The Gospel & Salvation: Salvation Produces Humility - Part 1

Salvation Produces Humility – Part 1

Romans 12:3

It is great to be back with you. Donna and I had an amazing experience. The beauty of God’s creation is breathtaking in Alaska. We had some incredible encounters with whales. We were so close to one that it isn’t at all hard for me to believe that God could have one of those amazing creatures swallow Jonah, just like the Bible says. 

I want to thank Caleb for all he did to fill in for me. I can’t tell you what a blessing it has been to watch that young man grow up and become such a solid individual. I know Caleb loves the Lord and shares my conviction regarding the sufficiency of Scripture and the authority of God’s word in every matter of faith and conduct. I am thankful to have him step in when I am unable to be here. With all he has going on with work and family and projects at home, I know he makes a great sacrifice to prepare. He does a good job.

Now that I am back I am ready to pick up where we left off a few weeks ago. We are now about to complete eight months in this series on the gospel and the work of salvation. In recent messages we have been looking at what the genuine work of salvation produces in us. We need to know the impact of God’s saving power. We need to be able to examine ourselves to see if this impact is being realized in our own lives. We must be certain regarding the issue of salvation.

We have seen that salvation makes us to be obedient to the Lord. Salvation makes us to become doers of the word, not just hearers. Salvation makes us obedient as slaves of our Lord Jesus Christ. We believe in Him by faith. Our faith is in Him not just as a Savior, but as Lord. And most recently we have been learning from Romans 12:1-3 that salvation makes us to become those who will present our bodies as a living and holy sacrifice to the Lord. So let’s turn to that passage again this morning and stand together as we read the word of the Lord.

Chapter 12 of Romans begins the section of this letter that outlines the duties of the Christian life. Romans 1-11 give the New Testament’s most thorough description of the doctrines of salvation. As we have often noted, Paul’s writings are most often divided in this fashion. He first describes the doctrinal truth. Then he details the duty that follows. The duties of the Christian life are detailed in chapters 12-16. Paul starts with an important duty right from the start. Paul says, “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.”

Verse 1 reveals that salvation calls us to become a people who are willing to live to fulfill our ultimate purpose in life. What is man’s ultimate purpose? Why do we exist? We exist for God’s glory. Our primary purpose is to glorify God. God created us in order that He might be glorified by us and through us. To live for God’s glory requires that we die to self. We abandon our own lives for the sake of Him. We present our bodies as a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God. This is an attitude and approach to life that can be described as nothing short of complete abandon of my dreams and desires and the apprehension of God’s plan and purpose.

So many people are seeking a relationship with God because they want His blessings and His favor and His forgiveness and heaven. Salvation gives us all that, and more. But salvation is not as much for man’s sake as it is for His glory. Salvation transforms us from selfish to sacrifices. If you missed the message on verse 1 I urge you to go listen to it. If you have forgotten the message from verse 1 I urge you to go listen to it.

The next message was from verse 2. I told you that verses 2 and 3 deal with the things that will serve as obstacles. There are two things that stand in the way of the Christian’s willingness to present his body as a living and holy sacrifice. The first obstacle comes from without. The second obstacle comes from within. The first obstacle is the world. The second obstacle, or the obstacle within, is our pride.

Because of the first obstacle, the world, Paul admonishes us and commands us to not be conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Don’t be squeezed into the mold of this ungodly world system. This world, as we learned, lies in the lap of the evil one. It is characterized by the “spirit of the age.” It is the line of thinking that is man centered. The religion of the world system is secular humanism. This is the belief that man is the ultimate authority. The world system hates God and opposes the truth of God’s word. Sometimes this hatred and opposition to God and His word are open and hostile. Sometimes it is subtle and not so easy to recognize.

On our trip we had the opportunity to witness some current examples of the world’s system and the manifestation of the “spirit of the age.” Most of what we saw as not hostile, but if you were paying attention it wasn’t really all that subtle. We spent some time in Vancouver. One of the more obvious things was the signs over the washroom doors that made sure that the people who didn’t know what their gender was were welcome. That was a fairly obvious manifestation. A more subtle manifestation was the fact that dogs outnumbered children by about 20 to 1. Young people are not getting married and having children. They have dogs. There is nothing wrong with having a dog as a pet, but these weren’t just pets. They treat these dogs like children. We would see a stroller like you would expect to see a child riding in, and it would have a dog. The dogs were in backpacks, carriers, or being held in their arms like a child, and sitting on the people’s laps at restaurants. This is an alternative to the biblical command to be fruitful and multiply. Dogs can be a pain, but I guess they are still easier and cheaper than children.

