Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.
1 Peter 5:5, ESV
Good guys, and bad guys: Every movie has them. If you have "a team," every game has them. Life itself has "good guys and bad guys," too.
Men and women who have considered the evidence, and therefore, have faith in the God of the Bible understand the very simple choice in life every individual must make: Serve the Lord of all goodness and love, or the great deceiver who tempts and destroys in this realm and that which is to be. It comes down to good guys and bad guys. And although God "made man upright" (Ecclesiastes 7:29), we have all sought out many schemes. We have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). Our own pride led us away from God, and that puts us on the side of "the bad guys."
Truly, God stands in opposition when we allow pride to chart life's course. The potential for the happy ending is there, though! The latter part of the statement from First Peter chapter five above reveals, of a truth, that God will bestow his kindness (i.e. grace) to those who will draw near to him in self-resigned humility. A chance to be on the side of "the good guys." A chance to serve God in humility, to be sure; but also an opportunity to gain a more complete understanding of how to treat our fellow man with respect and dignity.
The instruction given in the God-breathed statement above is to "clothe yourselves" with humility when it comes to our dealings with our brothers and sisters in the Lord. Certainly, the same applies to our treatment of the entire human race. In the original language, the phrase, "clothe yourselves" is a term (engkomboosasthe), occurring only this once in the New Testament. It is a verb formed from kombos, which means "a knot," or "a buckle." As the verb occurs here in First Peter, it means, "to attach," or "to fasten." As Ceslas Spicq points out, "It evokes the large apron that workers or slaves fitted or fastened to their tunics to protect them."
Such an apron was one of the primary ways in which slaves (indentured servants) were distinguished from freemen during the first century. The idea, then, is that every Christian ought to present himself to his neighbor in a spirit of modesty and self-denial gained by an attitude that is firmly fitted with the "apron" of humility."
How many problems (both within the church and without) would be averted if every man would so clothe himself?
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