The One Thing You Need Beyond Self-Confidence
The power of humility to free us, embolden us, and energize us in Christ.
In a culture obsessed with self-confidence, we’re told that believing in ourselves is the key to success, happiness, and resilience. But Scripture offers a radically different view: what we need most isn’t more confidence in ourselves it’s humility before God.
The Soil Where Everything Good Grows
John Calvin once quoted Chrysostom and Augustine on humility, highlighting it not just as a virtue but as the very foundation of Christian life. Calvin wrote, “The foundation of our philosophy is humility,” and “If you ask me in regard to the precepts of the Christian Religion, I will answer, first, second, and third, Humility.”
Why such an emphasis? Because humility is the soil in which everything good in the Christian life grows. Without humility, faith can’t take root, worship becomes self-centered, obedience falters, and love grows cold. Faith requires dependence on Christ. Worship requires a shift from self-glory to God’s glory. Obedience requires submission to God’s authority. Love requires putting others before ourselves. None of this is possible without humility.
Humility Makes You Gloomy
Many assume that humility means self-loathing or a joyless life. In reality, gospel humility is what frees us from the exhausting performance of self-exaltation. It liberates us to laugh without self-consciousness, to find joy in others, and to delight in God's grace without needing to prove ourselves.
True humility brings the kind of joy that makes room for deep, uninhibited laughter a joy unencumbered by the need to posture or impress.
Humility Makes You Timid
The world sees self-confidence as courage’s only fuel. But courage rooted in self will always be shaky because it depends on a fragile foundation. True boldness comes from God-confidence. When we are nothing and know that God is everything, we are set free from the fear of man.
Isaiah 51:12–13 reminds us, “I, I am he who comforts you; who are you that you are afraid of man who dies and have forgotten the Lord, your Maker?” When God is your strength, courage doesn’t diminish it multiplies.
Humility Makes You Passive
It’s often said that humility will sap our drive. If we’re not feeding our ego through achievement, what will motivate us? Paul gives the answer in 1 Corinthians 15:10: “By the grace of God I am what I am. I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.”
Grace, not ego, was Paul’s motor. Gospel humility doesn’t remove our drive it refines it. It channels our ambition away from self-glory and toward glorifying God. It doesn't lead to laziness; it leads to purposeful, Spirit-empowered action.
What’s Better Than Self-Confidence?
It’s not self-assurance that we need most, but assurance in the One who holds us. Humility is not weakness it’s strength under God’s authority. It’s the path to joy, the fuel for courage, and the engine of Christ-exalting labor.
In a world full of pressure to believe in yourself, the gospel invites us to something far more liberating: believe in Christ, and find the joy, boldness, and power that self-confidence could never deliver.
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