Perhaps the most subtle influence was in a message written on a bench. The message said something to the affect, “You need to learn to love yourself. How can you ever learn to love someone else if you don’t first learn to love yourself.” This philosophy is not unique to the culture we visited on vacation. It is a popular mantra in our own culture.  There are at least two problems with this thinking that is clearly from the world and not from Scripture. First, our problems loving others are not the result of us not loving ourselves. Our problems loving others come from the fact that we love ourselves too much. We look out for number one. We are selfish by nature and by choice. Second, there is no way that someone who loves themselves is going to lay down themselves as a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God. You will value your own will, wants, and desires more than you will value a life of sacrifice on behalf of others.

We don’t have to look far to see the evidences of a world system that is opposed to God and the principles of Scripture. The world wants to squeeze us into that mold. The world system dictates the spirit of the age, or the way of thinking that attempts to influence us away from the Bible and God’s ways. We cannot be conformed to this world and still be presenting our bodies as living and holy sacrifices acceptable to God. The world system opposes God. If we are squeezed into the world’s mold our focus will be on living for self. The enemy without is an obstacle the Christian must overcome.

The enemy of the world is overcome by thinking biblically. Paul says that rather than being conformed to the world, we are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. We renew our minds by learning what the Bible teaches about the will of God. As we learned in a recent message in this series, we must be determined to not just hear the word, but to be doers of the word.

This brings us to the obstacle within. The problem within is pride. This is why Paul writes in Romans 12:3, “For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith.” 

I don’t have too much trouble seeing the enemy without. I just shared with you a few examples I saw easily during our trip. I see evidence of it every time I turn on the television, or go to Walmart, or open the news feed on my electronic device. How easy is it to see the enemy within? All I have to do to see the enemy within is to look in the mirror. I have seen the enemy and the enemy is me. But here is the uncomfortable truth. It is not nearly so easy to see the problem within as it is to see the problem without. It is easy to see the face in the mirror. It is not so easy to see how selfishness permeates the life of the one whose face I see when I look in the mirror. 

This is because we have a very difficult time making an honest and accurate self-assessment. This is because our hearts, according to Jeremiah 17:9, are deceitful above all else, and desperately sick. Jeremiah asks, “Who can understand it?” The implication is that we cannot understand our own hearts by ourselves. This is why Jeremiah says in verse 10, “I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give to each man according to his ways, according to the results of his deeds.”

Satan does not even attempt to conceal the fact that the world will be an obstacle to our presenting our bodies a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God. But our hearts are capable of concealing the truth regarding this very thing. We are so easily blinded to the selfishness and pride that resides within us that we often cannot see. We need the Lord to search our hearts and test our minds and we need for Him to reveal to us both the problem and the solution.

The problem is pride. The solution is humility. There is very little teaching within the church that focuses on humility, even though I am convinced that this is the cardinal virtue of the Christian life. It is the chief characteristic of the work of salvation. As Andrew Murray puts it, humility is the soil in which all other virtues grow.

There is a humility we have already come to understand. This is the humility required to receive the gift of salvation. The Beatitudes of Jesus teach us that “Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth.” The idea of gentleness is that of humbling ourselves before God. This happens after we have become “poor in spirit” (Matthew 5:3) and mourned (5:4) over the fact that our sinfulness will produce the wrath of God. We become gentle and humble ourselves before God and abandon all claims of worthiness before Him. We are humble before God because we understand His glorious, holy, perfections, and our own unworthy, ugly, wretchedness.

The humility which is produced by the work of salvation comes as we see God’s perfection and our wretchedness side by side. The difference is glaringly obvious. The humility producing salvation causes us to stop trying to defend ourselves or justify ourselves before Him. We humble ourselves as Peter did once on a fishing boat, and we say, “Depart from me, Lord. I am an unworthy sinner.” These are the humble who receive the grace of God resulting in salvation. God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

This is simply the starting place of the work of God to make us humble. We must not only concern ourselves with enough humility to get into heaven. There is much more to the work of God in regards to the humility of His children.

I often remind myself that the Cross is a visible symbolic reminder of God’s saving work. The vertical beam reminds me of the vertical aspects of salvation. Salvation has restored my relationship to God. Salvation brings us to the place where we understand who God is, and who we are in relation to Him. He alone is God. He is the Creator, we are the creature. He is Sovereign and we are His subjects. He alone is worthy of glory and honor and worship and praise and thanksgiving. I am nothing. I become nothing so that He may be all. The vertical beam of the Cross reminds me of this.

The horizontal beam of the Cross reminds me of the impact of the work of salvation on my relationships to others. Salvation produces a humility that will be seen in my dealings with those whom God places in my life. This is the truest measure of the reality of God’s saving work. The beams of the Cross are both present and they are connected. You don’t have a Cross without both beams. Likewise, you don’t have a salvation that impacts your relationship with God, but not our relationships with others.

