4-23-23 Willisburg Bulletin
Humility
The focus of Ephesians is all about the Christian’s walk. Paul wrote the book to the believers in Ephesus, which in turn is for our learning. When you look at the verse above, you see there are three ways listed to walk worthy of being a Christian; including with all humility, with patience/tolerance in love -> generosity, and preserving the unity of the Spirit with peace. We will discuss the first one this week.
Humility goes along with the idea that was in last week’s bulletin of emptying ourselves. If we are going to walk worthy of being God’s child, we must deny ourself (Luke 9:23). We belong to Christ, which means we no longer live as an individual for ourself. We have to consistently retrain our mind to see ourself as a part of the whole body. The needs of the whole body (the church) is more important than your individual desires and wants. This is where self reliance, self pity, self exaltation, and self righteousness are removed from the jar by recognizing that no sin is any worse. We all have the same problem; we are sinners (Romans 3:23), but we all have the same solution too (saved by grace). We need to use the examples we see in scripture that humbled theirselves just as we ought. In Philippians 2:8, Christ did, and in Philippians 3:7 Paul did too to the degree that he looked at worldly possessions as a detriment to him. He found them to be distracting and a hinderance when serving God.
Team Player
In talking about humility, we must address the idea of being a team player. In a game, there are two places to choose which to participate as: a player (competitor) or a referee (judge). You can’t be both. As Christians, we need to be a player, but not in a sense to compete with our own team, but rather to compete against Satan. We must be working as a team with everyone else. We can’t just play individual and think we are going to win nor can we be a referee and think we are going to judge a certain team to win. When you play as a teammate, you show humility, because you are putting others needs before your desires. We are a team in Christ’s body (Ephesians 4:4). So, when you think about yourself, are you a competitor (compare yourself to others on your team) or are you a referee (always judging everyone), or are you a teammate (always looking for ways to serve the church)? We must look at the team as a whole! So when someone else is doing a job you think is smaller or even bigger than yours, rejoice with them because the work of Christ is getting done. Rejoice in the work, while also being a part. With humility, you won’t see jobs, you will see a progression bar of the work being completed.