The Humility of the New Testament Writers

As we begin the sermon today, I'd like to ask a very important question to all of us. How can we truly improve our lives? What would be the easiest way to do it? If you could just do something in your life that really made a big difference. Some might think, just give me a big bank account. Boy, that would improve my life a lot. But would it really do it? Would it make you into a better and a more caring person? Would it improve your inner life? Who you truly are. If what you have isn't going to really make a big difference with what you are inside, what can really make a difference? It doesn't take money or material things to do it. It means making a lasting change in our character and attitudes. Life around us would truly change. There would be so many more positive results. This is one of the greatest lessons in the Bible. And we have abundant evidence to back it up. What's more, we are going to go over the examples of the New Testament writers. How many do you think there are? Probably think there are quite a number. There are only eight writers that wrote the entire New Testament. Isn't that surprising? So much has been given to us by so few who were inspired by God. The lives of these men were enormously impacted by the presence and example of Jesus Christ. And as a result, it produced in them great humility. It made them feel smaller and Christ bigger. I've never forgotten those insightful words I once read in a book called The Training of the Twelve by A.B. Bruce. He said, throughout the New Testament, miracles are described in a sober, almost matter-of-fact tone. How is this to be explained? Walking on water, multiplying all this bread to feed 5,000? Wouldn't that be something that you thought was sensational? But the way they recorded it, it was just the facts, no embellishment. The author goes on to say, it is because the apostles had seen too many miracles by Jesus to remain excited about them. Their sense of wonder had been deadened from seeing too many of them.

But though they ceased to marvel at the power of their Lord, they never ceased to wonder about His loving grace.

The love of Christ remained for them throughout as a thing surpassing knowledge. And the longer they lived, the more they acknowledged the truth of their Master's words. Blessed are the eyes which see the things that you see. Luke 10.23.

You see, as they aged, the presence, the memory of Christ grew and their own image diminished.

They saw behind all that power that Christ manifested this incredible humility and lack of self-aggrandizement, instead of focusing first on others. Some of the people that were blind and lame and poor, nobody took them into account, yet He did.

The Apostle Paul summed up Christ's life and example in Philippians 2, verses 1-8. I would like to read it from the New English Bible.

By thinking and feeling alike, with the same love for one another, the same turn of mind, and a common care for unity, there must be no room for rivalry and personal vanity among you, but you must humbly reckon others better than yourselves.

Look to each other's interest and not merely to your own.

The New Living Translation continues in verse 6 and says, You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.

Though He was God, He did not think of equality with God as something to cling to.

Instead, He gave up His divine privileges, took the humble position of a slave, and was born as a human being. When He appeared in human form, He humbled Himself in obedience to God and died a criminal's death on a cross.

So, let's briefly go over those eight persons that wrote the New Testament and their examples of profound humility.

It can make a positive change in our lives if we learn to be humble, to think of the other person before one's interest. I know it's hard, but that's part of overcoming human nature. It can be a key to a positive change in the relationships that we have with other people around us.

Where there is no humility, there will be selfishness, self-centeredness, and contentions.

Their examples reveal action steps that we can take in our own lives and apply to our own circumstances, producing better results.

James said it best in chapter 3, verses 13 through 18. Notice the difference between selfishness and unselfishness.

The Good News Bible version says, Notice the words, humility and wisdom.

Such wisdom does not come down from heaven. It belongs to the world. It is unspiritual and demonic. Where there is jealousy and selfishness, there is also disorder and every kind of evil. But the wisdom from above is pure, first of all. It is also peaceful, gentle, and friendly.

It is full of compassion and produces a harvest of good deeds. It is free from prejudice and hypocrisy. And goodness is the harvest that is produced from the seeds the peacemakers plant in peace. So there's going to be good results that we can plant.

So let's look at these eight of the New Testament writers. There are some humorous stories which show how humble they were willing to be. That they actually hid stories about themselves that they didn't want to boast about. So they had to use kind of a third-person account. That was because of Christ's example. They felt so unworthy, so little in comparison to what they had seen He had done. Let's go to the first of the New Testament writers. That's Matthew.

If we go to Matthew 1, how does Matthew start? It doesn't start. This is the gospel by Matthew. No, this is the way it starts. The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Immediately, He's saying, the writer is nobody special. It's who He's writing about that's special. That's why I want to emphasize He doesn't identify Himself. He doesn't focus on me. I'm Matthew, one of the twelve apostles.

No, not at all. He just starts right explaining this is the story of the life of Jesus Christ. That's the important thing.

He was one of the twelve, but He didn't mention it anywhere.

He wanted to give Christ all the glory, point to Him and not to Himself. Secondly, He mentions His own calling in this account, but in a matter-of-fact way, doesn't even use His own saying, this is me.

