1 Peter 5:5–6 (NASB95)
5 and all of you,
clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, for GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD,
BUT GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE. 6 Therefore humble yourselves under the
mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time,
So what exactly does it mean when the Bible says that God
gives grace to the humble?
Our topic is humility and anxiety, and we have looked at
humility first. We are told to put on humility,
because God is opposed to proud people, but He gives grace to humble
people. But what does that mean? The next verse explains that. That’s why it begins with ‘therefore.’
Every translation I have seen translates this as ‘humble
yourselves.’ This is probably because
verse 5 says that we should put on humility.
But the verb is passive.
Literally it says ‘be humbled.’
Scholars may insist that it is proper to translate a passive as a middle
voice, but I don’t see any reason why Peter would use a passive if he meant a
middle. Middle voice verb forms are not uncommon
in Greek.
You read I and II Peter, and Peter does not appear to be
some uneducated blue collar fisherman. A
lot of years have passed since he was, but either way his Greek is not that of
somebody who dropped out of high school.
If he meant to say ‘humble yourselves,’ I have no doubt he would have
said that without expecting his readers to make that correction in their minds
as they read this.
Why is this important?
In the first case, we are told to actively submit ourselves to whatever
God might want for our lives. In the
second case, it tells us that God is the One who is actively working here to
humble us. Translators are expecting
that first thought here, because we were told to do that in verse 5.
But the humility that Peter speaks of in verse 5 is only one
small aspect of humility. While we are
to humble ourselves before fellow believers, there is a much bigger program at
work. Humility is to characterize
believers, and God is actively working to bring that about. In the case mentioned here, we choose to put
others first, but humility with God means more than just putting others or God before
ourselves.
The Bible commentary on I Peter 5:6 is Deuteronomy 8:
Deuteronomy 8
(NASB95)
1 “All the
commandments that I am commanding you today you shall be careful to do, that
you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the LORD swore
to give to your forefathers.
2 “You
shall remember all the way which the LORD your God has led you in the
wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know
what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. 3 “He
humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not
know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man
does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of
the mouth of the LORD. 4 “Your clothing did not wear out on you, nor did your
foot swell these forty years. 5 “Thus you are to know in your heart that the
LORD your God was disciplining you just as a man disciplines his son.
6
“Therefore, you shall keep the commandments of the LORD your God, to walk in
His ways and to fear Him. 7 “For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good
land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing forth in
valleys and hills; 8 a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and
pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey; 9 a land where you will eat food
without scarcity, in which you will not lack anything; a land whose stones are
iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper.
10 “When
you have eaten and are satisfied, you shall bless the LORD your God for the
good land which He has given you. 11 “Beware that you do not forget the LORD
your God by not keeping His commandments and His ordinances and His statutes
which I am commanding you today; 12 otherwise, when you have eaten and are
satisfied, and have built good houses and lived in them, 13 and when your herds
and your flocks multiply, and your silver and gold multiply, and all that you
have multiplies, 14 then your heart will become proud and you will forget the
LORD your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt, out of the house of
slavery.
15 “He led
you through the great and terrible wilderness, with its fiery serpents and
scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water; He brought water for you
out of the rock of flint. 16 “In the wilderness He fed you manna which your
fathers did not know, that He might humble you and that He might test you, to
do good for you in the end. 17 “Otherwise, you may say in your heart, ‘My power
and the strength of my hand made me this wealth.’
18 “But
you shall remember the LORD your God, for it is He who is giving you power to
make wealth, that He may confirm His covenant which He swore to your fathers,
as it is this day. 19 “It shall come about if you ever forget the LORD your God
and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I testify against you
today that you will surely perish. 20 “Like the nations that the LORD makes to
perish before you, so you shall perish; because you would not listen to the
voice of the LORD your God.
The people of God had been freed from slavery in Egypt. God had promised to give them a land of their
own, but it took 40 years to get them there through a wilderness. In this chapter, Moses explains to the people
what God was doing with them for those 40 years.
