1 Peter 5:6 “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand that he may lift you up in due time.”

For a moment picture the young man in his late teens or early twenties. He is strong. He may not be the kind of physical specimen who could walk on to the football team at a major university without getting killed. But he is approaching the peak of his strength. He may be stronger than his father. Almost certainly he’s stronger than his grandfather.

It’s also likely that he has a competitive streak. He wants to win. He wants to be better than the next guy, whether it’s something athletic, or matching wits with someone over a game of chess, or proving his skill in the classroom, or in making things. If he is not naturally shy, then he may be a bit of a show-off. Sometimes he does things without thinking about how he is endangering his own safety. That is why we make these guys our soldiers, and we also charge them a lot more for car insurance.

Our young friend is also itching to be independent. He wants to lead. He doesn’t want other people telling him what to do. Because he has some insecurities, and he doesn’t yet know how much he doesn’t know, he may compensate by acting a too aggressive. He may come off as a little cocky. This is the age of rebellion.

I have painted a cartoon picture of sorts. These characteristics can apply to any one of us in varying degrees. Like Annie Oakley in Annie Get Your Gun, women also want to claim, “Anything you can do, I can do better.” So in our feminist age, women may not be so different, either. Thus the Apostle Peter has something to say to us all.

And it isn’t, “Don’t let anyone push you around.” It isn’t “Look out for number one.” It’s “Humble yourselves.” Humble yourselves. Don’t wait for someone else to come along and cut you off at the knees. Don’t wait for your flaws to expose you. Don’t wait for God himself to take you down a few notches. “Set aside the self-promotion,” he is saying to us. “Stop pretending to be someone you’re not. Let go of the need to be just a little bit smarter, a little bit more righteous, than everyone else. Stop the comparing and the competition, and accept what you are–warts, weaknesses, weirdness and all.

While Peter’s case for humility suggests that generally we need to take a lower view of ourselves, the Lord isn’t asking us to deny genuine gifts with which he has blessed us. But what do we have that is not a gift? I did not create my talents. God gave them to me. I didn’t choose my looks. It’s the way God made me. Even my faith and my Christian life, feeble and faulty as they are, aren’t something I invented. “It is God who works in you both to will and to act according to is good pleasure” (Philippians 2).

The encouragement to humble ourselves “under God’s mighty hand” also has something very positive to say. One of the reasons we resist humility is the fear that it makes us vulnerable. Others will walk all over us. We think we have to look tough and smart to survive.

Not if God’s mighty hand is hovering over us, ready to pick us up. The real case for humility lies in this promise: “he may lift you up in due time.” God has every intention of lifting us up. When we repent of our sins and confess them to him, he doesn’t stand over us with his hands raised in victory, like the prize fighter dancing over the guy he just knocked out cold. He lifts us up. He forgives our sins. He welcomes us into his arms. He restores us as his children.

When we embrace the reality that we did not make ourselves, and any strengths are gifts, then God doesn’t leave us trapped in a prison of shame and self-hate. No, that’s when he sets us free. Why concern myself with what I don’t have? My Father made me the way he wanted, for his purpose. This has a glory all its own. It far exceeds anything I had planned for myself.

And he has set me among his other children with different gifts and talents. Just because we fill in the holes and gaps for each other, there is a real opportunity to love and be loved in his family. At the proper time God will lift you and me up to fulfill our purpose, and to know his grace and love in his family of faith. That makes a powerful case for humility.