3
Philippians by using the same word about
himself: “I know how to be humiliated” (AV
“how to be abased”; Phil. 4:12). This trans-
forms our thinking about death- how we die is
significant. Old age and death is not, there-
fore, a fading away into insignificance. Ezekiel
warns that a man may live a good life and at
the end, fall away- and is counted as having
fallen away; or that a man may live a bad life
but at the end repent and be eternally
accepted. How we end is significant. So as you
see an old person coming to the end of their
lives- they are actually on the final burst
towards the end of the race, they are
approaching the final humiliation. So that they
might rise in glory. Indeed, there is a clear
Biblical association between ‘death’ and
‘glory’. Just search out those two ideas
together in a concordance. Paul concludes
that death works in us, to prepare us for glory
(2 Cor. 4:12). The process of mortality and
humiliation is working for us the eternal
weight of glory. Death- we, as decaying chem-
ical molecules and dreams reduced to dust-
magnifies Christ, in this wonderful way (Phil.
1:20). This V-shaped pattern of humiliation
now and exaltation later is therefore the
essence of the Christian life, of the life
committed to unity with Him. For His path is
ours. At baptism, we sign up to the principle
that His death shall be ours- in an ongoing
sense, and in a final, literal sense as well.
Every adult body is in decline. Faculties and
memory fade and fail. But this has meaning,
in the bigger picture of our humiliation. These
experiences are not for us mere frustrations;
they are part of having “the body of our humil-
iation”, and if we respond to them rightly,
they are the path to exaltation eternally-
rather than a path to an inevitable end. There
is thereby a dignity and immense meaning
attached to our physical decline. Our loneli-
ness forges a further link between us and the
forsaken, existentially alone Christ of the
cross. And there are other ways in which a
loving Father progresses the humiliation
process. False accusation may descend upon
us, and we are left friendless, rejected and
not understood by former family and friends.
Editorial | Our Humiliation
Our sin itself is used by God; He doesn’t turn
away from us in disgust and cease working
with us because of our failure. She who
secretly prides herself at her morally upright
life finds herself caught in an uncharacteristic
sin. He who always keeps the speed limit is
snapped by the bus lane camera. Or we may
simply feel that we have not done as well as
we might have done in secular life- we worked
more diligently, with slightly higher intelli-
gence than others who did better than us, and
yet we never moved far beyond minimum
wage. And we may feel the same about the
home we ended up with, the family… and so
forth. And we may well be right. We didn’t do
as well as we might or even should have done.
But that’s OK. These things too are part of the
bigger plan of our humiliation.
There are things we are good at, and know
we’re good at them. And in those very things
we may fail. The talented plumber makes an
inexplicable mess of a job. The fluent speaker
of a foreign language finds themselves publi-
cally floundering for a basic word. Our human
strength is taken away, whether through the
loss of power which goes with advancing years,
or through a more dramatic event. A good
inheritance is lost by an unforeseen blunder or
circumstance. War breaks out, the careful
middle class life is brought to an end, your
home is in ruins and your savings meaningless-
and you are left standing on a railway platform
in a foreign land with your screaming, once
pampered kids, begging for soup and at least
a place to sit down on.
In the lives of believers, these things are not
random events. They have meaning, within
the process of our humiliation, and God’s
wondrous plan to do us good in our latter end.
Perhaps we find ourselves facing a situation
that our upbringing and culture never
addressed; we are alone, humiliated, before
our God. This is what happened to Israel and
to the Lord in the wilderness: “He humbled
thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed
thee with manna, which thou knewest not,
neither did thy fathers know; that he might
make thee know that man doth not live by
~ continued ...