He just says, this is another disciple that Christ called. It happened to be Him, but He didn't focus on it. He didn't write a whole couple of paragraphs about it. Notice in Matthew 9, verse 9, it says, As Jesus passed on from there, He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office, and He said to him, Follow me! So He arose and followed him. This is the whole story about being called by God in the flesh.

Follow Me! It doesn't say Matthew all that He did, why Christ called Him, what possessions He had that He had to sacrifice. No, He just said, He just quit His job right then and there and followed Him. Boy, you talk about a brief biography. That is a brief biography. Then it goes on to say, When Jesus heard that, He said to them, Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.

And it's interesting, when you're well, you don't get a checkup. It's when you've got a problem that you go to a physician. It's the same way Christ is saying, these are the people that recognize they are sinners. They need forgiveness. Those who are self-righteous don't think they have any sins to be forgiven. And He goes on to say, But go and learn what this means.

I desire mercy and not sacrifice. For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. So this is what Matthew recorded about His own calling. Yes, He said, Jesus called me because I'm a sinner. And I have all these other publicans right there that were not respected by the populace. They were despised. And yet, Matthew just said, I am one of those sinners.

I'm one of those sick that need forgiveness, that needs healing. It's only when later on, Luke writes his gospel many years later, that Luke tells us a little more that Matthew did not want to fill in here. He did not want to boast. He did not want to talk about what all of this was about. But in Luke 5, verse 28 and 29, it talks about the calling of Matthew again.

It was also called Levi. And it says about Matthew, so He left all. That's not what Matthew said. He just said, here, follow me, so He arose and followed Him. Didn't say He left at all, but He really did. And then He goes on to say, He rose up and followed Him. Here's a man with a successful profession. It was a pretty cushy job working for getting the Romans to tax people and to pick up and collect all the taxes. You could get a percentage of that, so they were despised by the Jewish population.

But He rose up and followed Him. Didn't ask any questions. Well, Lord, it's the tax season. Couldn't I just get after my big haul during that time? Maybe in a month or two? This is what Jesus said to a lot of people. They had all kinds of conditions that they didn't want to go right away. He realized what was going to happen. He was going to be mentored by God in the flesh, the Messiah. He truly believed it.

It says that He followed Him, then Levi gave Him a great feast where? In His own house. That's what Matthew didn't want to say. That He had a pretty big house. He had a banquet. He had a feast for Jesus Christ. Sort of a celebration to be part of His discipleship. But you don't see any of that. Typical of human nature, you could have embellished it, make yourself look better. But Matthew did not do so at all. It was only with Luke. And he goes on to say, And there were a great number of tax collectors and others who sat down with him. So it was a big crowd. Matthew had his house. He was a prosperous man, and yet he gave everything up to follow Jesus Christ.

You think that's a good qualification to later God say, I want you to write one of the Gospels. Because this person wasn't going to be filled with vanity and filled with himself. Next is the Gospel of Mark. Mark was younger than the rest. He wasn't an apostle. But he worked with two of the different apostles, which is mentioned in the New Testament. He worked with Paul. He also worked with Barnabas. And eventually, with a third, which is Peter. Peter mentions in 1 Peter 5.13 that Mark was with him.

How do we see the beginning of the account of Mark? Chapter 1. Does he start with his name and bold letters, focusing on himself? Not at all. Verse 1. The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. So again, it's about Jesus Christ, not about human beings. Not about the persons writing this account. They were witnesses. They were testifying to what they had lived and experienced. He had been acquainted with Peter, with Paul. He doesn't mention that at all. And there's one more detail that only is found in the Gospel of Mark. And it's a pretty embarrassing detail.

Mark is the only one that knows what happened at that time. And it really didn't have anything else to do with the story. But it's like saying, I was there when Christ was arrested. I was a young man following the apostles. And when Christ got arrested, this young man was also following Christ. He wasn't, like I said, one of the twelve. But you know there were numerous followers. Notice what it says in Mark chapter 14 verse 49.

It goes all the way to 52. Jesus said, Why didn't you arrest me in the temple? I was there among you teaching every day. But these things are happening to fulfill what the Scriptures say about me. Then all his disciples deserted him and ran away. One young man, following behind, was clothed only with a long linen shirt. In other words, he didn't have his coat on or anything. It was just a long linen shirt. And when the mob tried to grab him, all the disciples were running, getting dispersed.

And this young man, he was part of the group. And so they tried to grab him, and he slipped out of his shirt and ran away naked. It's a small detail known to him. But again, would you put that in the account of the Gospels? If you were the one that was going through that, it just showed, again, the humility. They were not trying to rise and get this big following and impress people. They said, look, we were human beings. We had our faults. And this is what happened to me at that time. It wasn't the great hero, right? He wasn't doing a heroic gesture at this time.

