“Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.” – James 4:10
The grace of God does not only works at our salvation or does not only stops the moment Christ has redeemed us from sin and death. It also extends to our daily activities in life and even in the smallest circumstance everyday. God is gracious and when we say He is gracious, He will not just stop for a small favor but He will really shower us with so much grace.
Now, our verse today makes us remember one particular story in the Gospel where Jesus said that the first will be the last and the last will be the first. As we can see, it has been a repeated topic that God wants to address and wants us to learn. He indeed does not like proud people for He opposed the proud and He gives grace to the humble. Indeed, God does not want us to live our lives full of pride and thinking highly of ourselves.
We must understand that it is important for us to humble ourselves in front of God. We know that as human as we are, we always like the spotlight. We always like to be praised by other people because of some good things we did. We always like to be put into the center so many people will look up to us and will see us as people who contributed a lot to society. So even if we deny it or even if we don’t realize that we are wanting that much attention, deep inside us, we really like it.
Therefore, James wants to encourage us to abandon our human pride and be humble in front of God. This is not just mere humbling or this does not mean that we talk lowly of ourselves, we treat ourselves bad but what God means by this is to abandon our alpha-male-like attitude. Our independent attitude when it comes to handling our situations in life. We should not solve our own problems because we think that we can just solve it without the help of anyone. God wants us to be dependent on Him and to submit ourselves to Him.
As Christians, we should know that it is no longer us who lives but it is Christ. He must increase and we must decrease. Our lives should glorify God. People should see God instead of us if they look at us. Thus, we are ought to humble ourselves before God. Let Him control our lives, let Him take over. Christ should indeed increase and we must decrease. Then, as God wants us to humble ourselves before Him, He takes delight in us for He sees Christ in us and by that He promised to lift us up.
Just like how Jesus said that the last will become the first. For those people who seek God’s help, God’s deliverance and God’s wonderful grace, we are dependent on Him. But for those people who see themselves so high and think that they don’t need God, they will be humbled. This is not because God wants all our praises and adoration, but it is because God deserves all of this and He wants us to understand that we are all under grace and that we are dependent on Him.
May we always remember that we should really humble ourselves in God. We must remember that it is Christ who should increase not us. Let us always remember that we are very dependent to God and without Him, we are nothing. We must always live our lives that are only glorifying God, not ourselves.
