Pure Church

This week, in three different circumstances, I received three different books by Andrew Murray. I'm thinking I should read Murray, having never done so before. Today I wanted to share a small bit from the opening chapter of his little meditation on humility.

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, they too fell from their high estate into all the wretchedness into which man is sunk. In heaven and earth, pride--self-exaltation--is the gate and the birth, and the curse, of hell.

Hence it follows that 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, He brought it, from there. Here on earth "He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death"; His humility gave His death its 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. His salvation is our humility.

And so the life of the saved ones, of the saints, must needs 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 favor and the power of His Spirit; without this, no abiding faith, or love or joy or strength. 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 as it is the root of all, because it alone takes the right attitude before God and allows Him as God to do all.