Spiritual pride!

Dr A. W. Tozer penned the following wise and challenging words:  “God may use people whom you think are not worthy to shine your shoes and in a given situation He will expect you to humble yourself meekly and take from them whatever it is they are pouring on you.  In that spirit of meekness you are humbling yourself under the mighty hand of God.”

Not to do so is to resist what God has ordained.  To refuse to accept God’s grace just because you do not like the hand that offers it, is blasphemous.  It is to despise God, and shows a lack of humility.  Spiritual pride always refuses to accept whom God has accepted.

Here, the irreconcilable conflict between pride and humility reveals itself.  ‘Must the Christian believer always humble himself and accept every situation with meekness?’  Answer: ‘Yes.  As Christians, we must never violate morals or truth.’  If in humbling ourselves we violate or compromise morals or truth, then we must not do it.  God has never asked a man to degrade himself either morally or in truth.

But Tozer is not referring primarily to these issues.  He is focusing our minds on our duty to accept those whom God has accepted and to submit to their teaching, provided it conforms to the Word of God.  If a beggar brings the truth of the Gospel to our hearts, we are bound to accept it.  If an unlearned man brings us the true Gospel, we must accept it and glory in it.  We might not care much for him, or for his lack of a “sound theological education,” or for the fact that he was trained in a suspect college or university; but if he brings us “the unsearchable riches of Christ,“ we must receive it as God’s provision for our souls, and rejoice!