Two Gates: Humility or Self-Exaltation?

Theology and Politics from a Conservative, Biblical Perspective

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Without disrespecting the nuances and volume of His teachings, everything Jesus taught is ultimately distilled down to the difference between choosing the path of humility versus the path of self-exaltation. In fact, Jesus summarized the entire Law and Prophets in citing the greatest commandment and the second; “On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 22:40).

In a recent article [1], I allowed Self to escalate a situation instead of allowing it to peter out to nothing. Afterwards, swallowing my pride, I admitted my failure and apologized. Fortunately, the other party was gracious and forgiving. However, a number of days had passed before I was able to get with the other party and offer my apology in person. During that time, as you might imagine, I felt miserable. I was also on the receiving end of numerous spiritual attacks complete with false accusations from the enemy as you might imagine.

The only thing I could do was throw myself on the Lord’s mercy. I spent much time repeating Psalm 145:17-20 and prayed often in order to help my mind focus on Him and His truth.

17 The Lord is righteous in all His ways,
Gracious in all His works.
18 The Lord is near to all who call upon Him,
To all who call upon Him in truth.
19 He will fulfill the desire of those who fear Him;
He also will hear their cry and save them.
20 The Lord preserves all who love Him,
But all the wicked He will destroy.

When I consider the ramifications of the above truth, it clearly tells me that God is righteous, gracious and willing to help if I come to Him in truth, with real repentance. Verse 18, tells us that He is near to all who call upon Him, but the caveat is that we must come to Him in absolute truth. We cannot try to hide our motives or excuse ourselves when we sin resulting in broken fellowship with Him. He will restore fellowship if we are honest with Him, since He knows the truth about us anyway.  The more I considered all of this, the more it really began to dawn on me.

We are all familiar with Jesus’ teaching regarding the narrow and wide gates of Matthew 7:13-14.

13 Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. 14 Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.

We could rename those gates from narrow/wide to humility/self-exaltation. This is exactly why the narrow/humility gate is so “difficult” as Jesus notes in verse 14. Who among us has an easy time walking away from “self” to embrace “humility”? I don’t, and there are too many incidents in my life proving it. It’s not wrong to remember these types of situations either, because they should serve as markers in our lives.

Please don’t get me wrong. God does not want us to beat ourselves up continually over these previous incidents where we allowed self to be exalted, because we are no longer under any condemnation (Romans 8:1-2). They should only serve to remind us what we should not be doing.

1 There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.

In my phone, I keep several pictures of myself when I was severely overweight. I was literally morbidly obese and my health was severely compromised.

Years later, after losing nearly 90 pounds and getting my body back to good health, I will sometimes take a gander at those photos to remind myself what I was and could become again if not careful. Those photos help me stay on the right eating path to continued good health. I don’t beat myself up over the fact that I was so obese. I actually marvel that I am where I am now with the Lord’s help. This is where He wants me to be and I partner with Him by denying Self, to ensure that I remain at this place of health. However, sometimes, it gets away from me and I have to again remind myself.

When Jesus tells us to enter into the “narrow” path and then states it is difficult in Matthew 7:14, He wants us to know ahead of time that becoming a Christian does not immediately eliminate the desire to sin practically speaking in daily life. Receiving salvation does not immediately, completely and forever change our desires in life. Entering into the “narrow” gate onto the narrow path beyond that gate begins the process of progressive sanctification, which will continue for the remainder of our lives on earth.

Progressive sanctification, as explained by the folks at Got Questions is a three-stage process, something that we don’t often consider, but certainly should.

Sanctification is a three-stage process – past, present, and future. The first stage occurs at the beginning of our Christian lives. It is an initial moral change, a break from the power and love of sin. It is the point at which believers can count themselves ‘dead to sin but alive to God’ (Romans 6:11). Once sanctification has begun, we are no longer under sin’s dominion (Romans 6:14). There is a reorientation of desires, and we develop a love of righteousness. Paul calls it ‘slavery to righteousness’ (Romans 6:17-18).

The second stage of sanctification requires a lifetime to complete. As we grow in grace, we are gradually – but steadily – changing to be more like Jesus (2 Corinthians 3:18). This occurs in a process of daily spiritual renewal (Colossians 3:10). The apostle Paul himself was being sanctified even as he ministered to others. Paul claimed that he had not reached perfection, but that he “pressed on” to attain everything Christ desired for him (Philippians 3:12).

