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Title: Spiritual Pride & Spiritual Humility
Text: Romans 9:1–13
Location: St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in Door County; 316 W. Main St., Forestville, WI 54213; 920-856-6420
Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christopher D. Jackson
Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church serves Luxemburg and other areas in Northeast Wisconsin.
Transcript
Today we are taking up the theme of spiritual humility, and in contrast to spiritual pride. And there’s a great story from the life of Martin Luther that I think really illustrates our true position under God. After Martin Luther perished, there were many efforts by people to make sure that his dying faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and his commitment to the doctrine of justification, remain established, that nobody could say that he recanted on his deathbed or took back anything that he had taught.
And one of the most fascinating pieces of evidence they found was on a little scrap of paper. And on this little scrap of paper, some curious writing there. Writing in both German and Latin, by the way. Lutherans love to do this. They love to mix up their languages. Our cornerstone, by the way, has both German and Latin on it back from the 1800s.
And on this little piece of paper was a little bit of German and Latin. The German said, “Wir sind alle Bettler.” And then the Latin said, “Hoc est vere.” What does that mean? We are all beggars, wir sind alle Bettler. It is true, hoc est vere. Today, in our Old Testament lesson, Jesus, the Word of God in his pre-incarnate state, the Word of God is inviting us to be beggars.
To receive food without payment and drink without money. And that certainly is a position of spiritual humility. That’s my prayer for us today, that through this sermon we would more and more put aside spiritual pride, but instead embrace spiritual humility and receive the gifts that Christ has humbly won for us.
Spiritual Pride
Spiritual pride—it’s a terrible malady, and it’s one that’s incredibly common all across the church and those who claim the name of Christian.
Right now, there’s a really big movement called the New Apostolic Reformation, for example. What is the New Apostolic Reformation? It’s one of the most powerful, popular spiritual movements going on in the United States of America and across the world. How powerful is it? Guess what? The leader of the White House’s faith office is an adherent to the New Apostolic Reformation.
And what does it teach? It teaches that God is appointing new apostles for this time, with an authority almost bordering on the apostles that were appointed by Christ himself. Now how do you know that the Lord has appointed you an apostle, or how can you know that someone has appointed someone else to be apostle?
It’s a little bit hazy to me. But certainly you must come yourself to this idea that the Lord has granted you special authority over others. It’s a form of spiritual pride. There are other forms of spiritual pride. A few years ago, I was watching some TV show. I can’t remember what it was, but some lady was having various kinds of personal problems, and she was kind of depressed and hanging out in her apartment.
And Sunday morning comes along, and her friend comes, bursts into the apartment and says, “Get yourself ready. We’re going to church.” The lady says, “I’m not going to church.” And the friend says, “What? Do you think you’re too good for church?” And she thinks for a moment and says, “Yeah, I do think I’m too good for church.”
And isn’t that the case? The church—it’s a hospital for those who are sin-sick. And there are many people who don’t think they have that sickness of sin, and so therefore they see no need to receive God’s grace and mercy as he offers it in word and sacrament.
There’s other forms of spiritual pride. So most of us, we probably don’t fall into that category that would consider ourselves to be apostles. It’s a beautiful Sunday morning, prime climactic real estate in Northern Wisconsin, and you’ve all chosen to be here instead of out on the lake or whatever it is.
Certainly there’s some evidence there that you know that you need what the Lord offers here. And so maybe you might be thinking to yourself, spiritual pride, that’s not my problem. That’s the thing about spiritual pride. If you don’t think you’re spiritually proud, guess what?
You have spiritual pride.
How many of us, when we really get down to it, can say that we utilize the Lord’s gifts as we ought? How many of us can say that we pray as we ought, that we read the Scriptures as we ought, that we allow our speech to be salted with the Word of God to each other as we ought? The plain fact of the matter is, none of us can.
In a sense, all of us turn up our noses at the gifts of God in one way or the other. All of us have spiritual pride. It’s one of the great enemies of true authentic Christian faith. The kind of faith that shows up to Christ as a beggar saying, “Lord, please give me your good gifts.”
Predestination and Spiritual Pride
And because of that, the Scriptures deal abundantly with this. Paul deals with this in the early church. He was dealing with this in Romans. We’ll get to that in a second, but as we talked about the kind of spiritual pride that would hold itself up above others on account of various kinds of spiritual gifts, Paul addresses that too.
The same sort of thing where people were holding themselves up as super Christians with a special kind of authority, spiritual authority over others. That happened in the church at Corinth. So Paul said, “Look, the gifts of the Spirit are there for the sake of service of others. And even if you have incredible spiritual powers but have not love, then it’s all pointless,” in 1 Corinthians 13. And here in Romans, he is talking about another kind of spiritual remedy to spiritual pride, and this is the knowledge of the predestination of God.
So last week we talked about predestination, and we talked about the wonderful blessing that the knowledge of predestination is. And here Paul continues on that. In the extended reading, which I had Arnie read, which went beyond what’s printed in the bulletin there, Paul uses predestination to address spiritual pride in the Roman congregation.
