To me, perhaps the most shocking attribute of God is His humility. Omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, infinitude, immutability…these strike me with amazement in the same way that looking at the night sky fills me with wonder and the sense that I am so very small. They are attributes that one would expect of the grand, unapproachable God who “makes darkness His hiding place” (Psalm 18:11), the God before whom prophets and apostles fell like dead men and burning ones perpetually cry, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come!” (Revelation 4: 8). Though I cannot claim to grasp what omniscience or immutability even mean, it makes sense to me that God, being God after all, would be these things.
In light of these attributes which tie my mind in knots, God’s humility seems, to understate, counterintuitive. But as Tozer says, God cannot suspend one of His attributes to perform another; He simply is all that He is, all of the time without changing (Tozer 15). He is the I AM (Exodus 3:14). That the God who is infinite-ness, who knows all, who is rich beyond imagination, et cetera into eternity, is at the same time humble to His very core is truly stunning. The most vivid portrayal of this humility must be in the incarnation, Emmanuel, God with us (Isaiah 7:13, Matthew 1:23), Jesus the Messiah. To gaze into the mystery this Man in whom it pleased the Father for the fullness of God to dwell (Colossians 1:19) is to awaken lovesick awe and gratitude in our hearts.
We should start at the beginning:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being…And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us… (John 1:1-3, 14)
The pre-incarnate Christ, second person of the Trinity, was at the Father’s side in the beginning, the very master craftsman of creation (Proverbs 8:30-31). “For by Him all things were created…all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:16-17). The God of creation, the One who formed Adam from the dust and breathed life into his nostrils on the sixth day (Genesis 2), emptied Himself and took on the form of His creation in a human body. “He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:7-8). Oh, the mystery, that becoming a lowly man and pouring out His life unto death was not giving up infinite glory or power or any other attribute of His person but rather fully expressing all that He is, wrapped in His humility. In Jesus on the Earth, God being wise looks like Yeshua, son of Mary and Joseph, “[continuing] to grow and become strong, increasing in wisdom” (Luke 2:40). The omnipotence of the Most High God looks like the King of the Jews hanging naked on a Roman cross.
Jesus said, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father…The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works” (John 14:9,10). The writer of Hebrews tells us that Jesus is “the radiance of His [the Father’s] glory and the exact representation of His nature” (Hebrews 1:3). This means that in His life and His words Jesus tells us what God is really like. He shows us when He changes water to wine at Cana (John 2) that the Holy One who breathed the stars into existence stoops so low as to care about little things that concern the human heart, such as keeping the party alive at a wedding. One of Jesus’ most extravagant displays of humility was in washing the disciples’ feet. When He finishes, He makes the astonishing statement so foreign to human logic: “You call me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am. If then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet” (John 13:13-14). In this He clearly shows that there is no contradiction in His supremacy as Lord and His bowing down as the humblest of servants.
Jesus says of Himself, “I am gentle and humble in heart” and then admonishes us to learn from Him (Matthew 11:29). In staring at the humility of God, I find my heart overwhelmed with the beauty of His person and exhilarated by the power of His affection. This God-man is humble not in some abstract context void of emotion but rather as the overflow of a torrent of desire for a people: without a second thought, He will do whatever it takes to win our hearts. This is where His zeal for holiness and His faithfulness and His justice and mercy and love all pour out into a humble human frame through which He expresses love at its highest pinnacle. Again and again my heart is pierced with the cry of Oh, the mystery! What beauty! Truly He is fairer than the sons of men (Psalm 45:2); yes, His name is like oil poured forth (Song of Solomon 1:3), this One who is so far beyond my comprehension yet bows so low for His beloved. Isaiah says it well:
For thus says the high and exalted One, who lives forever, whose name is Holy, “I will dwell on a high and holy place, and also with the contrite and lowly of spirit in order to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.”
(Isaiah 57:15)
To set our hearts to “learn from Him” in that He is humility is worthy of a lifelong pursuit.
Wow, awesome insights! I wish I had read this before I preached on it at much church this past Sunday!