Clothe Yourselves with Humility Toward One Another

How long did it take for you to get dressed today? Did you spend a little extra time fixing up because it is Sunday? I have to admit, I take a little bit extra time on Sundays thinking through what I wear and often have to pray about it. (Now some of you might think that I need to pray longer because my choice of clothes needs help.) Nevertheless, prayer for picking out my Sunday attire helps me not to agonize what to wear. And I usually only do this on Sundays when I’m on the platform.  Now you may ask, why do I go into my “prayer closet” before I go into my clothes closet? Because I don’t trust myself. I have the propensity to dress for success. But through the years I have come to the conclusion that for me to stand before God and declare His Holy Word with a garment of pride, I will be pointing you to the wrong person – myself when I need to be pointing people to God. And I will be judged for this! It’s hard to be humble when you are going to tell it on the mountain. Everybody sees you so if you try to do the opposite and live out a private and hidden spirituality, you still can’t escape pride. Pride goes where you go. As the Scottish Pastor Andrew Murray said, “Pride can clothe itself in the garments of praise or of penitence.”^[1] Pride may look like we have it altogether but actually we are naked. We are the emperor with no clothes trying to rule our own lives. And this is why we are called by God in 1 Peter 5:5-7 to clothe ourselves with humility toward one another. Is that what you are wearing today? Humility! The insidious nature of pride is that if I asked for a show of hands of who is humble here today, those of us who raise their hands would get an automatic zero on the humility test. Even my confession of praying before picking out my clothes is fraught with the temptation to boast of my spirituality. Peeling back the layers of our motivations often reveals selfishness. The world just searches for ability. But as the former NFL player and sportscaster Emmanuel Acho says, “Ability without humility is a liability.” And yet, humility is the toughest clothes to put on each day, but we are commanded to do it by God and even better, we are empowered by God to do it. Let’s read 1 Peter 5:5-7 to learn how to clothe ourselves with humility toward one another.  Read 1 Peter 5:5-7! 

Clothes of humility make the man or woman of God. Notice I didn’t say humble clothes. We are not asking you to wear beggar’s clothes though beggars are welcome and honoured here. Clothes themselves have for too long been an evaluative piece of one’s spirituality. I grew up when men, even young men, would wear a suit while girls and women would wear a dress to church. Our clothes were the mark of our holiness in church. But the truth is that our Sunday best may have only covered up the rest of the week’s worst. Our physical clothes were never intended to draw attention to ourselves with being either too showy or immodest. Clothes were meant to do the opposite – cover up our shame and nakedness. God was the first clothes designer and maker.  Genesis 3:21 records, “And the Lord God made for Adam and his wife garments of skin and clothed them.” I’ll say that again, clothes were meant to cover up our shame and nakedness. And those first clothes pointed to the fact that something had to die to cover up our shame and nakedness. An animal had to die. But that sacrifice was temporary until we sinned again and the clothes got threadbare. Then another animal had to die to keep us from being exposed. The cycle of substitutionary death for our dress did not end for millennia. As one Bible scholar writes, “Clothing was the original badge of man’s sin and shame. Pride caused the need of man’s clothing, and pride still reigns in dress; the Christian therefore needs to clothe himself in humility. But the clothes are too expensive.”^[2]

So who would pay for our new clothes? Jesus made the payment. Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, had to die to cover up our shame and nakedness permanently. He paid off our debts at Christmas with His gift which is the opposite of how we buy gifts and get into debt at Christmas. As the prophet Isaiah foretold in Isaiah 61:10, “I will greatly rejoice in the LORD; my soul shall exult in my God, for He has clothed me with the robe of righteousness …” “God provides us with the robe of Christ’s righteousness, but in order to receive these new righteous clothes, we must be stripped of pride.”^[3] Therefore, I ask you, have you been clothed with Christ’s righteousness? Jesus traded our sin-stained clothes for His pure ones in God’s sight. This trade is what we call redemption – God’s buy-back plan. Shame and nakedness were traded for righteous purity and humility. And this is why we will still wear clothes in heaven and not return to our Edenic unclad state. We will wear white clothes in the new heavens and new earth even after Labour Day. Isn’t this what Jesus promises in Revelation 3:5, “The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I will never blot his name out of the book of life”? Our clothes in heaven will be a constant reminder of Christ’s purifying work in our lives. It’s also why “humility is not demeaning ourselves and thinking poorly of ourselves. It is simply not thinking of ourselves at all.”^[4] It is actually thinking of Christ. You see, “The word Peter uses for ‘to clothe oneself’ is very unusual … and describes anything tied on with a knot … It was commonly used for protective clothing; it was used for a pair of sleeves drawn over the sleeves of a robe and tied behind the neck. And it was used for a slave’s apron. This reminds us of how Jesus took on the form of a servant who would wear such an apron and washed His disciples’ feet (John 13:4-5). However, it so happens that this word is also used of another kind of garment that is stole-like and was a sign of honour and pre-eminence. To complete the picture, we must put both images together. Jesus once took the towel, essentially putting on the slave’s apron and undertook the humblest of all duties, washing His disciples’ feet; so we must in all put on the apron of humility in the service of Christ and of our fellow-men; but that very apron of humility will become the garment of honour for us, for it is he or she who is the servant of all who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 20:26).”^[5] No wonder, “Humility is not only to characterize the relationship of the Christians one to another, but also the manner of the whole church.”^[6]

