“For by the grace given to me, I tell everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he should think. Instead, think sensibly, as God has distributed a measure of faith to each one.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Christianity has changed the world many times over. One of the ways it has done this is through its revolution and expansion of virtue. The number of characteristics considered to be virtues and encouraged for its followers to adopt into their own lives was greatly expanded by the teachings of Jesus and His first followers. One of the most radical of these changes was the transformation of one attitude into a virtue that had always been considered a vice. Let’s talk about what it was.

One of the dangers of walking through a section of Scripture on verse at a time like we tend to do here, is that it’s easy to look at each verse in isolation. Now, that’s not necessarily a terrible thing to do. There are many verses with self-contained truthfulness that is worth taking on its own terms. But each verse doesn’t actually exist in isolation (except for most of Proverbs). Each is informed by what came before it as well as the broader witness of Scripture as a whole.

What Paul writes here in v. 3, which is treated in most translations as the beginning of a new section, is a wonderful statement on the importance of humility. That’s good enough all by itself. But it doesn’t come out of nowhere, and it doesn’t exist independently of its context.

We are still at the beginning of Paul’s turn to application. Oh, there’s still plenty of theology to come in the chapters yet ahead of us, but what follows is practical in a way what lies behind us was not. (This becomes especially true in the back half of this chapter, but we’ll start to get into that next week.) Here, Paul tells us what to do with the theology.

The first thing we are to do is to give ourselves to God as a living sacrifice. We are to wholly dedicate our lives to advancing His kingdom causes because He fully dedicated Himself to the cause of our salvation. This sacrificial offering will become possible when we experience a total transformation of our minds. When we start to think like followers of Jesus, we will begin to behave like a follower of Jesus.

And of all the various places this could play itself out, the first place Paul goes with it is the first place he always goes: to the church. The command Paul gives here and what follows through v. 8 is all said with the context of the body of Christ in mind. Above and before everything else, wholly dedicating ourselves to God plays itself out first in the church. Advancing the kingdom of God is not something we can do on our own. No one can. We need the support and help of other followers of Jesus who are committed to walking in the same direction we are going.

In order for that to happen, though, we first have to recognize our need and our inability to do everything God has called us to do on our own. This requires us to embrace the virtue of humility. In Paul’s day, humility was not generally considered a virtue. In the absence of a belief in a God who was not only greater than us, but who had our best interests at heart, and was fully committed to our good, this dim view of humility makes sense. If no one else could really be trusted to advance your cause and lift you up, that burden fell entirely on your shoulders. Humility was for those who had been conquered and dominated by others. Considering others to be more important than yourself was simply an invitation for them to treat you as less important. Your interests were not going to be achieved this way. Instead, you were likely to lose what little power you might have had. And to lose that meant your life was effectively over.

What the Christian worldview introduced to the world was a radically new idea. There was a God who loved you completely. He always had your back. He was entirely committed to your good. You could trust Him to care for you. You were made in His image and thus possessed of a value that no one else could diminish. That was all baseline. On top of that, with all of His own greatness fully in mind, He committed Himself to serving those who were infinitely below Him, treating their needs as more important than His own. If He could do that, then we as His followers not only can as well, but we must.

Humility is not simply serving others like Jesus did, though. Humility is fundamentally about honesty. It is about our willingness to honestly acknowledge God for who He is. It is also about our willingness to honestly acknowledge who we are. With both of those acknowledgments made, humility is a willingness to rest contentedly and actively in that knowledge. A humble person can acknowledge her strengths. That’s just fine because she also acknowledges her weaknesses and failings. That’s safe to do, though, because she knows she’s in the hands of a God who loves her perfectly and always has her back. She can simply follow His lead in loving others, all the while trusting that He will take care of her.

A person who constantly treats you like you are more important than her, but who does so without a shred of insecurity or self-doubt motivating her actions is a pretty powerful thing.

In order for the church to work as designed, it needs to be full of people like that. So, Paul points us in that direction. “For by the grace given to me, I tell everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he should think.” Be honest about who you are. Be honest about what you can do well. Be honest about what you can’t. Be honest about what others can do well, and help them do it better because we all need each other to make this thing work.

“Instead, think sensibly, as God has distributed a measure of faith to each one.” God has equipped each of us to make an important difference in the church. Our roles are not the same. But they are all necessary for the whole thing to work like it should. We’ll talk more about that tomorrow. For now, it is simply enough to know that humility is essential to our lives as followers of Jesus, and essential for the proper functioning of the church. Let’s walk this part of the path of Christ together.