Who are these “humble” persons to whom God promises to extend grace (James 4:6; 1 Peter 5:5)?
The humble are those whose first response to objective truth from God’s Word is not to ask, “How do I feel?” but to say, “I’m not going to let my faith be determined and directed by the subjective and the experiential. Instead I confess openly before God that I will believe the objective truth of His Word, regardless of how I feel.”
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones once issued this warning: “Avoid the mistake of concentrating overmuch upon your feelings. Above all, avoid the terrible error of making them central.” Anyone making this mistake, he adds, is “doomed to be unhappy,” because of the failure to follow “the order that God himself has ordained.”
And what is that order? Lloyd-Jones reminds us that “what we have in the Bible is Truth; it is not an emotional stimulus … and it is as we apprehend and submit ourselves to the truth that the feelings follow.” When we focus first on truth, lo and behold, feelings follow! And they’ll be reliable feelings, because they’re anchored in truth. That’s the divine order.
Lloyd-Jones then proceeds to this profound application: “I must never ask myself in the first instance: What do I feel about this? The first question is, Do I believe it?” (p 35)
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