For the Christian, humility is absolutely indispensable. Without it there can be no self-knowledge, no repentance, no faith and no salvation.
Interpretation
Humility is essential for understanding oneself and achieving spiritual growth.
Aiden Wilson Tozer emphasizes the crucial role humility plays in the Christian faith. He argues that without humility, individuals cannot truly know themselves or acknowledge their faults, which are necessary steps towards repentance, genuine faith, and ultimately, salvation. This perspective highlights that humility is not just a virtue but a foundational aspect of spiritual life.
In practice
In a sermon discussing spiritual growth, a pastor could use this quote to illustrate the importance of humility.
Peace of heart that is won by refusing to bear the common yoke of human sympathy is a peace unworthy of a Christian. To seek tranquility by stopping our ears to the cries of human pain is to make ourselves not Christian but a kind of degenerate stoic having no relation either to stoicism or Christianity.
The average Christian is so cold and so contented with His wretched condition that there is no vacuum of desire into which the blessed Spirit can rush in satisfying fullness.
Let a man set his heart only on doing the will of God and he is instantly free. If we understand our first and sole duty to consist of loving God supremely and loving everyone, even our enemies, for God's dear sake, then we can enjoy spiritual tranquility under every circumstance.
The church that can't worship must be entertained. And leaders who can't lead a church to worship must provide the entertainment.
Before the Christian Church goes into eclipse anywhere there must first be a corrupting of her simple basic theology. She simply gets a wrong answer to the question, βWhat is God like?β and goes on from there. Though she may continue to cling to a sound nominal creed, her practical working creed has become false. The masses of her adherents come to believe that God is different from what He actually is; and that is heresy of the most insidious and deadly kind
People who are crucified with Christ have three distinct marks: 1. they are facing only one direction, 2. they can never turn back, and 3. they no longer have plans of their own.
I say to my breath once again, little breath come from in front of me, go away behind me, row me quietly now, as far as you can, for I am an abyss that I am trying to cross.
Silence is the unbearable repartee.
The prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.
Speaking of Self-realizatio n is a delusion. It is only because people have been under the delusion that the non-Self is the Self and the unreal the Real that they have to be weaned out of it by the other delusion called Self-realizatio n; because actually the Self always is the Self and there is no such thing as realizing it.
The possession of power inevitably spoils the free use of reason.
I think we're lucky to be living when we are, because things are going to get worse.
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