The “alleylon” (one another) passages in the New Testament, Part 2C:

Clothe yourselves with humility toward one another (1Pet. 5:5b)

Over the past couple of weeks, I have, perhaps rashly, taken a plunge into the vast sea of the virtue that the New Testament calls tapeinophrosúne, aka humility. After two blog posts, I still feel no less a speck in that ocean than when I began the journey. But what are the great depths meant for if not to be searched out and discovered, however reluctantly they yield their secrets? Besides, as one of the crucial characteristics of the Christian life, humility begs for more attention than my so-far brief efforts have provided. And, as an added incentive, I found another great verse about it in Peter’s first letter: “Clothe yourselves with humility toward each other.”

Put on humility. The exhortation tells us several things about being humble. The first is the most obvious, which is that humility comes from outside, from Christ himself. There is a cluster of characteristics that Scripture similarly encourages us to receive: love, kindness, compassion, meekness. In Colossians 3:12, Paul describes these attributes as being reflections of the new human person that the Father intends for us to be. We tend to stop there and think of such verses as issuing a call to express a high standard of righteousness. And that’s true as far as it goes, but I think we can miss something that the passage says about who we are in God’s eyes: Paul tells us that we put on the gift of the new creation as those whom God has chosen, whom he loves, whom he has made holy.

This means that humility is a gracious offering of the Father’s own nature to us, which he freely gives out of love. We don’t just accept an additional piece of moral vesture as an external burden to bear, with the Lord hoping that we’ll treat it well as good children should. Humility, along with love, compassion, meekness, and kindness, comes with its own spiritual power that, as we put it on, works into our heart to create God’s virtue in us.

The second thing to note is that, as something that we put on, humility is fitted exactly to who each of us is, and to what we need to reflect the gift  But I would say that the discipleship fitting is different from a normal tailoring job, which is more a process of making a garment that drapes naturally over our frame as it is. When Jesus measures us for humility, he produces a wardrobe that he designs for us as we are meant to be – a divine fashion into which the Spirit fills out our stature so that we grow into what he has envisioned. We cannot summon up humility from within as if we had some innate goodness from which to draw; we can only surrender to the Jesus-life that we receive as adopted children, recreated in his image and likeness.

All this must sound both idealistic and abstract in the extreme. How do I “feel” true humility? How do I know that I’ve clothed myself with it? How do I know that I haven’t fallen prey to humility’s false equivalents? Because humility has at least two false forms that our culture – and many Christians – adopt as a way of reconciling the value that we place on humility and our tendency toward self-importance. The more popular false equivalent is a kind of lowliness or self-deprecation that is an expression of insecure pride. We might see this when someone rejects a compliment or encouragement. “Aw, shucks” can seem endearing at first; after a time, the whole façade crumbles through the sheer weight of insincerity, through its uncomfortable humble-bragging, and through its transparent delight in really being the center of attention. In this kind of ersatz humility is, at heart, a hidden assumption of superiority: I Am Humble.

A second false equivalent is an obsequiousness that seems to offer deference, but is really self-serving. Probably the most common form of such slavish prostration is people-pleasing. What people pleasers want is security and identity, being accepted not for who they are, but for what they wish others thought of them. This is not clothing ourselves with humility toward others; it is a kind of social anxiety that essentially denies the goodness of how God has created us.

As I think about true versus false humility, it becomes clear that we need to return to the Beatitudes and connect real lowliness to poverty of spirit and meekness. Being poor in spirit is a foundation of humility. It accepts me as God has made me; is comfortable with my frailty; allows me to undefensively confess my weakness and sins; sees that I both have ultimate need for, and am favored by the Father. Meekness – companion of humility – lives at peace and forsakes anger when my reputation or others’ perception of me experiences denigration.

When meekness and humility work together, they produce the fruit of servanthood in our lives by empowering us to operate under the principle that the Lord will care for us and see to any deficit that we incur in giving ourselves to others. By contrast, my pride, arising from self-will and independence, would rather be served, at least as well as I serve (and usually more so). The irony is that serving from humility is a sign of confidence that I am a son, a much higher place in the cosmos than the one that pride would assign me. This sonship-humility is an architect of a great freedom that leads me to give myself to others without keeping a tally of what they have done for or to me.

In the end, putting on humility requires putting off the manifestations of self-love: envy, jealousy, concern over how others see or think about me, the offense that I have taken when others ignored me or paid too little attention to me or to my accomplishments, any thought that I have any claim to superiority to anyone on any basis whatsoever. And I also put aside the folly of comparison vis-a-vis my brothers and sisters. In the Father’s estimation, we are a company of the poor, his kingdom calling, Emma Lazarus-like, to we weary, huddled masses yearning to be free. The only comparing that will work for us is when we set ourselves over and against the character and person of Jesus and find that we all begin at the same infinite distance from his perfection.

Two last things to say: First, putting off and putting on sound very much like they correspond to the biblical idea of repentance. Whenever I hear that daunting word, I remember J.I. Packer’s excellent definition, “Repentance means turning from as much as you know of your sin to give as much as you know of yourself to as much as you know of your God.” That sounds doable. Second, Whatever is lacking in either our humility or our repentance, the Father will make up through his good discipline. If we are paying attention, we will find that he is faithful to use various circumstances to lower us in our own eyes and in the sight of those around us. While that might sound excruciatingly painful (my ego is nodding vigorously), it is the best and only way for us to fit into that new humility suit the Lord has prepared for us.