written by: Carissa Waggoner
The more I talk to people about the love and forgiveness of Christ Jesus, the more I see this lie that lives in them.
Satan is a liar. He’s probably the best at it. He has had millenniums to perfect his craft. He is an accuser. He knows that if his lies can keep the children of God down, in despair, doubting and chained to untruths about themselves and God, then he might thwart the mighty work God has prepared for His children to accomplish.
Revelation 12:10
10 Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:
“Now have come the salvation and the power
and the kingdom of our God,
and the authority of his Messiah.
For the accuser of our brothers and sisters,
who accuses them before our God day and night,
has been hurled down.
When speaking with a particular person about God’s love and forgiveness their response was; “I believe that God does forgive, ‘but’ I have done so many bad things.”
A few things come to mind when that ‘but’ word came up. Perhaps they don’t believe God will forgive them, or perhaps it is a way to keep themself humble.
I see that this tells me that they are more focused on the guilt and shame they feel rather than on the free, forgiving work of Christ. They may think that in order to stay humble, they need to continue to play over and over again the sins they have committed. They hold onto that guilt and shame as if to punish themselves and call it humility.
This is a dangerous lie. This lie will keep someone from truly accepting the full forgiveness offered. It will keep someone from even really living for Christ and in the freedom of Christ.
This lie will over burden them, they will become weary, give up, fall back into sin, relapse from an addiction, or repeat unhealthy patterns in their life.
This dangerous lie does not only paralyze people it disables them. It imprisons them to stay in the condition in which they were in before praying the confessors prayer. Nothing has changed except their basic belief that doesn’t live in action by the witness of their lives. Their life of being worn down by guilt and shame under the disguise of humility doesn’t look attractive to others that do not know Christ or of His gift of salvation and freedom. Those that live in the lie of the constant accuser are not free.
The lie I am referring to isn’t just accusations from the accuser, or even the lie that we are not ‘good enough’ to be forgiven.
This lie says that humility only comes from the fact that we are sinners and that it is holding onto guilt and shame that make us humble. This is just not true.
This lie keeps the focus on ourselves rather than on The God Almighty.
Let’s go with a few hypotheticals to better understand and refute this lie. Let’s say that sin never entered the world that day in the Garden of Eden. Let’s say that Adam and Eve did not sin. They would still have humility and be humbled before God Almighty.
You see God’s forgiveness of sins is great, but it’s not the only thing that makes Him Great. He is the Alpha and Omega, He is the creator of the Heavens and the Earth. He has always been. He knows all time and all knowledge is His.
Adam and Eve do not hold this kind of power. They are not equal to God and never would be even if they had not sinned. Jesus was without sin and was equal to God, because He is God. It is not just that our sins are forgiven that is the only reason to humble ourselves before God. In fact it’s not about what we do or don’t do. It’s has everything to do with who God is.
God’s word closely links The Fear of The Lord with Humility before Him.
Proverbs 22:4
4 Humility is the fear of the Lord;
its wages are riches and honor and life.
In order to see the God of the Bible and who He is and why we bow down before Him in all humbleness we can read in Job 38.
Job Chapter 38
The Lord Speaks
Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said:
2 “Who is this that obscures my plans
with words without knowledge?
3 Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.
4 “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
6 On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone—
7 while the morning stars sang together
and all the angels[a] shouted for joy?
8 “Who shut up the sea behind doors
when it burst forth from the womb,
9 when I made the clouds its garment
and wrapped it in thick darkness,
10 when I fixed limits for it
and set its doors and bars in place,
11 when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther;
here is where your proud waves halt’?
12 “Have you ever given orders to the morning,
or shown the dawn its place,
13 that it might take the earth by the edges
and shake the wicked out of it?
14 The earth takes shape like clay under a seal;
its features stand out like those of a garment.
15 The wicked are denied their light,
and their upraised arm is broken.
16 “Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea
or walked in the recesses of the deep?
17 Have the gates of death been shown to you?
Have you seen the gates of the deepest darkness?
18 Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth?
Tell me, if you know all this.
19 “What is the way to the abode of light?
And where does darkness reside?
20 Can you take them to their places?
Do you know the paths to their dwellings?
21 Surely you know, for you were already born!
You have lived so many years!
22 “Have you entered the storehouses of the snow
or seen the storehouses of the hail,
23 which I reserve for times of trouble,
for days of war and battle?
24 What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed,
or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth?
25 Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain,
and a path for the thunderstorm,
26 to water a land where no one lives,
an uninhabited desert,
27 to satisfy a desolate wasteland
and make it sprout with grass?
28 Does the rain have a father?
Who fathers the drops of dew?
29 From whose womb comes the ice?
Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens
30 when the waters become hard as stone,
when the surface of the deep is frozen?
31 “Can you bind the chains[b] of the Pleiades?
Can you loosen Orion’s belt?
32 Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons[c]
or lead out the Bear[d] with its cubs?
33 Do you know the laws of the heavens?
Can you set up God’s[e] dominion over the earth?
34 “Can you raise your voice to the clouds
and cover yourself with a flood of water?
35 Do you send the lightning bolts on their way?
Do they report to you, ‘Here we are’?
36 Who gives the ibis wisdom[f]
or gives the rooster understanding?[g]
37 Who has the wisdom to count the clouds?
Who can tip over the water jars of the heavens
38 when the dust becomes hard
and the clods of earth stick together?
39 “Do you hunt the prey for the lioness
and satisfy the hunger of the lions
40 when they crouch in their dens
or lie in wait in a thicket?
41 Who provides food for the raven
when its young cry out to God
and wander about for lack of food?
This is the God I’m talking about. We bow down before Him in humbleness because of how Great, Awesome and Mighty He is. We are humble before Him not because of who we are but because who He is.
True humility seeks to bring glory and honor to God and with others it looks out for the interests of others. Jesus even humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
God does want us to be humble but living in guilt and shame is not the path to it.
He also wants us to live in freedom.
C.S. Lewis’s quote: “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, It is thinking of yourself less.”
This is very true, we need to think of God more and others more. The holding onto guilt and shame is thinking less of ourselves.
This is a dangerous lie. It can determine how we respond and live for Christ.
Accept God’s free gift of forgiveness and believe the dangerous lie no more.
Humility comes from the fear of the Lord and who He is.
1 John 1:19
9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
Romans 8:1
8 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,
Prayer:
A Prayer for the Ephesians
14 For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
20 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
Becoming His 
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