The hard part is that “it takes humility to learn humility”^[7]  and “The highest lesson a believer has to learn is humility.”^[8] As Jemar Tisby declares, “Humility allows new information to correct old ideas and leads us into better ways of loving one another.”^[9] We need new information to correct old ideas. But it is a choice – humility is a choice. As the great preacher Charles Spurgeon once said, “Every Christian has a choice between being humble or being humbled.” I don’t like being humbled, do you? And this is why we must choose to clothe ourselves with Christ’s humility. How do we clothe ourselves with Christ’s humility? Clothe ourselves with Christ’s humility to …

1. … Our elders by submitting to them (v. 5) This is what we read in the first part of 1 Peter 5:5, “Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders.” This verse comes after the context of Peter instructing church elders to “shepherd the flock without shameful gain (v. 2) or being domineering, but being examples to the flock (v. 3).”  The context would point to big “E” elders or those overseeing the flock of God as Christ’s under-shepherds, but could any mentor in your life. “Elders have a unique responsibility to prepare a ‘house of God’ for the judgment that has now begun according to 1 Peter 4:17. They must guide and shepherd the flock not for financial gain or ego satisfaction, but willingly and without complaint. Instead of taking themselves more and more ‘emergency powers,’ they must become examples of servanthood and humility to the entire ‘flock of God.’”^[10] Isn’t it so much easier to follow and submit to somebody who is a good example and has your interest at heart rather than their own and who does not lord it over you? Nevertheless, the motivation for submission is greatly enhanced when we realize that we are submitting to God first. The late Warren Wiersbe taught, “We can’t be submissive to each other until we are first submissive to God.”^[11] And “Submission is an act of faith. After all there is a danger in submitting to others; they might take advantage of us, but not if we trust God and if we are submitted to one another.”^[12]This is not a call to stay in an abusive situation, but it is a call to remember that even if a superior mistreats us, we can go to their ultimate superior God who will bring judgment for evil and reward for good as 1 Peter 5:4 declares. I am deeply concerned that the big “C” Church is suffering from a lack of elders both official elders or those ahead of us in the faith and life regardless of age. We have a dearth of those who lead by godly example and I am concerned that we younger generations are not submitting to them because we believe we know more than them. And maybe in some areas, we do know more.  Or we may not be submissive because the leader has made mistakes and his or her failures deserve cancellation. But we are to live countercultural as Peter taught. “The word for submission has the active sense of minding the superiority of others and our own unworthiness.”^[13]We too make mistakes. I certainly have. What motivates me to submit to our elders at Temple is Christ’s humility, not my own. He submitted Himself to His parents as we know from Luke 2:51. In fact, every human Jesus came across, was imperfect and yet, Jesus humbled Himself and submitted Himself. We must do likewise to demonstrate Christ and His gospel. Clothe yourselves with Christ’s humility to those ahead of you by submitting to them as they call you to follow God’s Word. However, clothing ourselves with Christ’s humility is not only found in the garment of submission, but also in a second garment of service. This is why we also must clothe ourselves with Christ’s humility to …
2. … One another by serving in the lowliest of ways (v. 5-6) Look at verses 5-6, “Clothe yourselves, all of you (not just a few of you), with humility toward one another, for God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” We already learned that the idea of clothing one’s self with humility is directly tied to the apron strings of Jesus who was a servant to His disciples. And we must do likewise. Andrew Murray taught, “It is easy to think we humble ourselves before God, but humility towards men will be the only sufficient proof that humility before God is real; that humility has taken up its abode in us, and become our very nature; that we actually, like Christ, have made ourselves of no reputation. The only humility that is really ours is not that which we try to show before God in prayer, but that which we carry with us, and carry out, in ordinary conduct.”^[14] So think about who you might serve that cannot pay you back or even know about your service? Think about serving the person who has given you the most trouble this year – who is on your naughty list! Serve them! Remember, “Humility before God is nothing if not proved in humility before men.”^[15] The cool part is that God will help us with our humility. He gives grace to the humble. As John MacArthur says, “Humility creates the vacuum that divine grace fills.”^[16] The warning is that God is a sworn enemy of the proud. He opposes the proud. He has declared war on pride. Maybe this explains why so many on a pedestal have been knocked off and been cancelled? Stuart Scott declares, “Pride is the pandemic vice. It is everywhere and manifests itself in many ways and kills at an alarming rate. The question is not, ‘Do I have pride?’ but, ‘Where is it?’ and ‘How much of it do I have?’ We all have a tendency to think too much about ourselves and too much of ourselves.”