THE ROAD TO THE UPSIDE DOWN KINGDOM

MIKE CUNNINGHAM

APRIL 25, 2010

Last week we saw that before speaking the world into existence, the Triune God chose certain human beings to be holy and blameless in His sight. He planned to adopt these people into His family through His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ,(Ephesians 1:4-5). Before He created the world, it was also part of that plan that at a precise moment in human history (Galatians 4:4), He would unite all things in heaven and on earth through Jesus, (Ephesians 1:10). Then, in verses 11-13 of the second chapter of Paul’s letter to the Jewish and Gentile Christians living in Ephesus, Paul told them exactly how God accomplished this. From there we moved forward to the first four verses in the fourth chapter where we read:

Ephesians 4:1-4 (NIV)
¹As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. ²Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. ³Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. ⁴There is one body and one Spirit-- just as you were called to one hope when you were called—

There is one of these beautiful Christ-like virtues in particular which is very contrary to our sinful human nature. So much so, that for anyone sincerely wanting to learn how to acquire and then cultivate it within themselves to the point where it becomes his or her “second nature” is about as appealing as jumping into shark infested waters in order to learn how to swim faster. However, if we don’t develop this particular virtue, we will never enter into heaven. That’s how necessary possessing and cultivating this virtue is. In spite of that, you will rarely, if ever, hear a Christian asking you to pray on their behalf, asking you to plead with God to help them to develop it within him or herself. Nor will you find a “how to” guide in those self-help sections of a bookstore, even a Christian one, a title such as: “An Idiot’s Guide to Becoming Humble.” Inspired by the Holy Spirit, the Apostle Paul wrote to those first Christians and through them all subsequent followers, and He told them in verse two that they must: “Be completely humble.” Needless to say, this is a lot easier said than done. For instance, before we can do so, we have to first know something which is vitally important. Do any of you have any idea what the first step in becoming completely humble is, and if you don’t, have you really tried to find out? We should ask ourselves how just seriously we take this command, and we should answer ourselves truthfully. And whenever I say we, I really mean it! As I have told you folks many times in the past that I’m also preaching my sermons to myself. I need to be reminded, too! Some of our spiritual forefathers searched diligently and they discovered the answer just as Jesus promises His followers they would when He told them that if they seek, they will find, Matthew 7:7. For example:

The first step toward humility is to realize that one is proud.” C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), rev. ed., 3.11, 1952.

Lewis is correct. We have to realize we are proud, but in order to come to that realization there is something else we have to know. One of my favorite Puritans expressed it beautifully when he wrote:

“They that know God will be humble; they that know themselves cannot be proud.” John Flavel

The person who truly knows God will know him or herself. So well, that they will come to the point where he or she will literally beg Him to help them to continue to cultivate and grow humility within them, regardless of how painful that process may be. They will also ask Him to help them overcome every temptation not to do so, and they will relentlessly make this appeal with passion. As I said a moment ago, humility is the most important of all those beautiful Christ-like virtues. Regardless of how genuine our faith and other virtues may appear to be, or how solid our understanding of the Doctrine of Sovereign Grace and other Biblical truths is, we are only fooling ourselves if we don’t constantly struggle to acquire and cultivate humility, and then, in total dependence upon the strength of Christ within us, sincerely strive to apply it in all areas of our daily lives. Others of the past discovered this truth. Allow me to share some of the insightful truths they each learned.

“Humility is the foundation of all other virtues; hence, in the soul which this virtue does not exist there cannot be any other virtue except in mere appearance,” St. Augustine (A. D. 354-430).

“It is no great thing to be humble when you are brought low; but to be humble when you are praised is a great and rare attainment,” St. Bernard of Clairvaux.

“Humble we must be, if to heaven we go: High is the roof there; but the gate is low: When e’er thou speak’st, look with a lowly eye: Grace is increased by humility,” Robert Herrick: Noble Numbers.

