When Moses went up to Mount Sinai for the second time
with new plates the Lord descended in the cloud, and stood with him there and
proclaimed His name:
“And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed,
The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in
goodness and truth. Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and
transgression and sin….” (Exodus 34:4-7)
There is real significance in this. When God restores
or renews covenants, He reveals himself by confirming His impeccable character so
His people can know Him, trust Him and follow Him. In other words, He is saying, this is who I am, who you are covenanting with. It is meant to build faith
in people and invite them back into a real relationship with Him. In this
instance, Israel had broken the covenant by worshipping the golden calf.
The Gospel of John records Christ’s proclamations of
who He is which identifies Him as the Saviour of all mankind. These
proclamations are known as the “7 I AMs:
·
I
am the bread of life (6:31,51)
·
I
am the light of the world (8:12)
·
I
am the door of the sheep (10:7,9)
·
I
am the good shepherd (10:11,14)
·
I
am the resurrection and life (11:25)
·
I
am the way, the truth and the life (14:6)
·
I
am the true vine (15:1,5)
I have often been amazed at the confidence with which Jesus
proclaimed Himself as the Messiah. The Jews expected Him to come in the clouds
of glory, not through the stench of a stable. Judging Him to be a mere mortal led
some to say that He was mad because of these proclamations (John 10:20) and some
that he was possessed of a devil (John 8:48; 8:52; Mark 3:22; Luke 11:15). But
imagine if He didn’t openly proclaim what He was like and what He had to offer
as the Saviour of the world. Who would have had faith in Him if He held back
and denied His attributes and characteristics and His role in the human
experience? How blind the people of Jesus’s time were not to see that His
confidence was grounded in humility and not pride.
Sometimes we are reluctant to vocalise our good
qualities for fear that people will consider us prideful. Martin Luther said:
“True humility does not know that it is humble. If it did, it would be proud
from the contemplation of so fine a virtue.” I do not completely agree with
this statement. We are told that
humility is the mother of virtues and rightly so but I wonder if we know how to
properly appreciate it for our benefit.
There is one person we should affirm our humility to
and that is ourselves. There would have to be a day when our trials and obedience have humbled us enough to be able to say to
ourselves: I am humble enough to be corrected, I am humble enough to admit I am
wrong, I am humble enough to be teachable, I am humble enough to be chastised,
I am humble enough to receive instruction, to be taught, to receive help, to
apologise, to correct a wrong, to make restitution when I have caused damage. I
love a person who can say, “when I’m wrong, I’m wrong”….We should be able to
acknowledge humility within us when it is for our benefit and the benefit of
our fellowman.
The Book of Mormon tells us that humility before God
will grant us these four things (Mosiah 4:12-13):
·
We
will be filled with the love of God;
·
We
will grow in knowledge of Him’
·
We
will retain a remission of our sins;
·
We
will love our fellowman
We want this, don’t we? So the commitment should be: I
choose to be humble enough to believe in a higher power than myself, to be
taught about Him, to obey Him, to amend my ways and recognize I am no better
than my fellowman. That’s humility – minimizing self-importance and finding a
healthy place for it on your priority list.
One man in the scriptures who knew full well who he
was, what he became and by what power he got there was Paul who said: “For I am
the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I
persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am…..” (1
Corinthians 15:9,10). In other words, I was wrong, I was humble enough to repent
and accept salvation from Him who saved me from the jaws of hell. That’s
humility.
- CATHRYNE ALLEN