The humility that brings us to the proper position before God will also bring us to the right and proper position before others. The work of salvation that causes us to see who we are before God, will also cause us to see who we are to be in relation to one another. The work of salvation gives to everyone of us the capacity to do as Paul instructs us in Romans 3, which is “not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think, but to think so as to have sound judgment.”

Now I don’t want to be guilty of spending a few weeks on the subject of humility if you don’t need this instruction. So, to make sure this is something we need, I want us to take a little pretest. We can call this the “Do I need to learn humility test.” Please listen carefully to the following questions. This is a short test and you did not need to study to prepare for it. In school the teacher called this a “pop quiz.” Teachers used to pull that on us to see if we were paying attention. I didn’t necessarily do very well on pop quizzes. Let’s see how we do on this one.

First question. What are my expectations of others as I interact with them? Show me respect? Be polite? Be fair? If others fail to meet my expectations, what is my response? Why would I think I should be treated with respect, politeness and fairness? Is my response an indicator of how highly I am thinking of myself? Is it not my expectation because of my own opinion of myself and what I deserve?

Question 2. What are my reactions when I encounter unpleasant or difficult circumstances? Do I become irritated, frustrated, or angry? Do I complain, fret, or worry? Or do I rejoice and give thanks for all things and count it all joy? What would be the reason I might get angry rather than rejoice in difficulty? Is it not that my expectations are that I don’t deserve these things that are happening to me? Is this not rooted in a high opinion of myself?

Question 3. How do I respond when I am misunderstood, unappreciated, or misrepresented? Do I get defensive? Am I determined to prove that I am right? What is my motive for getting defensive or proving that I am right? Is it not that my opinion of myself is such that I feel I deserve to be understood and appreciated? Don’t I deserve to have my opinion heard?

Question 4. Am I quick to forgive wrongs committed against me? Or, do I dwell often and long on the wrong and let the wrong affect the way I think about the person who has wronged me? What is a biblical response to these wrongs? Why would I delay to respond as God commands me to respond? Is it not that I feel like I don’t deserve to have these kinds of wrongs committed against me? Is this not rooted in a high opinion of myself?

Do I need to go on, or have we asked enough to establish the truth about how easy it is for pride, or a high opinion of ourselves, to sneak in and contaminate our hearts and minds. Pride is devilish in nature and deceitful in its workings in our hearts. If we are honest we have to admit that we need constantly to be on guard against the pride that causes us to have a high opinion of ourselves.

I have probably touched a few nerves with these questions. Sometimes the truth pierces our hearts and minds with painful conviction. Sometimes we need to ask ourselves the hard questions. I know I do. Pride is the enemy within that will work against me as I seek to present my body as a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God. You see, a sacrifice dies. A sacrifice is poured out on the altar of God. A living sacrifice can only be presented if the living one is living only for the glory of God. We cannot be living for self and living sacrifices at the same time. Pride will always pull us away from the altar of sacrificial living and call us to live for self. The world is our enemy without, and our selfishness and pride is the enemy within.

Having established the strong likelihood that we all need to learn more of the need for the remedy to pride, let’s look to Romans 12:3 and understand what Paul is telling us. He begins by telling us that this instruction is “through the grace given to me…” We have learned much about Paul in our study of Acts in the Bible Study time. He once was a man who thought much of himself. As a Pharisee, and a Hebrew among Hebrews, he was characterized by the same pride as all the other Pharisees. We know enough about the Pharisees dealings with Jesus to see what devilish pride was capable of doing, even to the God-Man, Jesus Christ.

We also know what resulted from the work of God’s grace within the Apostle Paul. He became the Apostle of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles. All that he once counted as the reason for his boasting became to him as nothing but dung. This great apostle saw himself as an apostle by the grace of God. He had received nothing that he did not receive from the gracious hand of God. His gospel, his ministry, his service, and the truth he shared were all given to him from God. He was nothing but a vessel through which the truth and grace of God could flow. He was counted among the dregs of society so that Christ would be exalted in his life. The mindset to which Paul calls others is the mindset he had adopted as his own. Paul was a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God.

The second thing to note in this verse is that Paul’s instructions are not for a select few. He writes, “I say to everyone among you.” Matthew Henry correctly states, “Pride is a sin that is bred in the bone of all of us, and we have therefore each of us need to be cautioned and armed against it.” The problem with pride is truly a universal problem. I knew what the outcome would be of our little “pop quiz.” I was convicted because I am the victim of pride. I knew you would be convicted because we all are plagued with the same problem. All of us need to hear this admonition. What Paul says to the Romans, he says to all of us.

