Every good thing in the Christian life grows in the soil of humility. Without humility, every virtue and every grace withers. That’s why Calvin said humility is first, second, and third in the Christian faith.
Interpretation
Humility is essential for spiritual growth and the flourishing of virtues in the Christian life.
In this quote, John Piper emphasizes the foundational role of humility in nurturing the good qualities of the Christian faith. He asserts that without humility, virtues and graces fail to thrive, highlighting that a humble heart is crucial for true spiritual development, as reiterated by Calvin's insistence on humility's preeminent importance.
In practice
In a sermon about personal development, one might say, 'Remember, every good thing in the Christian life grows in the soil of humility.'
God will not turn away from doing you good. He will keep on doing good. He doesn't do good to His children sometimes and bad to them other times. He keeps on doing good and He never will stop doing good for ten thousand ages of ages. When things are going bad that does not mean God has stopped doing good. It means He is shifting things around to get them in place for more good, if you will go on loving Him.
You don’t have to know a lot of things for your life to make a lasting difference in the world. But you do have to know the few great things that matter, perhaps just one, and then be willing to live for them and die for them. The people that make a durable difference in the world are not the people who have mastered many things, but who have been mastered by one great thing.
Do all things without grumbling. Why? You have a sovereign God who is on your side, who works everything together for your good.
Christ did not die to make good works merely possible or to produce a half-hearted pursuit. He died to produce in us a passion for good deeds. Christian purity is not the mere avoidance of evil, but the pursuit of good.
The key to Christian living is a thirst and hunger for God. And one of the main reasons people do not understand or experience the sovereignty of grace and the way it works through the awakening of sovereign joy is that their hunger and thirst for God is so small.
Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn't.
A Christian brings peace to others. Not only peace, but also love, kindness, faithfulness and joy.
True humility is more like self-forgetfulness than false modesty.
Perhaps the seeds of false-refinement, immorality, and vanity, have ever been shed by the great. Weak, artificial beings, raised above the common wants and defections of their race, in a premature and unnatural manner, undermine the very foundation of virtue, and spread corruption through the whole mass of society!
Man is not an omipotent master of the universe, allowed to do with impunity whatever he thinks, or whatever suits him at the moment. The world we live in is made of an immensely complex and mysterious tissue about which we know very little and which we must treat with utmost humility.
Mercy can purge the soul of sin, making room for a fresh start. Truth is vital in order that we have an unvarying standard by which to determine what we are to be and to do and what we are to rid ourselves of. All the cardinal virtues, therefore, carry their own intrinsic as well as outward reward. A merciful man does do good to his own soul.
The central miracle asserted by Christians is the incarnation. They say that God became man.
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