The Hidden Power of Humility
How the way of Jesus disarms the powers and restores relationships and creation
Would you be able to allow yourself to become non-existent for one whole day?
As I recently had been studying the Biblical concept of Sabbath rest, this question was presented to me. Would you be able to allow yourself to become non-existent for one whole day?
As I contemplated, more questions flooded in: do you believe you need rest? Do you believe in God’s design of rest? What is Biblical rest? Do you believe you are less mortal than others?
As the wounds of a friend are faithful (Godly correction, received humbly, provides freedom), I had a close friend hold no punches and said, “at some point, your unwillingness to sabbath becomes sin.”
Once again, my overachieving tendencies were exposing themselves in the form of achy joints, thin patience, and sharp responses. Even with great intentions, the motives to do more, sacrifice, serve, give it all to Jesus aren’t always sought after with a pure heart.
When I consider being “non-existent” for one day, I begin to worry about how much further behind I would feel without a day’s effort, how much weight would that put on someone else, or even would people still know that I cared?
Underneath my own concerns is a false belief that I’m responsible for someone else’s identity in Christ, that today doesn’t have enough worries of it’s own and I need to worry about tomorrow to, even more potently is forgetting that God isn’t already aware of every detail of my life. To put it bluntly, those thoughts are me living in my own understanding, my own reasoning, through my own filters, and that’s the exact fruit that God warned Adam and Eve not to eat from.
On the other hand, maybe you’re thoughts are different when you ponder what it would look like if you became non-existent for one day. Maybe you hear, "one more day of being non-existent would mean that I feel non-existent a full 7 days out of the week, I don’t have or provide any value as it is, people may be better off if I wasn’t around anyways."
Those are heavy thoughts, but familiar to many. Unfortunately, they are still prideful thoughts. Those thoughts speak a language that the empty tomb and the resurrected Christ never spoke over your life. Scripture says that anyone who has committed to the way of Jesus is a brand new creation, a royal priesthood, more than conquerors, and empowered with the same indwelling spirit that raised Jesus out of that tomb.
Although those statements may sound humble, it’s a form of pride that is revealed as false humility. It’s still thinking and living through our own reasoning and understanding, it’s still a poisonous fruit designed to separate us from the humble, yet incredibly powerful heart of the Father.
The intention of this article to is ground ourselves in a Biblical understanding of humility and to see how through true humility Jesus disarmed the worldly powers, stripping them of any authority, and set into motion a new covenant of people to redeem and restore creation.
The Sleeper Among the Virtues
Humility may be the sleeper among the character traits of Jesus. We celebrate his love, trust his faithfulness, and proclaim his power, while humility often remains in the background as though it were a quiet virtue suited to gentle personalities. Scripture places it much nearer the center. Humility is woven through the incarnation, Jesus' obedience to the Father, his life among the overlooked, the washing of his disciples' feet, his surrender at the cross, and the victory revealed in resurrection.1
Humility brought the Son into the vulnerability of human flesh. It shaped the way he carried authority without domination and entrusted himself to the Father when obedience led through suffering. In a mystery the rulers of this age did not understand, crucified love became the place where violence, accusation, sin, and death were exposed and defeated.
We often recognize power by its ability to control outcomes, command attention, defeat opponents, or protect itself from vulnerability. Jesus reveals power that remains rooted in the Father's love and seeks restoration without coercion. Humility is not the absence of strength. It is strength surrendered to God's good purpose.
Humility in the Character of God
The incarnation does not introduce humility into God's character as though the Son temporarily adopted a trait foreign to divinity. In Jesus, the self-giving love of God becomes visible in human history. The eternal Word becomes flesh and lives among us. The Son does not use equality with God for his own advantage. He takes the form of a servant and humbles himself in obedience, even to death on a cross.
The self-emptying described in Philippians 2 does not mean that Jesus ceased to be divine or erased his identity. He refused to use divine privilege for self-preservation. The One through whom all things were made entered creation as an infant dependent upon the care of others. He lived without grasping and served without demanding recognition. The humility of Jesus therefore reveals more than a strategy for accomplishing salvation. It shows us what divine love is like.2
The cross is not Jesus persuading a reluctant Father to become loving. Father, Son, and Spirit act in perfect faithfulness to rescue creation from everything destroying it. Jesus' surrender reveals the character of God while exposing the false character of the powers that rule through fear, accusation, and death.