^[17] And pride is not the plague du jour. It plagues each generation. The 17^th Century Puritan Thomas Watson, was a non-conformist who died while praying in secret.^[18] He warned, “Pride is a spiritual drunkenness; it flies up like wine into the brain and intoxicates it. It is idolatry; a proud man is a self-worshiper.”^[19] “In the Greek language, the words for pride occur in two different categories. One particular word group suggests the idea of ‘straining or stretching one’s neck’ (as if to hold one’s head up high because of what one thinks he has made of himself or accomplished). The other category in the Greek conveys ‘a blindness’ and even suggests the idea of being ‘enveloped with smoke.’”^[20] So the irony as we hold our heads up high above others, we can’t see more but become more blind. And so, “Pride is a form of self-worship. Prideful people believe that they are or should be the source of what is good, right and worthy.”^[21] I don’t distance myself from that statement. I can so easily think that I am the source of what is good, right and worthy. No wonder God opposes the proud and gives grace only to the humble! Arrogant people don’t think they need grace. “Humility is so rare and endangered because it is unnatural to man. Only a Christian who has the Spirit of God can learn genuine humility.”^[22] Praise God that though “the danger of pride is greater and nearer than we think, the grace for humility is nearer still.”^[23] In practical terms, “Take every opportunity of humbling yourself before God and men. Accept with gratitude everything that God allows from within or without, from friend or enemy, in nature or in grace, to remind you of your need of humbling and to help you to it.”^[24] In this way, we will clothe ourselves with Christ’s humility to one another by serving in the lowliest ways. Submission and service though are not the only strings attached to Jesus. In fact, the ultimate way we should clothe ourselves with Christ’s humility is to …
3. … God by casting our cares on Him (v. 7) Look at verse 7 to discover one of the most beloved, yet under-utilized verses in the Bible, “cast all your care (or anxiety) on Him because He cares for you.” This literally means “To throw something upon something else like throwing clothes on an animal for riding.”^[25] To put that in Western terms, you are saddling God with your problems and He is big enough to handle them. It doesn’t sound though very humbling, but “the true Christian attitude is not negative self-abandonment or resignation, but involves as the expression of one’s self-humbling the positive entrusting of oneself and one’s troubles to God.”^[26] It is a recognition as the Puritan John Owen once said, “We can have no power from Christ unless we live in a persuasion that we have none of our own.” Even Sherlock homes once said, “The chief proof of a man’s greatness lies in the perception of his smallness.” I think being concerned less about ourselves would help with our anxiety. Anxiety is an epidemic in our society. Maybe it is because we haven’t humbly cast our cares on God but are trying to carry them ourselves? This is not a call to be irresponsible. Dr. George Morrison once said, “God does not make His children care free in order that they be careless.” But it is to “place yourself before God in your utter helplessness; consent heartily to the fact of your impotence to slay or make alive yourself; sink down into your own nothingness, in the spirit of meek and patient and trustful surrender to God.”^[27] Peter did this! Some of Peter’s known cares include family illness with the sickness of his mother-in-law after He humbly sought Jesus for healing (Mark 1:29-31). Then there was Peter’s family provision that may have been a concern when Peter decided to follow Jesus full-time. Christ cared for Peter and provided a boatload of fish after Peter humbled himself in letting down his nets once again even though he had been fishing all night. (Luke 5:1-11). On another occasion, Peter owed taxes so Jesus provided a fish with a coin (Matthew 17:24-27). The irony being that Peter’s own effort and “expertise” at his livelihood to pay the bills wasn’t enough (Luke 5:5), but Jesus could provide in an instance from that very same source – fish as a reminder of where Peter had been called from. Another care that Peter had was repairing the damage he had done to others like when he cut off Malchus’ ear when the mob came to arrest Jesus. Jesus healed Malchus (John 18:10-11; Luke 22:51). Then there was the care of Peter being in prison and Jesus delivering him (Acts 12). Or when Peter stuck his foot in his mouth and bragged about sticking with Jesus only to deny knowing Christ a few hours later (Matthew 26:30-35; 69-75). Jesus reinstated Peter shortly after Jesus rose from the grave (John 21;15-19). And let’s not forget Peter drowning when losing sight of Jesus (Matthew 14:22-33). All these cares Peter had and many of them we share. Like the fisherman he was, Peter learned to cast his cares on God – whether those cares were family, money, hurts, persecutions or missteps. And who did he learn this from? Jesus! Recall all the times Jesus made statements about His own reliance on God, “The Son can do nothing in Himself” (John 5:19, c.f. 30, 41; 6:38; 7:16, 28; 8:42, 50; 14:10). To clothe ourselves with Christ’s humility we must cast our cares on God. Jacques Benigne Bossuet once said, “Man tries to make himself God through pride, God makes Himself man through humility.” This is the motivation for casting our cares on Christ.

