Notes on Humility III

1 Peter 5:6-7: 6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. 7 Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you...

In Greek literature, 'humbling yourself' was almost always used in a derogatory and negative sense: we might better translate it 'debasing oneself', or 'acting in a servile and lowly manner'. Epictetus for example, would write that 'all that alienates man from himself and makes him dependent makes him small (ie humbles him). It is an expression used of the trivial or the petty, the lowborn, ignoble and crass.

What does it look like to humble yourself anyhow? I note first of all that it is not 'humility' as a virtue, or an attitude, that is looked for here. Rather we have a reflexive verb: 'humble yourselves'. It is something one does, rather than something one is. It not here a quality that you possess.

But it is kinda hard to describe it as an activity, isn't it? There are no outward forms or movements described. It is not something you do with your body - though you may express it through your body or represent it through your body.

If we imagine that vs 7 as a parallel to vs 6 fills out and completes the sense, we see that 'humbling yourself' and 'casting all your anxiety' do inform one another. Grundmann in Freidrich's TDNT writes: 'As the context shows, this consists in man's putting his whole confidence in the grace of God, who cares for those who subject themselves to Him.' Notably, in the post-apostolic era, once the sense of the imminent return of Christ had passed, the notion of humbling oneself was channelled away from this not active action and into penitence and fasting and similar ritualised and symbolic activities.

The humbling of oneself here is vis a vis God but of course it must reference others too. Indeed it springs out of a discussion of the mutual relationships within the church community. If you are humble towards God, then so must you be to others as a matter of course.