Humility the beauty of holiness pdf download

Humility the beauty of holiness – By rev. Andrew Murray

HUMILITY THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS

Book preface.

There are three great motives that urge us to humility. It becomes me as a creature, as a sinner, as a saint.

The first we see in the heavenly hosts, in unfallen man, in Jesus as Son of Man. The second appeals to us in our fallen state and points out the only way through which we can return to our right place as creatures.

 In the third, we have the mystery of grace, which teaches us that, as we lose ourselves in the overwhelming greatness of redeeming love, humility becomes to us the consummation of everlasting blessedness and adoration.

In our ordinary religious teaching, the second aspect has been too exclusively put in the foreground, so that some have even gone to the extreme of saying that we must keep sinning if we are true to keep humble.

Others again have thought that the strength of self-condemnation is the secret of humility.

And the Christian life has suffered loss, where believers have not been distinctly guided to see that, even in our relation as creatures, nothing is more natural and beautiful and blessed than to be nothing, that God may be all;

or where it has not been made clear that it is not sin that humbles most, but grace, and that it is the soul, led through its sinfulness to be occupied with God in His wonderful glory as God, as Creator and Redeemer, that will truly take the lowest place before Him.

In these meditations, I have, for more than one reason, almost exclusively directed attention to the humility that becomes us as creatures.

It is not only that the connection between humility and sin is so abundantly set forth in all our religious teaching, but because I believe that for the fullness of the Christian life it is indispensable that prominence is given to the other aspect.

 If Jesus is indeed to be our example in His lowliness, we need to understand the principles in which it was rooted, and in which we find the common ground on which we stand with Him, and in which our likeness to Him is to be attained.

 If we are indeed to be humble, not only before God but towards men, if humility is to be our joy, we must see that it is not only the mark of shame, because of sin, but, apart from all sin, a being clothed upon with the very beauty and blessedness of heaven and of Jesus.

We shall see that just as Jesus found His glory in taking the form of a servant, so when He said to us, ‘Whosoever would be first among you, shall be your servant,’

He simply taught us the blessed truth that there is nothing so divine and heavenly as being the servant and helper of all.

The faithful servant, who recognises his position, finds a real pleasure in supplying the wants of the master or his guests.

When we see that humility is something infinitely deeper than contrition, and accept it as our participation in the life of Jesus, we shall begin to learn that it is our true nobility and that to prove it in being servants of all is the highest fulfilment of our destiny, as men created in the image of God.