Humility Is Not Self Erasure
Humility is often confused with humiliation. Christians may be taught to deny their gifts, distrust their desires, silence their voice, accept mistreatment, or pretend that they do not matter. None of these captures the humility of Jesus. Jesus did not lack identity. He knew where he had come from, where he was going, and that the Father had placed all things into his hands. From that secure identity, he rose from the table, wrapped a towel around himself, and washed his disciples' feet.
Biblical humility is freedom from the need to make the self the center. The humble person can acknowledge gifts without turning them into proof of superiority. A humble leader can carry authority without controlling people. A humble disciple can confess failure without collapsing into shame. Humility allows us to stand truthfully before God as people who are deeply loved, genuinely limited, and dependent upon grace.
Jesus describes himself as gentle and humble in heart and invites the weary to learn his way. His humility is not passivity. It is strength that no longer needs to prove itself. It creates rest rather than fear and moves toward others without controlling them.
The Wisdom the Powers Did Not Understand
The powers understood the familiar grammar of empire. Preserve yourself. Seize control. Answer violence with greater violence. Prove strength by crushing opposition. Jesus refused that grammar. He would not grasp a throne through force or bow to evil in exchange for the kingdoms of the world. He would not call down destruction upon those who rejected him. Even at the cross, he answered hatred with forgiveness and entrusted his life to the Father.
Paul writes that the rulers of this age did not understand God's wisdom, because if they had understood it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. The phrase can include earthly rulers and the spiritual powers working through the rebellious systems of the age. The divine council worldview helps us see that the biblical drama involves both human and spiritual rebellion. These powers seek authority apart from God's design and draw nations into violence, idolatry, and death.3
At the cross, humanity's systems of religious self-protection, political violence, betrayal, and scapegoating gathered against Jesus. He received their full force without becoming their mirror. He did not defeat violence by becoming more violent or conquer accusation through counteraccusation. He carried these powers into death without allowing them to corrupt his love.
Colossians describes the cross as the place where Christ disarmed the rulers and authorities and exposed them publicly. Their weapons lost their claim to final authority. Accusation could not separate the Son from the Father's love. Violence could kill him but could not make him violent. Death could receive him but could not retain him. The powers knew how to create victims. They did not know what to do with a victim who refused vengeance and returned speaking peace.4
Resurrection was not the Father's rejection of Jesus' humble way. It was the Father's vindication of it. The risen Jesus remained the wounded servant who spoke peace, prepared breakfast, and restored a failed disciple. Victory did not transform him into the kind of ruler he had resisted. Resurrection revealed that self-giving love expresses a power death cannot finally master.
When Speech Becomes a Form of Power
This understanding of humility matters in a culture formed by voices. In the Greco-Roman world, rhetoric was a respected art. Public speech shaped political assemblies, legal disputes, education, and social standing. A gifted speaker could gather a following and establish honor. Within Jewish life, Scripture was read aloud, taught, recited, and remembered in community. Many people encountered sacred texts primarily by hearing them rather than by owning and privately reading scrolls.
Jesus knew how to communicate with power. His parables, questions, memorable sayings, images, and carefully placed silences show rhetorical wisdom. Paul also wrote with considerable rhetorical skill. His letters contain sustained arguments, scriptural interpretation, irony, appeals, and carefully structured movements. Christianity does not require careless speech. The danger begins when a speaker's ability becomes the power upon which the message appears to depend.5
Words can illuminate truth, but they can also control a room. They can invite repentance or manufacture shame. They can open a person to the Spirit or pressure that person into outward compliance. A speaker can defend the truth while quietly building an identity around being the one who is right. Rhetoric then stops serving love and becomes a way of grasping for authority.