The third and final stage of sanctification occurs in the future. When believers die, their spirits go to be with Christ (2 Corinthians 5:6-8). Since nothing unclean can enter heaven (Revelation 21:27), we must be made perfect at that point. The sanctification of the whole person—body, soul, and spirit—will finally be complete when the Lord Jesus returns and we receive glorified bodies (Philippians 3:21; 1 Corinthians 15:35-49).

So in this life, we walk through the first stage to receive salvation, then we spend the rest of our lives living in stage two. After we leave this life, we gain the third stage because Jesus provides us with a new, sin-free glorified body, fit for the Kingdom of Heaven. In essence then, this is what entering through the narrow (humility) gate and onto that narrow path ultimately means. I am simply summarizing it to say that in everything we do, think and say, we should turn our backs on and deny Self at every turn. That is difficult.

Why do we sin? Because we don’t seek humility but self-exaltation instead. It’s that simple to understand but takes a lifetime to develop a consistent practice, and even there unfortunately, we will never be completely free of Self’s desire to take charge in this life. We saw this with Moses, who spent nearly his entire adult life serving the Lord with diligence and abject humility.

Now the man Moses was very humble, more than all men who were on the face of the earth. (Numbers 12:3)

One might ask, how could Moses have been that humble since he actually wrote that about himself? The answer is that God directed him to write it and seeing Moses’ life proves to us that he was humble at every turn except the one time that unfortunately kept him out of the Promised Land. He should have known better because he’d been living the life of humility for years. Yet, it simply goes to show us that we can never let our guards down. When we do, Self will exalt itself as Moses did in Numbers 20.

In spite of Moses having lived obediently and humbly before God for many years, he made a fatal mistake and reaped the consequences of that decision to exalt Self. It can happen to anyone.

Living the life of a Christian, actively engaged in seeking Him through humility and not giving sin or Self the opportunity to gain dominance is much easier said than done. This is why when Christians do make mistakes through sin, humility should cause us to make it right, regardless of how Self might rebel and provide excuses. While we cannot undo what we did, we can do what we can to make things right.

Walking the difficult path of the Narrow/Humility Road requires constant communion with God. It requires us to be involved in His Word; reading it, memorizing it and repeating it to ourselves. Walking down the path of humility means we think of ourselves last or better yet, not at all as we submit to Him and His will at every turn. Anyone who says this is not difficult is either lying to themselves or deceived because it is sometimes tremendously difficult to live out, practically speaking. Self yearns to be exalted and hates to admit failure. Refer to Luke 22:39-44 to remind yourself of Jesus’ own struggle, yet without sin.

By giving careful attention to the decisions we make every day, many times throughout each day, we ultimately have only two options: serve God or Self. We cannot do both at the same time.

Christians must be diligent in serving God if we are going to call ourselves Christians. Each time we choose the correct choice (denying Self), we gain reward. That reward is an increase in humility. If we instead follow the demands of Self, that results in an increase in self-exaltation and broken fellowship with God. So how to avoid sin and increase humility? By focusing on the positive reward (increased humility), which then becomes the impetus to ignore temptation and do what is right. So we are not focusing on not sinning. We focus instead on gaining humility.

By focusing on gaining greater humility, we grow in Christ. By focusing on greater self-exaltation, we grow in Self. It’s always one or the other. Those are the two opposing ideologies that strive for our attention and seek to direct us; humility or self-exaltation.

A person can try to do, say and think the right thing by sheer self-effort, but that’s a deception and we can see that doing so so means allowing Self to direct our steps and glorify itself, dishonoring God. God wants us to submit to Him in all things, to admit that in and of ourselves, we cannot do it and need His help, enabling and empowerment to leave Self behind and treat it as though it is dead (Romans 6:11).

Focusing on the reward of greater humility gets the job done rather than focusing on not sinning. If I may, I believe that’s why Jesus said His burden is light and easy to bear (Matthew 11:28-30). Our correct focus brings things into perspective.

So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Such a simple thought, isn’t it? Difficult to put into consistent practice. Yet, this is what Jesus did. If we truly believe we are followers of Jesus, we must do the same.

[1] https://studygrowknowblog.com/2023/10/27/i-did-it-again/

Theology and Politics from a Conservative, Biblical Perspective