Evening, June 3
Go To Morning Reading
“He humbled himself.”
Philippians 2:8
Jesus is the great teacher of lowliness of heart. We need daily to
learn of him. See the Master taking a towel and washing his disciples’ feet!
Follower of Christ, wilt thou not humble thyself? See him as the Servant
of servants, and
surely thou canst not be proud! Is not this sentence the compendium
of his biography,
“He humbled himself”? Was he not on earth always stripping off first one robe
of honour and then another, till, naked, he was fastened to the cross,
and there did he
not empty out his inmost self, pouring out his life-blood, giving
up for all of us, till
they laid him penniless in a borrowed grave? How low was our dear
Redeemer brought! How
then can we be proud? Stand at the foot of the cross, and count the
purple drops by which
you have been cleansed; see the thorn-crown; mark his scourged shoulders,
still gushing
with encrimsoned rills; see hands and feet given up to the rough iron,
and his whole self
to mockery and scorn; see the bitterness, and the pangs, and the throes
of inward grief,
showing themselves in his outward frame; hear the thrilling shriek,
“My God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me?” And if you do not lie prostrate on the ground before
that cross, you have never seen it: if you are not humbled in the
presence of Jesus, you
do not know him. You were so lost that nothing could save you but
the sacrifice of
God’s only begotten. Think of that, and as Jesus stooped for you, bow
yourself in
lowliness at his feet. A sense of Christ’s amazing love to us has a greater tendency to humble us than even
a consciousness of our own guilt. May the Lord bring us in contemplation
to Calvary, then our position will no longer be that of the pompous
man of pride, but we shall take the humble place of one who loves
much because much has been forgiven him. Pride cannot live beneath
the cross. Let us sit there and learn our lesson, and then rise and
carry it into practice.