We reject our humanness (with its limits and weaknesses), but Jesus embraces it. He not only calls it “very good” in the beginning but shows us how it is good through taking on a body of His own.

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
John 1:14

Admittedly, I’ve not spent much time contemplating the mystery of Christ’s dual natures until recently. It has always been something I easily accepted (the truth of it and the mystery of it) though I’m not sure if that is because of faith or intellectual laziness. I mean, some things are just too big to even begin unraveling, and I’m learning to accept (and be okay with) the fact that God did not design our brains to hold or understand all that He is. He is, after all, to borrow from our Sunday School’s second grade curriculum, incomprehensible.

But here I am, sitting on my back porch, a day after my fifty-first birthday, thinking about it, and I have Hannah Anderson to thank. For though I have read her lovely book Humble Roots twice already, God is still using it to teach me more about who He is and how He redeemed humanity partly by becoming human Himself.¹

“…Jesus, who being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross!”
Philippians 2:6-8

Hannah explains that the English words “human” and “humility” share a common Latin root: humus, which means dirt, earth, or ground. This hearkens back to the creation account in Genesis. “The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” (Gen 2:7) In Hebrew, we see linguistic similarities: haadam means “man” and comes from their word for ground: haadamah.

To be sure, there is a connection to be made in our minds between humanity and humility. To be humble is to remember how we are formed—to remember from where we came: the dirt.

And to also remember that man only becomes “a living being” after God breathes into him “the breath of life.” As Hannah asserts, “Without God’s breath in us, we are nothing but a pile of dirt.” (p. 65)

Did that make you flinch?

I’ll be honest. I read that sentence and felt no insult to my sensitivities whatsoever, but after meeting with a group of ladies from church, and hearing their reactions to it, I can see how it might come across as harsh and insensitive. And I think it has to do with the ways our broken world often abuses each other. When we’re mistreated, we might cry out: He treated me like dirt. When someone acts shamefully and we want to give him or her a scathing review we may shout: What a piece of dirt!

Dirt, in this sense, has been co-opted to mean less than nothing. And when applied to a person, his or her value and dignity has been reduced to worthless garbage.

But Hannah is not stripping humankind of its dignity by calling us ‘piles of dirt.’ That is simply what we are.

“…when you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust.”
Psalm 104:29

He keeps our hearts beating and He fills our lungs with breath. When He removes these from us, our bodies die and return to the dust. We really are quite weak and fragile. And remembering this truth is what creates the marveling and wonder that He thinks about us at all! More than that, that He became one of us.

The late pastor and theologian, R.C. Sproul explained once that it isn’t the Resurrection people can’t accept; it’s the fact that God took on human flesh that upsets their thinking. Why would Almighty God condescend to such a lowly, mean estate? It’s scandalous.

Hannah is helping me understand that by becoming a man, Jesus restored our humanity by reclaiming humility.

Being formed from the earth, we should, by nature, be humble people. But humility was lost in the fall. By reaching for the forbidden fruit, mankind pulled themselves away from the ground (where they belonged) elevating themselves. Sin twisted our nature making us proud instead—the very opposite of humble. Perhaps the reason pride is found beneath every sin we commit is because it is the oldest sin.

I never realized just how thoroughly I was ruled by pride until God showed me the various ways it manifests in my life. I always thought it was the face of arrogant boasting, but it can be quiet too. The nature of pride draws us inward—or as St. Augustine described it, we are incurvatus in se, “curved inward on oneself.”

Martin Luther popularized the phrase in his Lectures on Romans:

Read More