Do you want to know the worst gift you could get this Christmas? Pastor Charles Swindoll tells us, “The world’s smallest package is a man wrapped up in himself.” Contrast this with the best Christmas gift – Jesus! The Son of God came to earth in another small package – the form of a baby born in a lowly stable. Jesus is the Christmas gift that lasts the rest of the year. It is because of Him we can put humility on each day. You see, as soon as we wear yesterday’s humility and think we are humble enough, we become exposed and our pride is on display. This is why a practical exercise would be to pray and ask God to clothe you with Christ’s humility as you get dressed for the day. 

Today, Sarah Brent is getting (or got) baptized. She is exchanging her clothes of unrighteousness, being washed and putting on Christ’s righteousness for you all to know about. Those righteous clothes are the same clothes of humility that Christ wore on the night He was betrayed and washed His disciples’ feet even though they would betray, flee and deny knowing Him a couple of hours later. He even fed them supper. As we now partake in this supper, may we clothe ourselves with Christ’s humility in our submission, service and asking for supplication to God. 

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^[1] Andrew Murray, Humility – The Beauty of Holiness (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1990), 41.

^[2] Jamieson, R., Fausset, A. R., & Brown, D. (1997). Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (Vol. 2, p. 513). Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

^[3] Fausset.

^[4] Warren Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary – Volume 2 (Wheaton: Victor Books, 1989), 431.

^[5] William Barclay, The Daily Study Bible (Toronto: G.R. Welch Co. Ltd., 1976), 271.

^[6] Bo Reicke, The Epistles of James, Peter & Jude – Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday & Company Inc., 1964), 131.

^[7] Stuart Scott, From Pride to Humility (Bemidji, MN: Focus Publishing, 2002), 26.

^[8] Murray, 62.

^[9] Jemar Tisby, How to Fight Racism (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2021), 185.

^[10] J. Ramsey Michaels, 1 Peter – Word Biblical Commentary (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1988), 291.

^[11] Wiersbe, 431.

^[12] Wiersbe, 431.

^[13] R.C.H. Lenski, Interpretation of Peter, John & Jude (Columbus: Wartburg Press, 1945), 222.

^[14] Murray, 34.

^[15] Murray, 35.

^[16] John MacArthur, “School News Publication,” The Master’s Seminary Mantle, Winter 2000, 1.

^[17] Stuart Scott, From Pride to Humility (Bemidji, MN: Focus Publishing, 2002), 2.

^[18] Source: https://prabook.com/web/thomas.watson/1784269. Accessed December 8, 2021.

^[19] Thomas Watson, The Godly Man’s Picture (Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1992), 574.

^[20] Scott, 3.

^[21] Scott, 5.

^[22] Scott, 17.

^[23] Murray, 64.

^[24] Murray, 66.

^[25] Cleon L. Rogers Jr. & Cleon L. Rogers III, The New Linguistic and Exegetical Key to the Greek New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998), 578.

^[26] J.N.D. Kelly, A Commentary on the Epistles of Peter and Jude (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1976), 208.

^[27] Murray, 58.

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