Paul and the Refusal of Impressive Speech
Paul told the Corinthians that he had not come with lofty speech or human wisdom. He resolved to know Christ crucified so that their faith would rest on the power of God rather than the persuasiveness of the messenger. Paul did not reject clear thought, careful reasoning, or artful communication. His own letters would contradict such a claim. He rejected the use of rhetorical display to establish status and gather loyalty around himself.6
Corinth valued teachers, patrons, public speakers, and impressive personalities. The church had begun organizing itself around favored leaders: Paul, Apollos, Cephas, and Christ. Paul answered this competition by directing their attention toward the cross. The crucified Messiah overturned their assumptions about wisdom and power. A message centered upon the One who refused to grasp could not faithfully be carried through the speaker's own grasping for recognition.
Paul would speak, reason, persuade, correct, and plead. Yet he refused to confuse persuasion with transformation. Only the Spirit can reach the places inside another person that rhetoric cannot touch. Paul could bear witness to Christ, but he could not manufacture faith. This restraint is an expression of humility because it leaves the outcome with God.
Kindness and the Work of Repentance
Romans 2 says that God's kindness is meant to lead us to repentance. Paul is not describing kindness as indifference toward evil. The verse appears in a passage about human judgment, stubbornness, and God's patient justice. God's kindness creates room for a person to turn instead of treating destruction as the first response to failure.7
Scripture also speaks about the Spirit's conviction, godly sorrow, correction, and repentance as a gift God grants. These themes do not compete with God's kindness. They clarify how kindness works. Divine kindness tells the truth about what destroys us while continuing to seek our restoration. It does not flatter us or call evil good. It brings truth without abandoning the person who needs to hear it.
Shame may produce silence. Fear may produce an apology. Social pressure may produce conformity. None of these guarantees the inward turning Scripture calls repentance. True repentance involves a changed mind and direction, a willing return to the God whose goodness has become trustworthy. The kindness of God makes this return possible because grace creates enough safety for us to stop hiding.
Paul applies this directly to Christian leadership. The Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome but kind, patient, and able to correct opponents with gentleness, because God may grant them repentance. The servant speaks and corrects, but God grants the turning. Gentleness reveals that the speaker understands where transforming power resides.8
The Humility to Trust the Spirit
We can extend grace and speak truth. We can confess our failures, set necessary boundaries, and create conditions in which honesty is possible. We cannot make another person repent. When we try, even sound theology can become an instrument of domination.
Humility accepts the limits of our role. We prepare the soil, plant, and water, but God gives growth. We restore someone caught in sin with a spirit of gentleness while watching ourselves. We testify, but the Spirit convicts and guides into truth. Trusting the Spirit does not make us passive. It frees us to remain faithful without trying to become the Holy Spirit in another person's life.9
This is one of the most difficult expressions of faith. We often reach for control when a relationship matters deeply or when someone's choices are causing harm. We may raise our voice, repeat ourselves, gather allies, quote more Scripture, or increase the emotional pressure. Sometimes boundaries must become firmer, but pressure and faithfulness are not the same thing. Humility asks whether our words are serving another person's restoration or relieving our own anxiety by forcing an outcome.
A humble heart can be gentle and bold. Gentleness governs how strength is carried. Boldness allows love to remain truthful. Jesus never needed to diminish another person in order to stand securely in his identity, and he never abandoned truth in order to avoid discomfort.
Platforms and the Formation of Christian Character
Our world measures voices constantly. Followers, views, shares, invitations, and influence can make visibility feel like evidence of authority. Social media rewards urgency, certainty, controversy, and reaction. Humility often develops more quietly. It listens before responding, leaves room for mystery, and can remain faithful without immediate recognition.
The church is not immune to the values of the surrounding culture. We can build platforms faster than we form people. We can mistake amplification for anointing and visibility for fruitfulness. Charisma may open doors that character is not mature enough to walk through. Humility may even be dismissed as weakness when it refuses to participate in the rivalries through which religious influence is established.10
A platform is not inherently corrupt. It can give faithful teaching a wider reach, draw attention to suffering, and connect people who would otherwise remain isolated. The spiritual danger appears when the platform begins forming the person who uses it. The need to remain visible can make repentance costly, uncertainty unacceptable, and quiet service feel insignificant. The speaker may gradually protect the platform rather than the people the platform was meant to serve.