Let's go to the third New Testament writer, Luke, the physician. Now, we know he's a physician, but not because Luke said so. It's from Paul's writings in Colossians 4.14 that Paul calls Luke the beloved physician. So Luke was quite well educated. He had gone to some medical school because he's a physician. Yet he never tells us that, nor does he give us his credentials.

He doesn't talk about here, or Luke the physician, and, I went to Corinth for the medical school, and this is what I did. No, he didn't do that at all. Notice how his gospel begins. Luke 1. He starts with a preface, and he doesn't talk about identifying himself. Then in verse 5, he starts the account, There was in the days of Herod the king of Judea a certain priest named Zechariah. So he begins with the father of John the Baptist. But again, it's not about the writer. He doesn't make himself known, doesn't attribute any importance to himself. He uses many medical terms in this gospel, yet he never boasts about his knowledge or puts focus on himself.

The same thing is found in the book of Acts, which Luke also wrote. He doesn't identify himself in the beginning, and in Acts 16 verse 10, he starts mentioning himself, but as one of the company that was with the apostle Parr. He just uses the term we. So we know this is where he is actually involved with the group. Luke 16 verse 10, Acts 16 verse 10, it says, Now after he had seen division, immediately we sought to go to Macedonia, concluding that the Lord had called us to preach the gospel to them, called us.

So this is the only time Luke is relating the history of the church, and he begins here what they call the we accounts. There are actually four of them, also Acts 20 verse 5 forward, Acts 21 forward, and then chapter 27 and 28. Luke is with him when they suffer that shipwreck, when he goes to Rome and is there with the apostle Paul. But the only thing we know is that he just saying we. So again, he diminishes his involvement.

He wants to focus on the apostle Paul, on when Christ is carrying out. What a wonderful example of humility. Let's go to the fifth of the New Testament writers, the apostle Paul. You see in his writings humility throughout. He introduces most of his epistles as Paul, the servant of Christ, the term there is actually slave of Christ, doulos. There were two types of slaves in the Roman Empire.

One was the one that was forced slavery, where you were obligated to be a slave. But the second type was the one which was a voluntary slave, that he basically gave himself to a family or to a person and work with them throughout their lives. And Paul identifies as a bond slave of Christ, one that voluntarily yielded his own life to serve God. That takes us then to, I should have said, the fourth gospel writer, which is John. And John is part of the three closest apostles to Jesus Christ, the other ones being Peter and James. But John is so humble, he doesn't want to mention his own name in an account that's describing Jesus Christ.

He doesn't draw any attention to himself, and when he has to refer to himself, he uses vague terms, like in chapter 2 toward the end, where he says, the other apostle, that was with Andrew, when Andrew was called, and this other apostle or disciple, he says, I'm not going to identify, referring, as is generally understood, being John himself.

But he just refused to take any credit, any focus upon himself. Then, in John 13, 23, he identifies himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved, and he left it at that. You'll have to guess who he is, because I'm not going to tell you, because I don't want you to focus on me.

He also used the term in chapter 18, 13, 19, 26, and 21, 7. He's always drawing himself away from the limelight. I believe that's one of the keys for why he was chosen to write one of the Gospels, several of the Epistles, and the Book of Revelation. Because again, he wasn't going to let things get lofty with him, get a swelled head over this calling that he had received. And now we come to the fifth New Testament writer, the Apostle Paul, as I mentioned.

He's always mentioning being a slave of Christ, and he was pretty hard on himself. You read chapter 7 of Romans, where he's talking about his struggles, and, you know, I can't overcome this, and I've got this flesh, and it's pulling against the Spirit, and it doesn't let me do what I want. He was very candid, very honest. How many people would like to write that about themselves?

See, he had been completely removed from all of that pride and vanity that he had had before.

And so he was a docile instrument that God could use. He wasn't going to get a swelled head.

Always remember, though, that all of these men were humble and meek, but they were not weak.

So you have this combination, very strong inside, character, following God, even to death, if necessary. But yet, they were kind, compassionate, always thinking about others, not putting themselves in the limelight. Notice Galatians 6, verses 2 and 3.

Paul is telling them, Bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.

As you'd like others to treat you, so treat others.

Verse 3, For if anyone thinks himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself.

And here that Greek term for nothing has to do with numbers. And you know what number that is? That's number zero.

That's nothing. That's how Paul felt.

He repeated the same thing in 2 Corinthians, chapter 12, verses 1 through 3.

Here he tells them some of the things that God had been doing in his life.

But again, he's so reluctant to put himself up in the limelight. So he struggles with this. He says in 2 Corinthians 12, verse 1, It is doubtless not profitable for me to boast.

Please, brethren, this is not what the focus should be. It's what Paul is saying.

But they were undermining his authority. They were losing respect for him.

So again, he's trying to defend his ministry. And he says, I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord.

So he says, okay, this is what God has done. Maybe you'll respect me a little more, is what he was asking.

