Faith through Humility and Exaltation

Faith in God is not dependent on our economic status. This daily devotional looks at how the poor and the rich experience trials to grow their faith.

Nuggets

  • The poor are elevated to a higher status when they accept Jesus as their Savior and Redeemer.
  • The rich are brought down to show their need of Jesus as their Savior and Redeemer.
  • We, like grass, are temporarily in this world.

Devotions in Living Out Our Faith series

We’ve been looking at James 1, a rich book that reminds us of the importance of faith. James told us to endure the trials we encounter with faith, not doubt and double mindedness.

Beginning in verse 9, it seems James moves on to another topic. Let’s see how it ties in with the concept of faith.

Let's Put It into Context

Here is a running list of nuggets for the series.

The Poor Brother

“Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, and the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass he will pass away” (Jas. 1: 9-10 ESV)

The poor are elevated to a higher status when they accept Jesus as their Savior and Redeemer.

Christ took His message to people in all walks of life. They were the poor and the enslaved as well as those who were better off in that society.

Jesus’ message of love and deliverance was a great comfort to many in His day. They were lowly brothers. Yet, they were brothers.

But now they had cause to celebrate. Their sins had been forgiven, and their relationship with God was restored. They were uplifted.

The thing was they had to accept Jesus’ message and believe that He was the Messiah — even if He didn’t do all the things that they thought the Messiah would do.

Jesus will elevate us when He redeems and regenerates us.

Redemption is where God bestows His gift of grace on us in order to deliver us from sin.

  • Grace is a free and unmerited gift of love from the Heavenly Father, given through His Son, Jesus Christ, that enables salvation and spiritual healing to believers by the work of the Holy Spirit.
  • Sin is not believing that Jesus is our Savior to save us from our actions by humans that disobey God and break one of His reasonable, holy, and righteous laws and commandments, goes against a purpose He has for us, or follows Satan’s promptings.
    • Holy means to be set apart — because of our devotion to God — to become perfect, and morally pure while possessing all virtues.
    • Perfection means we reach a state of maturity because the combination of the spiritual graces form, when all are present, spiritual wholeness or completeness — holy, sanctified, and righteous.
      • Spiritual graces are worldly morals that have been submitted to God to further His kingdom instead of enhancing this world.
      • Sanctified means to be set free from sin.
      • Righteous means we are free from sin because we are following God’s moral laws.
    • Pure means not being sinful or having the stain of sin. 
    • Virtues are standards of moral excellence.

Regeneration is being changed from spiritually dead to spiritually alive and the internal new birth and requickening that God brings about through the work of the Holy Spirit.

  • Spiritual death is the separation from God that occurred as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s original sin.
    • The spiritually alive are those who have ABCDed, so they are no longer separated from God.

The ABCDs of Salvation

If you have not become a believer in Christ, please read through the
Plan of Salvation and prayerfully consider what God is asking you to do.

A – admit our sins
B – believe His Son Jesus is our Redeemer
C – confess God as Sovereign Lord

D – demonstrate that commitment by making any changes needed in our lives to live the way in which God has called us

The Disciple’s Job Description

Glossary

Jesus doesn’t exalt us so that our social status will change. He does so our heart status will change.

The goal is to return our character to be like that of God’s. This is a spiritual change, not a physical one.

Wardlaw explained that we are exalted because we tap into the power which strengthens our self-control. This is definitely needed!

Resource

As humans, we cannot stop sinning. It is in our physical nature to do so.

God calls us to follow His laws and commandments — in other words, to stop sinning. He knows we will never be able to do that. (If we could, Jesus wouldn’t have had to come to pay the penalty for our sins. We couldn’t, so He did.)

ABCDing gives us strength to not commit sins we would have in the past.

Our society does change, but not in the way some would think. We aren’t automatically upgraded to better jobs, better homes, and fancier cars.

We join a new society — the family of God. We may still be in this world, but we are no longer of it.

To read a related devotion, click the button below.

The way we are exalted in riches is that we gain spiritual blessings. We gain eternal life.

The Rich Brother

“and the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass he will pass away” (Jas. 1: 9-10 ESV)

The rich are brought down to show their need of Jesus as their Savior and Redeemer.

In contrast to the lowly brother being exalted is the rich being humiliated.

Notice it doesn’t say brother. However, Wardlaw took it to mean James was talking to rich disciples.

The reference has to be what happens in this world. It can’t be a spiritual designation.

Rich and poor could have been added to Paul’s list. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3: 28 ESV).

There are other verses that showcase how we are the same.

  • “Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living” (Gen. 3: 20 NIV).
  • “These are the clans of the sons of Noah, according to their genealogies, in their nations, and from these the nations spread abroad on the earth after the flood” (Gen. 10: 32 ESV).
  • “From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands” (Ac. 17: 26 NIV).
  • “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3: 23 CSB).