Paul refused to make the gospel dependent upon the impressiveness of its messenger. If people are frightened, shamed, or emotionally pressured into faith, their confidence may remain attached to the person who moved them. Paul wanted their faith to rest in God. Humble ministry therefore asks whether people are becoming more dependent upon Jesus, more attentive to the Spirit, and more capable of loving one another when the prominent voice is no longer present.
Creation Waits for the Children of God
Romans 8 says that creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God. Creation groans like a woman in labor as it waits to be liberated from corruption. This is resurrection language. God's purpose is not to discard the material world but to renew it, doing for creation what he did for Jesus at Easter. Christian hope therefore concerns bodily resurrection, restored creation, and humanity's renewed vocation within God's world.11
Paul is not describing creation waiting for Christians to become more famous or culturally dominant. Creation waits for humanity to become recognizable again as God's mature children. It longs for people who bear the family likeness of the Father and exercise authority according to his character.
Genesis describes human beings as God's image, appointed to represent his wise rule within creation. Human rebellion distorted this vocation into grasping, exploitation, and domination. In Jesus, the true image of God appears, and the human calling begins to be restored. The Spirit forms a new humanity that participates in God's care for the world rather than using the world to magnify itself.12
Creation is waiting for leaders whose strength becomes shelter rather than threat. It is waiting for churches that pursue reconciliation rather than control and for people who can tell the truth without contempt. The revealing of God's children is the unveiling of their character. The world already knows what power looks like when shaped by pride. It longs to encounter power restored to its intended purpose through love.
Humility Restores What Pride Fractures
Pride is more than thinking highly of ourselves. It is the attempt to secure life apart from trusting communion with God and others. Pride grasps, compares, hides, and blames. In Genesis 3, the fracture of sin immediately becomes relational. The humans hide from God, become estranged from their own bodies, and turn against one another through blame. The ground is caught in the disorder. Sin damages relationship with God, neighbor, self, and creation.
Humility moves toward truth. It accepts responsibility, remains teachable, and makes room for the gifts of others. Humility does not weaken truth. It creates the conditions in which truth can be received without being weaponized.
This is why humility is essential to reconciliation. Relationships are rarely restored because one person wins an argument. Restoration begins when someone becomes secure enough to listen, courageous enough to speak honestly, and free enough to repent without self-destruction. Humility makes confession possible because our identity no longer depends upon appearing innocent. It makes forgiveness possible because our wounds no longer need to become weapons.13
Paul connects humility directly to the life of the church. Believers are to walk with humility, gentleness, and patience as they preserve the unity of the Spirit. Humility is communal architecture. It helps a covenant people remain together when differences, disappointments, and wounds would otherwise pull them apart.
A Church Formed by Humility
A healthy church does more than preach humility as a personal virtue. It builds practices in which power can be questioned, wounds can be named, repentance is safe, and overlooked people are heard. A culture of goodness requires empathy, grace, truth, justice, service, and Christlike character. These qualities protect a church from confusing loyalty to a leader with loyalty to Jesus.14
Humility changes the way leaders carry responsibility. A humble leader does not pretend to have no authority. The leader uses authority for the flourishing of others, welcomes correction, shares credit, and refuses to treat another person's gift as a threat. Humility also changes the way a congregation follows. People learn to participate rather than remain dependent upon a few visible voices.
This is the kind of community through which atonement becomes visible. The reconciling work of Jesus forms a reconciled people. The church does not merely announce that God restores relationships. It becomes a place where estranged people can tell the truth, receive grace, practice justice, and learn a new way of being human together.
Scot McKnight describes atonement as something that creates a community shaped by God's reconciling work. The church participates in atonement when the peace accomplished in Christ becomes embodied among people. Restoration remains costly because truth, repentance, repair, and forgiveness all matter. Yet its goal is communion rather than exclusion and healing rather than control.15
The Way of Jesus Today
God continues to restore the world through humble hearts submitted to his will. This restoration often enters quietly. It appears when a spouse listens without preparing a defense, when a pastor admits uncertainty, when a leader makes room for another person's gift, and when a church refuses to manufacture unity through control. It appears when repentance becomes a doorway home rather than a theater of shame.
