Here are verses that you can pass on to someone you know who think of themselves more highly than they ought (and don’t we all know at least one of those people!):
“As for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and it’s place remembers it no more.” [Psalm 103:15-16]
Feeling small and insignificant yet? Let’s try this. Examine these verses describing Jesus as God becoming Jesus as a human being:
“Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.” [Philippians 2:5-7]
So Jesus transformed from equality with God to nothing, also known as human likeness. At first glance, the word ‘nothing’ gives me pause. Until I realized that comparing any finite being, like a man or a woman, to an infinite being, like God, who has no beginning and no end, is impossible. No time frame, no life span, no empire can be compared to infinity. I think that too often we try to put God into some ‘box’ that we understand, when in fact it is impossible to completely understand One who is ever present, knows everything, and is all-powerful.
As an example, try to fully grasp these simple five words in Genesis:
“…He also made the stars.” [Genesis 1:16c]
A trillion, trillion stars, in 5 words. All-powerful indeed. So a cynical person (not me, of course) might wonder why an infinite God would bother to deal with us ‘nothings’. I’ll tell you why – it’s because He loves us, undeserved and finite as we are:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.“ [John 3:16]
An infinite God never had to love us, He chose to. Would we not be wise to also choose to love Him?
Blessings,
Keith