The Scandal of the Christ

“Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you shall find rest for your souls.” Matthew 11:29

Humble – In order to fully appreciate how onerous this word really is to human beings, we must look behind our sanctified expression of humility and expose ourselves to its root.  Servile!  Lowly!  Base!  Submissive!  Unworthy!  Made small!  Humiliated!  Weak!  Not a single one of these jumps to the head our list of desirable characteristics.  We want glory, honor, power, strength, leadership and prestige.  For us, the idea of ego deflation is odious.  No one wants to be at the bottom.  Except Jesus.

Why does Jesus describe himself with the word tapeinos?  The answer is once again found in the Hebrew thought behind the Greek word.  Tapeinos is another derivative of the Hebrew ana, the same word group that we found behind the word “gentle” or “meek”.  Jesus is using two adjectives that modify the same idea.  And that idea is very different from the Greek notion of humble.  For the Greeks, and for us, humility is associated with a state of being.  Our definitions point to intrinsic value.  So, when we say “humble” we often mean to say something about the character of the person.  That’s why we have such a hard time swallowing the term.

But the Hebrew root ana is not about a state of being.  The Hebrew word focuses on actions, not value.  To be humble is to bow down, to bend, to make yourself low, to cast yourself down.  Humility within the context of ana is choosing to acknowledge the right of another to be my master and lord.  In particular, to be humble is to recognize and respond to the sovereignty of God as my rightful king.

Now we see that “gentle” and “humble” are but two facets of the same stone.  When Jesus describes himself as “gentle” (praos), he is really saying that his inner strength comes from total acceptance and reliance on the will of the Father.  His power is God in him.  When Jesus says that he is “humble” (tapeinos), he is saying that he bows before the Father as the God of all creation and he serves the Father as the only Lord of his life.

Our world exalts individual freedom, power and personal glory.  Our world despises subjection and humility.  But God does not share this view of life.  Those who acknowledge Him as Lord and Ruler know that the secret to power is not found in ego but in emptiness.  The scandal of the Christ is the act of subjection.

Have you made the choice to embrace the scandal of the Christ today?