We are to “not think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment…” Understanding Paul’s instruction here is made easy because of his emphasis. His emphasis is “emphasized” through repetition. Four times in the phrases I just read is the use of some form of the word “phroneo.” This word is translated “think” three times and the word translated “sound judgment” is another variation of the word. The word “phroneo” means “a way of thinking, a mindset.” The activity represented by this word involves the will, the affections, and the conscience.

The first instruction is “not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think.” This puts the preposition “huper” with the word “phroneo.” “Huper” means over,  or above.” This means to think highly of oneself or to consider oneself to be something of great importance.

Here is where the enemy without, the world, and the enemy within will conspire together to trip us up. The philosophy of the world teaches us that we are of the greatest importance. This is the religion of secular humanism. The principle doctrines of humanism are the value of self-love, self-esteem, self-fulfillment, and self-satisfaction. The message of the world appeals to the pride within. If we are not very careful, we will allow our thinking to be shaped by the world’s message because pride leads us to think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think. If we listen to the world we will begin to believe that we are something of great importance.

Rather than adopting a way of thinking that considers us to be something of great importance, Paul calls us to adopt a way of thinking that is according to sound judgment. The word translated “sound judgment” is “sophroneo.” You hear the root word “phroneo” in that word. This word is translated “sensible” in Titus 2:6 where Paul told Titus to teach the young men to be “sensible.” This is a call to think rightly. Nothing is more important than our thinking.

I want to remind you of something I often teach. All of our actions begin with our thinking. Our actions are the products of our decisions and our decisions are always the products of our way of thinking. It starts with the way we think. Ultimately, our actions will reflect our thinking. If our actions are selfish, we must admit that our thinking is rooted in the belief that we are something of greater importance than the person with whom we are being selfish. If I push for my way and have no regard for the feelings or desires of the other person, I believe I am more important than the other person.

Paul tells us to think so as to have sound judgment. So then, we must answer the question, “What constitutes sound judgment?” Does the world offer sound judgment? The only place we can find out what constitutes sound judgment in God’s mind is to look at the only source He has given to reveal His mind. The place to find sound judgment is in the Word of God. Psalm 19:9 says, “The judgments of the Lord true; they are righteous altogether.”

So let’s go back to our pop quiz questions and see how to answer according to sound judgment. What are my expectations of others in my interactions with them? Do I expect them to be respectful, polite, and fair? What is my response when others fail to meet my expectations?

What would the wisdom of the world tell us? The world tells us to demand respect. If we are not treated with respect we protest. We call out the actions of those who are disrespectful. We demand respect and to be treated fairly.

What does the Bible reveal about sound judgment in this situation? Jesus told us that if the world hated Him it would hate us also. We expect to be respected and Jesus tells us we will be hated. You can’t be more disrespected than to be hated. Jesus tells us to expect it. 

Jesus said that we could expect to be ill-treated, hated, and reviled by the world. Paul gives us some sound judgment a little further in Romans 12. In verse 14 he writes, “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.” In verse 17 he writes, “Never pay back evil for evil to anyone.” In verse 19 he writes, “Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, fore it is written, ‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord. But if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in doing so you will heap burning coals on his head.” Verse 21 explains why, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

Sound judgment and worldly wisdom are quite a bit different are they not? What about the second question? What are my reactions when I encounter unpleasant, or difficult circumstances? Do I become irritated, frustrated, and angry? Do I complain, fret, or worry? Or do I rejoice and give thanks in all things and count it all joy because I know God is using the trial for my sanctification. Here again, you know which response is the result of thinking more of ourselves than we ought to think, and which response is the response dictated in the sound judgment of God’s word.

How do I respond when I am misunderstood, unappreciated or misrepresented? Am I defensive and determined to prove that I am right? The world would tell you to defend yourself and argue your point of view. The world would tell you that you have the right to stand up for yourself. Jesus said, “Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the say way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” The world’s wisdom appeals to your pride. The sound judgment of Scripture dictates to the Christian the right way to respond.

Am I quick to forgive wrongs committed against me? Or do I dwell often and long on the wrong and let the wrong affect the way I think about the person who wronged me? The world would tell you to exact an eye for an eye, and even quote the Bible in the process. But Jesus said, “Whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two.” Jesus tells us to forgive as we have been forgiven. God’s forgiveness is perfect and forever. When we don’t forgive as we should, we cannot deny the fact that our unforgiveness is revealing the presence of a high opinion of ourselves.

All we have been able to accomplish today is to establish the fact that we need to learn humility. I think we should come back to this again and learn how.

Let’s pray.