Classic Book of the Month: The door to a garden of spiritual fruit

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, April 4th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: two book reviews for Holy Week.

Some Christians like to give meaningful gifts at Easter for friends and family. So today, we bring you two special book recommendations we hope will enrich your observance this weekend.

REICHARD: First, a book recommendation by one of the pastors at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Nashville. WORLD’s Emily Whitten attends that church, and Covenant is the same one in which six people lost their lives last week.

This interview took place before that terrible day. Pastor Patrick Curles talked about his book and Emily prepared this review for us before last week.

It’s a serious invitation not to wait until hard times begin, but to draw near to the Lord now.

EMILY WHITTEN, REVIEWER: Our Classic Book of the Month is titled Humility: The Beauty of Holiness. It’s by Christian author Andrew Murray, who was born in 1828 and died in 1917. Murray spent much of his early career traversing South Africa by horse and wagon, ministering to isolated farm families. In the documentary Andrew Murray: Africa for Christ, missionary Peter Hammond explains how these farmers influenced Murray’s writing:

ANDREW MURRAY FILM: They’re not interested in this dry theology and hypothetical. They want practical theology. Put feet to your faith. The kind of message that makes sense. So Andrew Murray was forced to revise all of his teaching.

Later, Murray preached in the bustling city of Cape Town. He also served as a moderator for the Dutch Reformed Church, a position which required him to fight some of the academic heresies of his day.

ANDREW MURRAY FILM: This was no doubt the most traumatic part of his life. He was torn into church politics, and legal battles. All the clashes between the theological liberals and those who were attacking the integrity of Scripture.

Sadly, Murray himself fell into some theological extremes. So, I don’t recommend all of his books. He was associated with the Higher Life movement and held some radical views on faith healing and perfectionism. But Murray’s roughly one-hundred page book titled Humility is a treasure, combining simplicity and Biblical wisdom.

PATRICK CURLES: I think that’s that's one of the reasons I enjoy reading Murray so much, and all of the folks in the higher life movement, despite their their errors, what they seem to grasp better than a lot of people is the Christian life is Christ living in me.

That’s Patrick Curles. He’s a pastor at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee. He’s actually one of my pastors, and he recommended the book to me a while back. When I listened to the audiobook last fall, I was struck right away by Murray’s idea of humility. Curles explains with a quote from author C.S. Lewis.

CURLES: The famous line from Lewis is ‘Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less.’ And I think that's what a lot of people would say humility is, but Murray I think would say humility is dependence. God's the creator. We're the creature. We were made for dependence upon Him.

Murray explains that humility isn’t a result of the fall. Realizing our sinfulness can help us see our pride, but godly humility isn’t caused by sin—it’s part of how God made us.

CURLES: So I love this line, where he says humility is often identified with penitence and contrition. As a consequence, there appears to be no way of fostering humility except by keeping the soul occupied with its sin. We have learned I think that humility is something else and something more. We have seen in the teaching of our Lord Jesus and in the Epistles how often the virtue is earnestly taught without any reference to sin.

If you want to know what humility looks like in everyday life, Murray says look at Jesus. He never sinned, but he speaks over and over of his dependence on the Father. Murray quotes Jesus on this point.

CURLES: My doctrine is not mine, I've not come up myself, I do nothing of myself. He says, I don't seek My own glory, the word which you hear is not mine. And all of those is, he’s pointing to Jesus, as an example of what it looks like to be in that dependence, where he's willing to be God's instrument.

Sometimes, Jesus’s behavior fits the American idea of humility, and sometimes it doesn’t.

CURLES: Jesus was always humble. But sometimes he was turning over tables and, you know, rebuking Pharisees and calling sin sin. It's not just being small, it's not being mousy, it's not being quiet.

Clearly, a Biblical kind of humility doesn’t come naturally to fallen people. That begs the question, if we don’t have humility, how do we get it? Murray says we need Christ’s presence and power in our lives. Here’s Curles reading Murray again.

CURLES: We see that only by the indwelling of Christ in His divine humility do we become truly humble. We have our pride from another, from Adam. We must have our humility from another, too.

Murray says humility is one of the least understood virtues—and because we don’t understand it, we miss many Christian graces that flow from a humble, Christ-filled heart. Graces like courage to say I’m sorry when I blow it as a parent. Or power to keep loving a coworker or spouse who doesn’t love me back. Humility opens the door to a thousand kinds of spiritual fruit.

Murray’s insights also speak to the critical question today of identity.

CURLES: I think it was Lily Tomlin, that old comedian. She said, ‘I always wanted to be somebody, I should have been more specific.’ Everybody wants to be something. And I think that's God given, right? So sin was my failed attempt to be that apart from you. Humility is my willingness to acknowledge that and come back to Christ, who is now my only hope for being what you made me to be.

I’m sorry to say that Our Classic Book of the Month, Humility by Andrew Murray, won’t make you humble. But it can help you think more deeply about the subject—and that’s a good place to start.

I’m Emily Whitten.

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