Strangely enough, the Bible tells us to be humble and also to boast. We are to ‘do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God’ (Micah 6:8). Not only are we to walk humbly with God, but also before others. We are to do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility to count others more significant than ourselves (Phil.2:3). Usually, boasting is frowned up by all and sundry, except, perhaps, the boaster. Paul told the Corinthians: ‘Your boasting is not good’ (1 Cor.5:6a). Those who think they know how their future will pan out only indulge in boasting which is evil (James 4:16). The whole plan of salvation is designed to exclude human boasting (Eph.2:8-10). Self-adulation is not something we generally appreciate, and it is usually only found in Logie Award winners, performing chimpanzees, or North Korean dictators on parade. Yet there is a sense in which a Christian can boast (Gal.6:14; 1 Cor.1:31; 9:15; 2 Cor.12:9; 1 Thess.2:19).
How, then, do we do anything humbly? How do I write an incisive and perceptive article on humility? How do you respond to it without ruining the concept? It really is a slippery eel. We can more easily seek to achieve love, kindness, or faithfulness in our lives than humility. It seems that the more we are aware of it, the less we possess it. Paul took pains to have a clear conscience toward both God and man (Acts 24:16). No doubt the most difficult part of that self-examination came when he contemplated whether he was walking humbly before God and man. An affirmative and a negative answer both have their problems.
One way into the subject is to contemplate the things in which we can boast. Paul declared: ‘Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world’ (Gal.6:14). To boast in a horrible drawn-out death on a place of execution is, by the world’s standards, lunacy of the first order. Not so to the Christian who sees why we are told: ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord’ (1 Cor. 1:31). This is because, as Cecil F. Alexander says:
There was no other good enough
To pay the price of sin.
That is why Isaac Watts could write:
Jesus, my Lord! I know His Name,
His Name is all my boast.
Boasting in ourselves is painful; boasting in Christ makes sense.
Hence Paul’s boast was that he freely preached the free gospel of grace (1 Cor.9:15-16). He saw this as entirely appropriate, and could imagine working no other way. All the world’s standards are turned upside down. Since God works through the meek and lowly, Paul could write: ‘I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me’ (2 Cor.12:9). Normally, we strive to be as strong and as healthy as possible, but Christ uses afflictions to achieve our sanctification. That, then, is the ground for boasting not in human strength nor even particularly in human weakness as such, but in human weakness resting on Christ.
We are often told, rightly I believe, that males especially identify with their work while females are more focused on relationships. Paul seems to combine both approaches when he says that in making Christ known, his boast was not in his achievements but in the people whom the Lord had saved (1 Thess.2:19). Summing up, we see that Paul certainly boasted as no one else has boasted – of the cross; of the Lord Jesus; of preaching for free; of his weaknesses; and of sinners who had been saved.
The secret to a Christian’s boasting is thus to be found in faith, as Calvin describes it: ‘We are in Christ, because we are out of ourselves.’ As he was so often, C. S. Lewis is particularly helpful here. He says of the truly humble human being: ‘He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.’ That is the mystery of humble boasting.
– Peter Barnes