Ephesians 4:2 “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.”

I know a man who ran for elected office and won. It changed him. He wasn’t elected to a national office. But even winning a local campaign made him feel important. He had power. The majority had chosen him. It started to go to his head. He didn’t treat people who served or waited on him with the same dignity. They were more like inferiors to command than equals to appreciate.

Another acquaintance of mine started his own business. For a time it was quite successful. He was making a lot of money. He rubbed shoulders with other wealthy people. He wanted to live in a house and drive a car that were worthy of his new status and success. You could tell that he didn’t regard people with less money, or people who hadn’t accomplished so much in their careers, as his equals.

Money, status, and power have a way of changing people–usually not for the better. We start to believe our own propaganda. We forget where we came from. We congratulate ourselves for our ingenuity, praise our own hard work, and take full credit for our success story. We are just a little better than most others, you see.

You or I could be elected President of the United States. We could start the next Apple or Google. But we still wouldn’t have as exceptional and privileged as we are to be believing Christians. Jesus, the Savior of mankind, regards you as his dear brother or sister. The Chairman of the Board of all the Universe recruited you for his team. He made you royalty in his worldwide organization. There is no “up” from your calling as a Christian.

That is no reason to congratulate and praise ourselves, as though we could take full credit for this spiritual success story. Paul urges us to be humble. If we remember where we came from, do we have reason for anything else? We were so lost, our sins were such a mountain of messed up choices and ideas, that only the death of God could save us from ourselves. In Jesus, God did die and save us. But that is no reason for us to get a big head. This calls for humility, because we know where we came from. We know how incredibly generous and forgiving God was to make us what we are today.

This also calls for us to be gentle with other people, not brash and abusive. “Be patient, bearing with one another in love.” It’s true, people do dumb things, even fellow Christians. Sometimes they do something mean. Sometimes they are self-indulgent, unthinking, or show a lack of concern for anybody else. All too often, I have to pay. Their bad behavior costs me. When this happens, like the rest of the world in which I live, I would like to let loose with my mouth and unload on the morons whose problems I now have to try to fix.

But nothing anyone has done to me, no problem anyone has ever created, begins to compare to the trouble my sins caused for my Savior. It took thirty-three years of love and a cross to fix it. Yet far too often, I am still committing the same sins. Jesus has been gentle, and patient, and he bears with me.

The better I know my own place, the more I will treat others with gentleness and patience in return. That’s only fitting in light of the gentleness and patience with which my Lord deals with me.