“This is the deepest degree of humility: to rejoice when one is humiliated and jeered at, just as the vain person takes pride in great honors; and to feel hurt when honored and esteemed, as the proud person suffers when taunted and ridiculed.” (B)

“Humility is the genuine proof of Christian virtue.”—“Without it we keep all our defects; and they are only crusted over by pride, which conceals them from others, and often from ourselves.” Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“Humility is the alter upon which God wishes us to offer Him sacrifices.” Francois de La Rochefoucauld: Maximes Posthumes, 537

“Many would be scantily clad if clothed in their humility.” Anonymous

True Christians who aren’t trying with all of their might to be completely humble as they each make their way through this dark sin-infested world are only fooling themselves. He or she can be absolutely certain that they have strayed from “The Road To The Upside-Down Kingdom,” and “Perfect Love and Infinite Wisdom” will do whatever is necessary to bring them back just as the Lord did when He had to afflict King David thousands of years ago by putting David into His dreadful “Furnace of Affliction.” And He will keep His straying child in it and allow him or her to suffer, sometimes greatly, until he or she finally learns the lesson He is teaching as David did. Consider this joyfully proclamation from David:

Psalm 119:67 (ESV)
⁶⁷Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word.

Psalm 119:71 (ESV)
⁷¹It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.

Can you visualize this tall handsome red haired man David gratefully strumming on his harp and joyfully singing about the things the Lord has finally succeeded in teaching him? I can. For instance:

Psalm 19:7-11 (ESV)
⁷The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; ⁸the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes; ⁹the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; the rules of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether. ¹⁰More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. ¹¹Moreover, by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward.

As I mentioned earlier when I quoted Paul, God commanded those early Christians and all Christians after them to: “Be completely humble.” During His earthly ministry, just after He finished instructing His twelve disciples, Jesus went out to teach and preach in their cities. Then, after denouncing the unrepentant cities where most of His mightiest works had been done, Jesus addressed the crowds. Try to visualize Him giving the call to those weary Jews who had been suffering under the demands of their self-righteous religious leaders as He softly said to them:

Matthew 11:28-30 (ESV)
²⁸Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. ²⁹Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Concerning the call or summons from Jesus, Alexander Maclaren, another of my favorite commentators wrote a long time ago: “The summons is honeyed, sweetened, and made infinitely mightier when we hear it from His gracious lips. It is the blessed custom of the Christian ideal, that the manifestation of the ideal carries with it the power to realize it. And just as the increasing strength of the spring sunshine summons the buds from out of their folds, and the snowdrops hear the call and force themselves through the frozen soil, so too when Christ summons He also inclines the ears to hear the call, and enables them to obey the summons, and to become what they are commanded. And thus we have ‘the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.’

“Now, if that is the call, if the life of Christ is that to which we are summoned, and the death of Christ is that by which we are inclined to do so, what sort of life will be worthy of these? Well, the context [of the particular verse we are focusing on this morning] supplies part of the answer. “I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle, bearing with one another in love.” And then, on the other side, in one of the other texts where the same general set of ideas is involved, we get a yet more marvelous exhibition of the life which the Apostle considered to be worthy.” “The first characteristic of a life that is ‘worthy of the calling,’ and to which, therefore, every one of us Christian people is essentially bound, is that it shall, in all its parts, please God, and that is a large demand.”

“Being fruitful in every good work,” (Colossians 1: 10). It’s a many-sided fruitfulness, a list of all sorts of beneficial activity, covering all the ground of possible excellence; and that isn’t all. It’s a life that’s ‘increasing in the knowledge of God,’ (Colossians 1:10), a life of a progressive personal relationship with Him. And that isn’t all! It’s a life ‘strengthened with all might and with all patience and long-suffering!’ Nor is that all that is progressive in its acquaintance with God! That’s because the crown of the whole is ‘giving thanks to the Father.”

“So, then, you see your calling brothers.” A life that’s worthy of a vocation whereby you are called’ is a life that conforms to the divine will. It’s a life ‘which is fruitful in all good,’ a life that’s progressive in its acquaintance for all patience and long-suffering, and which in everything is thankful to Him. That is what we are summoned to be, and unless we are in some measure obeying the summons, and bringing about such a life in our conduct, then, notwithstanding all that we have to say about unmerited mercy, and free grace, and undeserved love, and salvation being not by works but by faith, we have no right to claim the mercy to which we say we trust.” (C)

Maclaren goes on to add: “From the nature of the gift it’s clear that there must be a moral and religious congruity between the gift and the recipient, or, to put it into plainer words, you cannot get into heaven unless your nature is capable of receiving these great gifts which constitute heaven.” In conclusion, Maclaren writes: “We carry ourselves with us wherever we go. The persistence of character, the continuity of personal being, the continuity of memory, the unobliterable-if I may coin a word-results upon ourselves of our actions, all these things make it certain that what looks to us like a cleft, deep and broad, between the present life and the next, is to those who have passed it, and see it from the other side, as just a little crack in the soil scarcely observable, and that we carry on into another world [either heaven or hell] the selves we have made here.”