He said, I know a man in Christ who, 14 years ago, whether in the body I do not know, or whether out of the body I do not know, God knows such a man was caught up in the third heaven.

So he's talking about visions here. This was a person caught up in a vision that was so vivid that he couldn't distinguish.

It was so clear to him. It looked like he was actually there in person.

And I know such a man, whether in the body or not of the body I do not know, God knows how he is caught up into paradise, which is the third heaven up there, and heard inexpressible words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter, of such a one I will not boast, yet of myself I will not boast except in my affirmities.

For though I might desire to boast, I will not be a fool, for I will speak the truth, but I refrain lest anyone should think of me above what he sees me to be or hears from me, unless I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations a thorn in the flesh was given to me.

So again, he kind of says yes, brethren, it was me.

But because it was such a marvelous vision and revelation, then God said, well, you're going to get a swelled head, you're going to get vain.

And so God says, I'm going to have to give you something to remember. You're just a human being.

And then he goes on to say in verse 11, he says, I have become a fool in boasting.

You have compelled me, for I ought to have been commended by you. You should have been respecting me.

You should have been following what I'm saying.

For in nothing was I behind the most eminent apostles, though I am nothing.

He repeats that again.

He just had that humility that is so important to be a man of God, an instrument that God can use.

Let's go to the sixth example of the New Testament writer. That's the apostle James.

Notice, let's go to the book of James. How does he start here? This is an epistle. So in these letters, you do identify yourself, so at least they'll know.

But notice how humbly he does it and address himself.

James, a bondservant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. Bondservant, the word dulus, which again means a slave of Christ.

He doesn't mention that he was a family member, that he was a half-brother of Jesus Christ. How does he call him now?

My Lord. He realizes that Jesus Christ is much greater than what he ever imagined.

So he didn't try to impress people, being part of the family of Jesus Christ. He just says, James, a bondservant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Throughout his epistle, always focusing on helping the brethren doesn't focus on himself at all.

That takes us to the 7th New Testament writer, the Apostle Peter.

How does Peter begin? Do you see him kind of raising himself up and exalting himself because of his responsibilities? Not at all. He starts out in...let's go to 2 Peter, to that letter, which is the last letter he writes in chapter 1, verse 1.

Simon Peter, a bondservant, an apostle of Jesus Christ. Again, he uses the word doulas, which means a slave and apostle, which is a messenger sent on a mission.

That's the only title. He didn't talk about him being in charge of everybody, being in charge of the apostles and the church. No, just a bondservant of Christ.

Notice also in 1 Peter 5, just one page before that, in verse 1, his humble attitude as he addresses the church.

Verse 1, He's saying, I'm one of the elders, too. He wasn't talking about being the top head of the church at that time, physical head at all.

He says, I am an elder among all the rest of you. He says, Verse 2, which is among you, serving as overseers and not by compulsion, but willingly, not for dishonest gain, but eagerly, not as being lords over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock.

And when the chief shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that does not fade away.

He goes on to say, likewise, you younger people, submit yourselves to your elders.

Yes, all of you be submissive to one another and be clothed with humility, for God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.

Had Peter learned something in his life? Certainly he did. That's why God used him. He was able to keep that humility, despite all of the great responsibilities that God gave him.

And that takes us to the eighth and last writer.

Let's turn to Jude.

Jude 1.

The only chapter that begins in the first verse.

How does he begin? Jude, a bondservant of Jesus Christ and brother of James.

He didn't say here he was also the half-brother of Christ.

He also talked about a bondservant, a slave, voluntarily giving up your own rights to serve God.

He doesn't draw attention to himself.

He focuses on the teachings of Christ.

So these are the eight New Testament writers.

And you see the same attitude, the same spirit.

They're all wishing to highlight Jesus Christ and diminish their own glory, their own position.

And that is not an accident.

That's because that's one of the key ingredients if a person wants to be used by God.

It's one of the key ingredients to having harmony among ourselves, to develop that same spirit, and being willing to give the other person the deference.

And we should not only open the door for ladies so they can come in, think of the other person, instead of our own interest. And you'll see, people are going to really appreciate, and they're going to get closer to all of us.

And in our marriage relationships, in our family relationships, that spirit of humility will go a very long way, and it will bring a blessing from God.

So in conclusion, as these examples of the New Testament writers have shown us, if the presence of Jesus Christ is growing more in us, there will be less a focus on self and more on others.

This is something we can focus daily on how we can better serve and help.

The Apostle Paul said in Ephesians chapter 5 verses 20 and 21, to submit ourselves one to another.

And Peter adds in 1 Peter 5, 5, be clothed in humility. It's like putting something on.

It doesn't come naturally. You have to pray, you have to prepare yourself, and clothe yourself with that spirit that was in Jesus Christ.

Humility is truly a vital key to better getting along with others, and what's more important, a pleasing God.

Now, let's put it into practice.