What Is Humility?
Humility in the Bible is not making yourself smaller than you are but seeing yourself from the right vantage point: accepting dependence before God and counting others above yourself. The Old Testament wisdom tradition returns to it often: 'Pride goes before destruction'; 'Surely he mocks the mockers, but he gives grace to the humble.' The prophet Micah, listing what the LORD requires of a person, names 'to walk humbly with your God'. In the New Testament the measure of the concept is Jesus himself: 'I am gentle and lowly in heart,' he says, and by washing his disciples' feet he gives the pattern of service. Paul's hymn in Philippians sums up this posture in Christ's journey: he did not cling to equality with God, took the nature of a servant, obeyed to the point of death — therefore God exalted him. The lowering-and-raising line runs throughout Scripture: 'Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.' Humility is thus not weakness but the shape of love and true greatness.