Now, what kind of spiritual pride was going on among the Romans? At the Roman congregation, there were those who were holding themselves up above others within the congregation on account of their ethnic background. So there were those who were Jewish by birth, who could trace their lineage generation by generation back to Abraham, and not only this, but also observed the Old Testament law.
All the various kinds of laws and strictures that were given to the children of Israel at Mount Sinai, they continued to practice, and they held themselves in a higher status over those who couldn’t trace their background back to Abraham, what we often call the Gentiles, and who themselves as well didn’t live according to those Old Testament principles.
And Paul’s trying to cut them down a little bit. Trying to cut them off at their knees in a couple different ways. So first of all, Paul undercuts them here in this passage by talking about what it means to be descended from Abraham. What that does and doesn’t mean. And he references, first of all, Isaac, and says, “Think about Isaac.”
Abraham had two wives. He had Sarah on the one hand, and he had Hagar on the other. From Sarah, he had Isaac. From Hagar, he had Ishmael. Why was one son chosen over the other? And St. Paul argues there is really, in a sense, nothing to commend Isaac over Ishmael. It was God’s sovereign choice.
Now, there might be a little bit of a weakness in that argument, because someone might say, wasn’t Sarah a free woman and Hagar a slave? Therefore surely Isaac would receive the promise instead of Ishmael. Paul says wait. Just a second. Think about the sons of Isaac. Esau on the one hand, Jacob on the other.
They had the same mother, Rebecca. And according to the ways of the world, it might be thought that Esau would be the favored one. He was the firstborn after all. He was as well his father’s favorite. And yet, it wasn’t Esau, but it was Jacob who inherited the promise. And this was determined by God before either of them had even come to be.
So surely it wasn’t that God looked ahead and said Esau is going to be this incredible person, or rather, Jacob’s going to be this incredible person, so I’m going to give him the promise. No, it was entirely God’s providential decision and choice before any of them had even come to be. It had nothing to do with them, but it was purely about God and his decision and his choice. And so yes, you may be descended from Abraham according to the flesh, and there is much benefit to that.
And he lists many of these benefits after all. He says, to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship and the promises, the patriarchs, and the greatest blessing that from their race according to the flesh, Jesus Christ would be born. But even all these things, they aren’t deserved. Pure blessing. Pure gift.
Didn’t earn it. God just saw fit to give it to you. So because of this, there is no room for spiritual pride. If anything, you ought to acknowledge how humble your situation is, that God would simply give these things to you out of His grace, out of His mercy.
And that point applies to us in a slightly different form, but it still applies to us today. Our status with God has nothing to do with our abilities, with our works, with our virtue, with our knowledge. But instead, our status with God has everything to do with Him, with His sovereign choice. And the flip side of that doctrine of predestination, God’s sovereign grace, is the doctrine of justification.
If our status with God has nothing to do with us and everything to do with Him, then salvation is pure gift. And that’s the great promise of the doctrine of predestination and salvation by grace through faith: they go hand in hand. They are two sides of the same coin.
You can’t have one without the other.
The Humility of God
And praise be to God that this salvation by grace has been won for us through perhaps one of the greatest paradoxes of the Christian faith: the fact that almighty and glorious God humbles himself to serve us. It’s at the core, by the way, of the miracle, the feeding of the 5,000, the humility of God in Christ.
The feeding of the 5,000—it’s, aside from the resurrection of Jesus Christ, you might consider it maybe the most important miracle that Christ did. There could be an argument for that because, as far as I’m aware, and I could be wrong, and maybe you can check me on this, but as far as I’m aware, there’s only two miracles which are recorded in all four Gospels.
The one is the resurrection of Christ, and the second is the feeding of the 5,000. And why did they consider the feeding of the 5,000, the apostles, so important under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit? Many reasons, one of which I am convinced is that this feeding of the 5,000 shows us two realities. First of all, it shows us God’s humble service to us in creation, and second of all, it shows God’s humble service to us in redemption.
In creation, first of all, because this feeding of the 5,000 opens our eyes to the fact that all of God’s earthly blessings are truly from Him by grace, and this is His humble service of us. Our God is not far off, but rather daily supplies us with every need. Yes, the Lord works mediately through all kinds of means, and yet it is the Lord at work.
When the seed is down in that gritty ground, it is the Lord who causes it to germinate. When that seed is nourished by the rain, it is the Lord who has sent those waters upon the land to nourish it. It is the Lord who sends the sun’s rays to cause the plant to transform that energy into the kernel.
And ultimately, it is the Lord who brings that kernel to our table to sustain this body and life. Every good gift in this life is from the hand of God. How marvelously humble is the Lord of glory.
And therefore, God’s humility was not done. Even though we have failed to honor God as we ought, God yet sent His Son, Jesus Christ, who even though He was equal with the Father, did not consider equality with God a thing to be clung to, but made Himself nothing, taking the very form of a servant and humbling himself even to the point of death, even death on the cross. What incredible humility in the incarnation and the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, our Lord.
My prayer for you, brothers and sisters in Christ, is that in perceiving, in treasuring this humble work of Christ, that the Spirit would move your heart to humbly receive the gifts of God. Acknowledging, yes, His incredible benefits in this life, but above all receiving His benefits of grace and mercy for the life to come.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.