NOTES for Jam 4:10

For unbelievers this is perhaps the most irritating concept in Christianity: humility. How it is caricatured: as powerlessness, lack of will, passivity, and slavish submission... Is that so? Christ says of Himself, "I am meek and humble in heart" (Matt. 11:29), and He is not powerless, not lacking in will, not passive, and if He is obedient, it is not as a slave, but as a Son; that is, rather, He is obedient, not submissive in slavery.

This word irritates because it is opposite to pride, the main driving force of every sin. Pride seeks strength, power, self-assertion; a person overcome by it places himself above everything and everyone and is incapable of true love. Humility, however, is the path to love, because for the one who loves, what matters more is not himself but the other, the beloved.

Christ's feat on the Cross leads all of us out of slavery to sin, redeems our guilt before God, and gives us reconciliation with the Heavenly Father. But there is a step no one will take for us: to acknowledge God's headship in our life, to open our heart to God's voice and will. This is humility. And the apostle James says that in this case God will be able to take responsibility for our "fate", our life, and it will become an ascent into eternal life full of love.