“Ah, brethren, how solemn that makes life; the fleeting moment carries Eternity in its bosom. It passes, and the works pass, but nothing human ever dies, and we bring with us the net results of all the yesterdays into that eternal today. You write upon a thin film of paper and there is a black leaf below it. Yes, and below the black leaf there is another sheet of paper, and all that you write on goes through the dark interposed page, and is recorded on the third, and one day that will be taken out of the book, and you will have to read it and say, ‘What I have written, I have written.” (D) Consider the following verse:

1 Peter 5:5 (ESV)
⁵Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

Here’s that quote again from an unknown author I shared earlier: “Many would be scantily clad if clothed in their humility.” From my personal observation throughout a lot of years, all too many Christians I have seen would be ‘naked as a Jay Bird’ if Peter was speaking of physical clothing. And judging from your facial expression, I know you each agree.

Commenting on verse 5, Barclay writes: “Peter returns to the thought that the denial of self must be the mark of the Christian. He clinches his argument with a quotation from the Old Testament: "Toward the scorners God is scornful, but to the humble he shows favor" (Proverbs 3:34).”

“Here again it may well be that the memories of Jesus are in Peter's heart and are coloring all his thought and language. He tells his people that they must clothe themselves with the garment of humility. The word he uses for to clothe oneself is very unusual; it is egkombousthai which is derived from kombos which describes anything tied on with a knot. Connected with it is egkomboma, a garment tied on with a knot. It was commonly used for protective clothing; it was used for a pair of sleeves drawn over the sleeves of a robe and tied behind the neck. And it was used for a slave's apron. There was a time when Jesus had put upon himself just such an apron. At the Last Supper John says of him that he took a towel and girded himself, and took water and began to wash his disciples' feet (John 13:4-5). Jesus girded himself with the apron of humility; and so must his followers.”

“It so happens that egkombousthai is used of another kind of garment. It is also used of putting on a long, stole-like garment which was the sign of honor and preeminence. To complete the picture we must put both images together. Jesus once put on the slave's apron and undertook the humblest of all duties, washing his disciples' feet; so we also must in all things put on the apron of humility in the service of Christ and of our fellow-men; but that very apron of humility will become the garment of honor for us, for it is he who is the servant of all who is greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.,” Matthew 18: 1;4. (E)

“Webster defines a paradox as “a statement that is seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense and yet is perhaps true.” An example of this is the statement, “giving is receiving.” The Scriptures contain many paradoxes, telling us that the weak are strong, the empty are full, the slave is free, the cursed are blessed, and that death brings life

-all statements which first strike the ear as contradictory, but become increasingly true to us as we meditate on them. G. K. Chesterton gave this magnificent definition of a paradox: “a paradox is truth standing on its head shouting for attention.” In my mind’s eye I see truths lined up like ridiculous people on their heads, feet waving in the air, calling, “Hey, look at me! Up is down! Down is up! Think about it.” Paradox is a powerful vehicle for truth, because it makes people think.” (F)

Our macho society often views a humble person as a spineless pathetic example of a human being. God views him or her as one of His most Christ-like powerful warriors in His war against Satan and his evil forces of darkness. The weak are strong! Think about that fact! You and I must make every effort to live lives worthy of the calling we have received, and do everything we possibly can to become ‘completely humble and gentle.’ As this beautiful Christ-like virtue becomes increasingly manifest in our lives while we make our way through this dark sin infested world on our way home, we will know with absolute certainty we’re headed in the right direction and traveling on what I have characterized as being: ‘The Road To The Upside-Down Kingdom.’

Lord willing, soon….

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(A) Found in “Humility” (1) Spiritual Diary; Selected sayings and Examples of Saints, 1775, St. Paul Editions, 1962.

(B) Ibid (17)

(C) Expositions of the Holy Scripture, Alexander Maclaren, D. D. Litt. D., Ephesians, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, p. 197-198

(D) Ibid. p. 200-202.