NOTES for Jam 4:10

For unbelievers, humility is perhaps the most irritating concept in Christianity. How it is caricatured: as weakness, lack of will, passivity, slavish submission... Is that right? After all, Christ says of Himself, "I am gentle and lowly in heart" (Matt. 11:29), and He is not weak, not lacking in will, not passive; and if He is submissive, then not as a slave, but as a Son, that is, obedient rather than submissive.

This word irritates because it is the opposite of pride, the main driving force of every sin. Pride seeks strength, power, self-assertion; a person possessed by it places himself above everything and everyone and is incapable of real love. Humility, by contrast, is the path to love, because for the one who loves, the other, the beloved, is always more important than himself.

Christ's work on the Cross brings 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: recognizing God's rule in our own life, opening our heart to God's voice and will. And this is humility. 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.