What Christianity says about humility

Humility appears at the opening of Jesus's best-known sermon, not in its closing remarks. The first people called blessed are those who know they cannot manage alone, and the theme carries through the parables and the letters that follow. These nine concepts from the library's Christian collection, each with chapter and verse, show how it is described: as a starting position, as a reversal, and in one case as a job done on the floor with a basin.

Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit

The first beatitude begins with people who know they cannot save themselves. Poverty of spirit is named as the entrance, not as a stage to be got through.

Gospel of Matthew 5:3

Blessed Are the Meek

Meekness here is not timidity. It is described as strength held under control, and what it is promised is the earth.

Gospel of Matthew 5:5

The Pharisee and Tax Collector

Two men pray. One lists what he has done well; the other cannot lift his eyes and asks for mercy. Jesus says the second goes home right with God, which is the opposite of the expected result.

Gospel of Luke 18:13-14

Judge Not

The instruction is against condemning, not against noticing. The picture is of a speck in someone else's eye, seen clearly by a person with a log in their own.

Gospel of Matthew 7:1-2

Serving Others in Humility

Jesus washes his disciples' feet and then tells them to do the same for one another. Status is not merely discouraged here; it is inverted by the person who holds it.

Gospel of John 13:15

Submit to One Another

Paul puts mutual submission in front of everything he says about households. Mutual is the load-bearing word, and it turns rank into service in both directions.

Ephesians 5:21

God's Strength in Human Weakness

Paul asks for his affliction to be removed and is told instead that power is completed in weakness. He goes on to treat his limits as the place strength shows, which is not the same as enjoying them.

2 Corinthians 12:9

Salvation by Grace Through Faith

Salvation is called a gift, received rather than earned. The stated reason for that arrangement is that it leaves no one anything to boast about.

Ephesians 2:8

The Prodigal Son

A son wastes his inheritance and comes home with a rehearsed apology. The father runs to him before the speech can be delivered, so the son's humility and the father's disregard for his own dignity arrive in the same moment.

Gospel of Luke 15:20

The reversal in this material is consistent and slightly uncomfortable. The man who recites his achievements goes home unchanged, the one who cannot look up goes home right with God, and the teacher takes the servant's place at the basin. Nothing here presents humility as a way of getting ahead by another route.