These acts can look small beside political, economic, and religious power. Yet Jesus repeatedly described the kingdom through seeds, yeast, shared bread, washed feet, and open tables. Humility trusts that faithfulness to God's design bears fruit even when recognition is delayed.
The humble are not people who believe they have nothing to offer. They have stopped treating what they possess as something to grasp. Their gifts become available to the body. Their strength offers safety. Their authority becomes service, and their repentance invites others into the light. Their lives begin to resemble the crucified and risen Lord.
Power Restored to Its Purpose
Philippians 2 does not end with the cross. The One who humbled himself is exalted, and every knee will bow before him. His exaltation does not reverse his humility. The risen Jesus still bears wounds and speaks peace. The Father vindicates the servant way rather than replacing it with domination.
The world tells us that survival belongs to those who grasp and protect themselves at any cost. Jesus reveals that life belongs to love entrusted to God. A seed falls into the earth and appears to disappear, yet its surrender brings abundant life. The cross looks like defeat until resurrection reveals what humble love has accomplished beneath the surface.
Humility may still appear to be the underdog among the virtues. It rarely advertises itself. Yet heaven's victory came through the humility of the Son. The powers were disarmed by love they mistook for weakness, and death was defeated by the life it believed it had swallowed. God continues to restore relationships, communities, and creation through people who have become secure enough in divine love to release control. These are the people we are seeking to be continually formed into at Tov.
The invitation is not to become smaller than God created us to be. It is to become free from the exhausting work of making ourselves greater than others. We receive the mind of Christ as people rooted in belovedness, surrendered to the Father, attentive to the lowly, courageous in truth, generous with power, and faithful in love. In the kingdom of God, humility is power restored to its proper purpose.
Footnotes
1. Matthew 11:28-30; John 13:1-17; Philippians 2:5-11.
2. John 1:1-18; Philippians 2:5-8. See also N. T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense (New York: HarperOne, 2006), especially his account of God's renewal of creation through Jesus.
3. 1 Corinthians 2:6-8; Ephesians 6:10-12. For the divine council and the biblical relationship between human and spiritual rebellion, see Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2015); and BibleProject, The Divine Council, Spiritual Beings series.
4. Colossians 2:13-15; see also Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm, on the victory of Jesus over the rebellious powers and the reclamation of the nations.
5. On Greco-Roman rhetoric and the social setting of Corinth, see Ben Witherington III, Conflict and Community in Corinth: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on 1 and 2 Corinthians (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995). On communal reading, see Luke 4:16-21; Colossians 4:16; 1 Thessalonians 5:27; and 1 Timothy 4:13.
6. 1 Corinthians 1:17-2:5; 3:4-9. See Witherington, Conflict and Community in Corinth, for Paul's use of rhetoric within his critique of Corinthian status and rivalry.
7. Romans 2:1-4. Scripture also speaks of godly sorrow and repentance as God's gift; see 2 Corinthians 7:9-10; Acts 11:18; and 2 Timothy 2:25.
8. 2 Timothy 2:24-26. The passage joins correction with kindness, patience, and gentleness while locating the granting of repentance in God.
9. John 16:7-15; 1 Corinthians 3:5-9; Galatians 6:1-2.
10. For a sustained account of healthy church culture, power, truth, service, and Christlike character, see Scot McKnight and Laura Barringer, A Church Called Tov: Forming a Goodness Culture That Resists Abuses of Power and Promotes Healing (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House, 2020).
11. Romans 8:18-25. See N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: HarperOne, 2008), for resurrection, renewed creation, and the church's present vocation.
12. Genesis 1:26-28; Colossians 1:15-20. See BibleProject, Image of God, and the related Image of God podcast series, which trace humanity's vocation as God's image and its restoration in Jesus.
13. Ephesians 4:1-6; Philippians 2:1-5. See Scot McKnight, A Community Called Atonement (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2007), for the relationship between the reconciling work of Jesus and the community it creates.
14. McKnight and Barringer, A Church Called Tov. The authors describe a goodness culture formed through empathy, grace, people-first leadership, truth, justice, service, and Christlikeness.
15. McKnight, A Community Called Atonement. McKnight presents atonement as the reconciling work of God that forms and is embodied through a reconciled community.
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