4 Ways that Jesus Demonstrated Meekness

Photo by Thijs van der Weide

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

- Matthew 5:5

When I first read this verse, I thought that meekness was something to achieve. In other words, if I worked hard enough at being meek, then I would perfect it and receive the reward of gaining the world. In our work-obsessed culture (and in my perfectionist-leaning heart), we are told that we must work and focus on ourselves in order to earn yet another self-promoting title like “meek.” But meekness is just the opposite. It involves self-forgetfulness. Sacrifice. Dependence on God. If we are looking at the world’s understanding of “meekness,” we will only continue searching in the wrong direction: ourselves.

As Dane C. Ortlund explained in his book Gentle and Lowly, Matthew 11:28-30 is a passage in scripture where Jesus reveals His heart to us: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” When we look at the definition of meek in the Oxford Languages, it says “quiet, gentle, and…submissive.”1 In other words, Jesus’s gentle and lowly heart is “meek,” a synonym for “humble.” It is not because Jesus is less-than-God that He is meek in heart. In fact, Jesus reveals the great power in being humble, gentle, and lowly, for as He Himself says, “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted” (Matthew 23:12). Jesus humbled Himself as He laid down His life at the cross, yet He was exalted when He was resurrected and raised to new life. Jesus’ life on earth is not only our redemption but the perfect example for us of what we were designed to be: obedient, and humble servants to God. While we cannot imitate all of the prophecy-fulfilling acts of Jesus, we can learn what it means to be humble by looking to Him. Though this is not an exhaustive list, here are 4 ways that Christ demonstrated humility in the scriptures.

1. Jesus Associated with the Rejected and Outcasts of Society

I once heard a pastor say that Jesus is so great that if He were to come back, he would be driving a lamborghini while everyone would be cheering him on. This pastor must have skipped the part in the Bible where Jesus was riding a donkey (John 12:14) while the Pharisees still despised Him (John 14:19). It is a total misunderstanding of Christ’s greatness if we equate it to money, material wealth, popularity, or good looks. In fact, Jesus had none of these things. Instead of being rich in possessions, He was rich in compassion. He showed the greatness of reaching out to the rejected, the lost, and the broken, rather than longing to be with those deemed wise and rich by the world, as the Pharisees were 2,000 years ago. This can be seen in how Jesus treated widows, the poor, and the sick, but especially with lepers. According to the Jewish law, if a person contracted leprosy, a catch-all word for skin diseases, he was to be isolated from society and called “unclean,” as it says in Leviticus:

The leprous person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp. (Leviticus 13:45-46)

Why was this necessary? The degradation of the body symbolized the erosion of the spirit because of sin. If someone were to touch a person with leprosy, they also would be considered unclean because they could contract the disease. The doctors 2,000+ years ago did not have the medicine or knowledge to heal leprosy.

Jesus, being the great Physician of not only the body but also the soul, had the power to heal the lepers. Would He dare risk being called “unclean”? Becoming an outcast? As we read in the gospels: “[A] leper came to [Jesus], imploring him, and kneeling said to him, ‘If you will, you can make me clean.’ Moved with pity, [Jesus] stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, ‘I will; be clean.’ And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean” (Mark 1:40-42). Instead of ignoring the leper in need, walking past him as if He did not want to see him, Jesus touched the leper and healed him. Jesus did not do this for show, but out of compassion, out of love for His “neighbor,” and He demonstrated humility by risking the disapproval of the world if it meant spreading the love of God. Jesus did not come to gain any earthly title but to save the lost. Any human can attest to the inner conflict of wanting to please the popular eyes of the world and gain favor instead of honoring God and losing worldly favor. It requires humility to give up a great name for the sake of spreading God’s love for His name.

2. Jesus Fulfilled the Will of God

Following God’s will and purpose for my life, that is, glorifying His name even at the cost of comforts and popularity, is far from easy, and I fail often. Why do I reject opportunities to serve God and glorify Him? Because of my pride. Often, in my sin, I want to live for me rather than God, and I consider myself deserving and worthy of comforts and pleasures rather than sacrifice. When in the presence of those who do not trust Jesus, I can feel the tug of the Holy Spirit to share my faith with them. When I make the choice not to witness, I refuse to live for God so that I can avoid doing uncomfortable things. However, this is not the example Jesus provides for us:

47 While [Jesus] was still speaking, Judas came, one of the twelve, and with him a great crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests and the elders of the people. 48 Now the betrayer [Judas] had given them a sign, saying, “The one I will kiss is the man; seize him.” 49 And he came up to Jesus at once and said, “Greetings, Rabbi!” And he kissed him. 50 Jesus said to him, “Friend, do what you came to do.” Then they came up and laid hands on Jesus and seized him. 51 And behold, one of those who were with Jesus stretched out his hand and drew his sword and struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his ear. 52 Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword. 53 Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? 54 But how then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?” (Matthew 26:47-54)

