Introduction: An abiding favorite writer of mine is Flannery O’Connor. In her book Mystery and Manners, she wrote many zingers. This is one of them: “To know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self-knowledge is humility.”

Teaching: “To measure oneself against Truth” drives the honest man to his knees. Why? Because the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord.
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight” (Pr 9:10). The proper fear of the Lord is one of reverence. It is not that God gets His jollies by mean-spiritedness. Just the opposite, in fact. God is patient with us. He suffers long for sinners. The Cross of Christ is His ultimate demonstration of that—that the triune God came on a mission of rescue of sinners.

We just celebrated another Christmas, a holy day (that’s the English word origin for “holiday”) that commemorates the incarnation of God the Son. But it’s shortsighted to not think through the incarnation of the Cross of Christ. It is Calvary, not Bethlehem, we’re to be thinking about, because the Cross of Christ demonstrates God’s patience and longsuffering towards us sinners. If we fail in the area of humility, we thumb our noses at the holiness of God. If we think we outsmart or outmaneuver God, we are fools. Nothing escapes God’s sight—nothing. This should lead us to humility and gratitude and selfless service.

Encouragement: As in many things, O’Connor was spot-on. We need to seek the approval of God rather than the approval of man. It’s come down in our day to be a cliché, but we should ultimately be serving an audience of One, because it is to God Himself that we will answer. Press on, dear ones, in the truth, knowing whom you serve, and work hard at it so that you may one day hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”