Very briefly, in verse 2 he said that God wanted to humble
them and in verse 16, he said that the purpose of the humbling was so God could
“do good for (them) in the end,” just like I Peter 5:6. Actually this humbling process has 5
purposes, but Peter just mentions the one, because it is important to see in a situation
where it appears you are giving up something (by humbling yourself) that you
are really gaining by doing so.
So chapter 8 of Deuteronomy explains this whole humbling
process that Peter tells them (us) to submit to (or, be humbled).
1. The first
purpose of God in His attempts to humble us to know what is in our hearts (v.2). Theologians may argue that God already knows
what is in our hearts, but we certainly don’t.
And what exactly is He looking for?
Whether we will keep His commandments or not.
This is the exact same thing that Job went through. Satan claimed that the only reason Job served
God was because God protected Job from bad things and filled his life with good
things. And everybody needs to answer
the same question: do you do what is right because it is right, or because you
benefit from it? Would you do the right
thing even if it cost you something?
You see, when you are dealing with God, by the very definition
of God, you are not going to always understand what is going on, so you will be
asked to do things that you will not understand or that will seem contrary to
all common sense at the time. Can you
believe that this is still the right thing to do? At some point, you will just have to believe
that what God says to do is the right thing to do.
2. The second
purpose of this humbling process is to make you understand that man does not
live by bread alone but by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of
God. So what does that mean (v.3).
So what does that mean?
Notice in the first part of verse 3 that God humbled them and let them
be hungry, and then He fed them. We
wonder why God allows problems to come into our lives. It’s so that we go through the process of
seeing a need and approaching God for help, and God then provides the
help. Without the process, it becomes
easy to assume that everything will just work out by themselves. We won’t see God’s direct involvement in
every part of our lives.
3. The third
purpose of this humbling process is so we learn that God is treating us like
children, His children. Do you ever
wonder why God created families? Why
this whole birth process and this whole growing up process, where we start out
not exactly stupid, but essentially we have to learn everything. And that means that somebody has to teach
us. Generally it is the parents. They care the most about us and are most
invested in our lives.
And that is how God feels about us. This is why I would say that it is important
for people to marry and have children.
This is an important tool for learning about God. You may know it in your head, but until your
heart aches for your kids, you won’t really understand how God aches for
you.
4, The fourth
purpose of this humbling process is to help us not forget (v.11). We are told to beware not to forget. Forgetting is easy. Now these words were addressed to people who
had seen miracles from God on a daily basis.
If they can forget, how much easier is it for us to forget?
And what exactly is it that they will forget? They will forget that God was the One who did
all these things for them (v.17). They
will start to think that it was their intelligence, their education, their hard
work, their great personalities, their social skills that brought them their
success.
5. The fifth
purpose for this humbling was so that God could do good for them in the end
(v.16). One of the hardest parts of the
Christian life, in my opinion, is believing that God really wants what is best
for us. To put it another way, will I be
happy in life without really trying? We
know we are to give thanks in everything and to rejoice always, but that sounds
like we are to force ourselves to smile when the world is falling in around us
or we appear trapped in a situation that we find bothersome with no sign of
relief.
All the descriptions Moses uses here to describe this land
are descriptions of abundance: flowing forth, without scarcity, not lacking
anything, satisfied, multiplies.
At this point, many Christians will protest and say that God
did not promise us a life of ease but of trials. Which could I suppose lead to anxiety, which
is the topic of these articles.
Peter says that God will exalt those who have been humbled
by God’s work in their lives. You can
judge the progress of that humbling by the first 4 purposes listed above. The Bible doesn’t spell out just what that
exaltation will look like or exactly when due time is. I think it depends on the person. It’s like buying Christmas presents for
people. What excites me might not
interest you at all.
But this is certainly not talking about going to heaven and
having a wonderful time up there. God wants
to bless us in life down here. We just
need to understand what God is doing in our lives, and this verse gives us the
clue.
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