In this is humility—not that we have humbled ourselves, but that God, in his mercy, took the initiative to humble us first. Yet, he invites us to welcome his work and participate in the process through the self-humbling of repenting, declaring him righteous, and learning from the humbling of others.

Humility is not self-taught. Try as we might, we don’t just up and humble ourselves by our own bootstraps.

Within measure, we can take certain kinds of initiatives to cultivate a posture of humility in ourselves, but the main test (and opportunity) comes when we are confronted, unsettled, and accosted, in the moments when our semblances of control vanish and we’re taken off guard by life in a fallen world—and the question comes to us:

How will you respond to these humbling circumstances? Will you humble yourself?

Humility Received, Not Achieved

God takes the initiative in producing humility in his people. Whether or not we will “humble ourselves,” then, comes in response to the humbling hand above.

Alongside pondering the postures and means we can cultivate — as in daily humbling ourselves under the authority of God’s word, and humbling ourselves by obeying his words, and humbling ourselves by coming desperately to him in prayer, and humbling ourselves in fasting — we need to know that humbling ourselves is first and foremost responsive to God, not of our own initiative.

In such situations, when we find ourselves humbled — whether through God’s word, or becoming newly aware of some pattern of sin in us or some way we have not measured up, or some circumstances or event in life that lays us low — what might it mean to humble ourselves, looking with faith to the promise of God’s lifting us up in his perfect timing? Consider the self-humbling moments of three Old Testament kings — two Israelites, one Babylonian, two positive examples, one negative — and what we might glean for our time when it comes.

1. Receive the humbling of God, and repent.

God not only means for us to know ourselves to be sinners in general, but also specifically. And in his severe mercy, he runs the world in such a way as to expose, in new ways, the specific sins of his people. In doing so, he calls us to admit particular times we have been on the wrong path and need to change course. The word for it is repentance.

Such repentance is a form of self-humbling, as demonstrated in the life of King Josiah. When Hilkiah the high priest found the lost Book of the Law in the temple and brought it to the king, Josiah tore his clothes in distress as he became newly aware of how he and his people were out of step with God’s directives (2 Kings 22:11). Josiah sent to inquire of God, through the prophetess Huldah, who commended his self-humbling in the form of his repentant heart and the acts that followed:

Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Regarding the words that you have heard, because your heart was penitent, and you humbled yourself before the Lord, when you heard how I spoke against this place and against its inhabitants, that they should become a desolation and a curse, and you have torn your clothes and wept before me, I also have heard you, declares the Lord. (2 Kings 22:18–19)

Josiah’s repentance is recounted again in 2 Chronicles 34, with an emphasis on the king hearing God’s words and then appropriately responding (called “self-humbling”) with a tender heart and torn garments: “because your heart was tender and you humbled yourself before God when you heard his words against this place and its inhabitants, and you have humbled yourself before me and have torn your clothes and wept before me, I also have heard you, declares the Lord” (2 Chronicles 34:27). As we’ll see, this is not the only emphasis on self-humbling in 2 Chronicles.

2. Declare him to be right—always.

When life’s circumstances and events conspire to lay us low, we may be tempted to doubt God’s goodness and justice. The test of self-humbling in these moments, as we see in King Rehoboam, is whether we arrogantly point the finger at God, instead of humbly evaluating our own hearts and lives, and declaring — for our own souls and for anyone else in earshot — that God is righteous.

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