Unfortunately, many love their earthly riches. It isn’t the riches themselves — it is the abuse of the riches that is the sin.

Loving their riches too much does foster pride and vanity.

We tend to forget that earthly riches are fleeting. They are going to be gone tomorrow. They definitely will not make the transfer to Heaven.

Even all the accolades we earn from our knowledge and skill mean nothing in eternity.

What we gain when we ask Jesus to be our Savior and Redeemer is far better than anything this word offers.

We tend to think that humility is a bad thing. Instead, Wardlaw said it was the opposite. He wrote, “His very humility is, as a creature and a sinner, his true honour; as it is the honour of the first archangel before the throne. In that humility, too, Jehovah has complacency. He obtains the smile and the blessing of Jehovah, and all the present joy, and all the soul-satisfying hope which that smile and that blessing impart.”

Resource

We are blessed when we give up our pride so that we can humbly come to God. That is how we gain honor.

Using Grass as an Example

“For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass; its flower falls, and its beauty perishes. So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits” (Jas. 1: 11 ESV)

We, like grass, are temporarily in this world.

Stop a second. I think it is too easy to get caught up in the terms made low and humiliated that we might miss what is really being said here.

Briggs reminded us that, in the fall from grace, we didn’t lose that which makes us still made in God’s image. We still possess, as Briggs put it, “intelligence, conscience, moral sensibility, and power to will.”

Resource

We still have a greatness of nature. But worldly nature isn’t enough. We need to be humiliated and made low.

How are we humiliated and made low? We go through trials.

Yes, we may lose our earthly riches. We may get real uncomfortable.

But what do we gain? We just talked about that.

Trials produce the faith and patience we need for perfection/maturity.

Trials produce the faith and patience we need for perfection/maturity.

We lose what this world values and gain what is valued for eternity.

Did you catch that this is about change? Growth through the trials bring a change.

Oh, no. We don’t like change. But this is a necessary change so that we can imitate God.

Change keeps us from becoming too self-confident and forgetting God. We recognize that we cannot on ourselves.

Both are in better condition than before the trials. The poor man has been elevated to something better. The rich man now also knows himself more.

It goes back to humility. We kind of pulled that out in the previous devotions, but not much. We only said that the trials foster humility.

If you are like me, you wonder about what grass has to do with anything. We wonder because we don’t know our Old Testament like the Jews did. Look at this.

“A voice says, “Cry!” And I said, “What shall I cry?” All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the LORD blows on it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades,
but the word of our God will stand forever” (Isa. 40: 6-8 ESV).

We have about a 30 minute drive to church depending on the route we go. This spring, we commented almost every Sunday and Wednesday how beautiful the grass and the flowers were along the edge of the road.

There are still some flowers there. They are not near as vibrant as they were. The heat of the summer scorched them.

Soon, the cooler weather is going to hit, and they will be gone.

We, like the flowers, are here temporarily. This earth is just temporary.

“Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them” (Rev. 20: 15 ESV).

James may or may not have had Judgment Day in his mind. He probably was thinking more along the line that people die. No one lives on this planet forever.

faith-through-humility-and-exaltationFB

Making the Connections

Think about the rich disciple and the poor disciple a second. Adam said both of them had reason to boast — they were in the Lord. “Therefore I have reason to boast in Christ Jesus regarding what pertains to God” (Rom. 15: 17 CSB).

Resource

Thomas made an interesting observation. He wrote, “Circumstances are no test of character.”

Resource

It isn’t the environment in which we live that builds character. It is the choices that we make as we are going through the trials.

Don’t get all bent out of shape because there are poor people and rich people. I know it is a stumbling block for some. They think this is a prosperity gospel, and rich and poor doesn’t fit in their definition.

Rich and poor doesn’t fit in their definition of a loving God, either. How can there be this inequality?

Easy. Adam and Eve. Poverty is a result of the original sin. God didn’t design the world for anyone to be poor.

However, when Adam and Eve chose to disobey God, poverty was born. Now, it is a fact of life.

But that is part of this temporary world.

How Do We Apply This?

The purpose of the trials is to also change our perception of ourselves. Both the rich and the poor go through trials to ensure their character is what God intends.

  • Be content in whatever circumstance in which God puts us.
  • Look to spiritual triumphs over circumstances rather than our worldly circumstances to bring us joy.
  • Don’t think too highly or too poorly of ourselves.
  • Don’t judge others based on their riches or their poverty, as changes to these are based upon God’s molding them.
  • Acknowledge hat whatever happens to us comes from God.

Resource

Father God. We know we are all equal in Your sight. Exalt the poor so they know their worth in You. Bring humiliation to the rich so that they can come to You in genuine faith. It is imperative that we put our faith and trust in You. Amen.

What do you think?

Leave me a comment below (about this or anything else) or head over to my Facebook group for some interactive discussion.

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