Christ demonstrated humility by giving Himself over to His enemies so that God’s purpose could be accomplished through Him. Jesus wanted to fulfill the scriptures - that He would die on the cross, bearing the full wrath of God, so that the sins of His children would be forgiven. Even when the disciple stepped forward to defend Him (v. 51), Jesus told Him not to. Being God, Jesus easily could have stopped the crowds with an army of angels (v. 53). God humbled Himself by taking on human flesh and allowing those whom He made to capture and hurt Him so that His purpose would be fulfilled, that His people would be redeemed and His name glorified. Even in our own fleshy, and powerless pride, the temptation to live for ourselves is often too strong. Yet, Jesus provides the example to all people of the perfect servant of God, saying, “My food is to do the will of him [God the Father] who sent me and to accomplish his work” (John 4:34).

3. Jesus Died for People Who Did Not Love Him

It is far easier to serve those who love us than those who do not love us. I am not speaking of serving those whom we love, rather how others show love to us, who adore us. To the world, it makes much more sense to die for someone who loves you than someone who hates you. What the world does not say, however, is that only serving those who show love to us is a form of pride. This type of service depends on the actions and feelings of others rather than from our own heart of self-sacrifice regardless of what others do. And as God’s word says, it is a self-sacrificing, humbling love that Christ showed to us when He died for us on the cross:

For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us…For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. (Romans 5:7-9)

Even scripture admits, it would be easy to die for a good person, for someone who loved us and who we then loved back. But Christ died for us despite our rejection of Him, despite the sin that distorted us and made us unlovable. “We love because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). He did not wait for us to love Him back before laying down His life for us, an act of service that we did nothing to deserve. But Christ, being God in the flesh, humbled Himself to death so that we, His enemies, could be reconciled to God. Do we only serve those who are easy to love and who love us back? Let us not forget the state of our hearts and the state of our eternity if it were not for Christ setting His love on us and dying for us while we rejected Him and served ourselves. In our pride, our flesh will want to deceive us that we should only serve those who are “as good as us,” but all have the same desperate need for a savior, and it is only God’s grace, the humble act of Christ taking our place on the cross, that has changed our hearts and our eternity.

4. Christ Put Others First, Even in His Suffering

All believers are commanded to “Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:3-4). It is already difficult to put others first when things are going well for us, but how much harder it is to put others first when we are experiencing hardships and trials. One of the less recognized acts of humility that Jesus showed was how He put others first in His suffering. When He was crucified on the cross, the soldiers began to cast lots for His clothing, and “When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son!’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother!’ And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home” (John 19:26-27). Jesus was essentially saying that He could no longer take care of His mother (at the time, it was the duty of the son to look after his mother if the father had passed away) by pointing to His circumstance “behold, your son!” on the cross. He told John, “Behold, your mother!” as a request that John would care for His mother as if she were his own. Only three verses after this, Jesus died on the cross.

What is striking about this example is that even though Jesus was experiencing immense pain on the cross while preparing to bear the full wrath of God in our place, He thought of His mother and how she needed to be cared for. In times of suffering, stress, heartache, and physical pain, it becomes very tempting to become self-pitying, viewing our suffering as bigger than God and bigger than the suffering of others. The Bible certainly makes room for a righteous grief when experiencing sorrow (John 11:35), but it is a form of pride to become so self-absorbed in our own troubles that we forget the suffering of others and judge those who do not accommodate us. Yet here, Christ, experiencing the greatest act of injustice that has ever happened in the history of this earth, is looking “to the interests of others” from His gentle and lowly heart.

Jesus: Our Lord, and Our Example of Perfect Meekness

While He was a humble and faithful servant to God and example to the children of God, Jesus also is God - He is God’s being incarnated in human flesh (John 1:1, 14). So although He showed us what perfect humility was like, He was also showing us something that we could never accomplish without Him. How can we be meek? Only by the power and work of Christ. It is only by being so enraptured by the greatness of our God that we can forget about ourselves.

Of the different examples that we have looked at, the apostle Paul wonderfully explains the purpose of Christ’s meek example:

5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:5-11)

Christ’s meekness is not for meekness’ sake. Ultimately, it is so that Christ would be exalted in His humility, so that God would be glorified, so that we would be redeemed, so that we would see His gentle and lowly heart and know Him. Although meekness is certainly not the only attribute of Christ, it is the attribute from His example that we as children of God must cherish in our own hearts.