness, and their effect is to wall us off from the true righteousness that comes only from Christ, the Christ of the cross. The “better” we are, the harder it is for is to acknowledge our total depravity, and our total need for God’s utterly undeserved acceptance. This is a painful but necessary reminder that every one of us comes before God and the Christian assembly as a sinful and helpless person, full of gratitude for God’s love in Christ. But where is theological humility in our churchly debates and struggles? Far too often the debates reveal what are really personal ambition or a defense of cherished personal positions…What could happen if we began our discussions and debates with the confession of our own sinfulness and our own lack of worthiness before God? What if we granted to others the grace that comes from acknowledging that we, like they, stand judged by the Law; and that they, like we, are redeemed by the cross of Christ? What if all parties set aside their confident assertions that they are right, and they alone? Would (our debates) develop differently if (they) were approached in the spirit of Luther’s theology of the cross, rather than in a theology of glory, in which each debater were confident of his or her own goodness?”

Peter had some lessons to learn. Odds are that we do too. Can we follow in humility? Think about it.