Humility: UnSelfing
Interestingly, the Copernican Revolution of the soul, as we considered here, reminds us that God is the Creator of all things and, as those chosen by God, born again to a living hope, serve at his pleasure and for his purposes.
In this post, I consider another facet of humility that I describe as unSelfing. This term is not meant to convey that walking in humility involves some kind of divine erasure, or that somehow our unique selves need to dissolve into a heavenly realm of perfection, but instead, unSelfing suggests a necessary yieldedness, no matter how tentative, to the triune God who created us in God’s image. We are designed to be God’s imagers and as such, to fulfill God’s purposes.
Imago Dei
Mysteriously and definitively, beginning in Genesis, we learn that humankind—flesh and bone, male and female, you and I—is created in the image or likeness of God—imago Dei.
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them (Gen 2:5–7).
Incredibly, the Creator fashioned us for the purpose of relationship with God, ourselves, each other, and the created world. God sets us apart as those who bear God’s image and commissions us to fill and subdue the earth and exercise dominion over every living thing (Gen 1:26–31; 2:21–24). The whole person is the image of God—our very makeup, constitution, and purpose reflects God’s image.
Created and Chosen
In fact, over the course of our lives, as we follow Jesus along the mountain tops and down into the deep valleys, we become more and more fully who God created us to be—imagers, made alive together with Christ for God’s good pleasure.
For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, hat we should walk in them (Eph 2:10).
Often the process and result of discovering the works for which we have been created, is far different than we expect. Bit by bit, we learn that obeying God’s call requires us to step out of ourselves—to unSelf—in obedience to God even when we are wholly unprepared or unqualified, incapable or sure to fail because we live in God’s kingdom not our own. Conversely, unSelfing also means that even at our best–prepared and uber-qualified, capable and successful–we might hesitate for fear of failure. Yet, every step of the way, we must submit to God because we live in God’s kingdom not our own. Jesus reminds his followers,
You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you (John 15:16).
In the Company with Fools
In my experience and perhaps your own, whether in weakness or strength, steps of faith require risk and can lead to humiliation, misunderstanding, and even obscurity. But as we follow God’s lead, we actually join the company of God’s imagers across the canon of Scripture, who, like us, were chosen by God to serve his purposes in sometimes exhilarating, perplexing, and even disturbing circumstances.
God calls Moses to deliver his people, Moses protests, Oh my Lord, I am not eloquent…I am slow of speech and of tongue (Exod 4:20).” God chooses Gideon to deliver Israel from her enemies and heralds him a mighty man of valor (Judges 6:12). Gideon shudders in fear and disbelief because he is the weakest and least in his clan. God chooses Mary, a virgin, to bear his son despite the inevitable shame and dishonor that is sure to follow.
Jesus, God’s own son who had no stately form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men: a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. Jesus, although he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross (Phil 2:7–8), that the Scripture be fulfilled.
God, the author of the true story, has always chosen what is low and despised in the world to confound the wise. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God (1 Cor 1:18).
Willing Fools
A posture of humility says, I cannot but follow God who calls me.
No matter the outcome or the consequences, I am willing to unSelf, to look like a fool for the sake of the gospel. I am willing to suffer humiliation, to serve along the margins, to express the truth or meet a need, no matter how lowly because God created me for his purposes.
I have found that in order to follow-through on God’s call, I must crawl out of mySelf that says, “You are not eloquent, you are slow on your feet, afraid and inadequate” and follow God into sometimes daunting and other times demeaning places.
