With the holiday season reaching its apex, now is a wonderful time of year to consider the life and teachings of Jesus. Jesus’s teachings have meant many things to many people over the last 2000 years; indeed, Jesus’s impact on world history has been unparalleled. And yet for a person who changed the course of human history, Christ’s story is one of supreme humility. Let us consider what we can learn from the manner in which Jesus lived his life.
The Value of Humility
Even for the time in which Jesus lived, it is important to consider that Jesus’s background was remarkably humble. For instance, we can gather from Matthew 13:54-55 that Jesus’s father Joseph was a carpenter: “Coming to his hometown, he began teaching the people in their synagogue, and they were amazed. ‘Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?’ they asked. ‘Isn’t this the carpenter’s son?'”
During this period of history in Palestine, sons usually pursued the occupations of their fathers. This is why Jesus is often thought to have pursued a career as a carpenter prior to beginning his ministry around age 30. To wit, Jesus was not a powerful legal scholar or a wealthy political figure. From the outset, he lived a humble life.
Parallels With John the Baptist
We also know something of Jesus’s commitment to a life of poverty because of the life of John the Baptist. John believed himself to be a sort of guide for Jesus to build his ministry; John himself cited the Book of Isaiah to suggest that he was the “voice of one calling in the wilderness to prepare the way for the Lord.”
In many ways, the arc of John’s life mirrored that of Jesus’s. This was particularly true of John’s commitment to a life of poverty: According to the Gospels, John himself lived on a diet of “locusts and wild honey.” Like John, Jesus saw poverty as a state of being that was closest to God’s plan for humankind; he likely saw greed as a divisive force that turned men and women against one another.
Living According to Jesus’s Example
There can be little doubt that both John and Jesus lived lives of very restrictive poverty. For example, it is worth stopping to consider what subsisting on a diet of “locusts and wild honey” actually implies. To fulfill his commitment to a life of humility, John must have been close to starvation at times.
In addition to their vows of poverty, John and Jesus shared many other similarities: Both worked outside of prevailing religious systems; both were peripatetic teachers traveling through both Jerusalem and the Palestinian countryside in order to bring the Word of God to those who would listen.
Because of this, both figures were put to death by powerful rulers. John was executed by Herod; Jesus was executed by Pontius Pilate only a few years later. Because of their strong senses of faith, in other words, both men ran afoul of religious authorities and local rulers bent on preserving high-status lifestyles.
A Deep Commitment to Spiritual Humility
Both John and Jesus also practiced poverty as a spiritual exercise. That John lived on “locusts and wild honey” suggests that the itinerant preacher’s financial condition was desperate; in other words, John literally lived off whatever the wilderness could provide for him.
We also know that Jesus grew up in poverty because of the circumstances of his birth as described in the New Testament. In the Gospel of Luke, for example, we read that Mary placed the infant Jesus in a manger because there was no other place within a local inn for the family to stay. Yet it is worth considering how little influence the family must have had if they were placed in a stable with common barn animals; they must have been seen at the time as being on the lowest rung of the social ladder.
A Lesson in Humility
What lesson can we derive from this information? Clearly, God puts very little stock in earthly things such as social status or personal wealth. Indeed, God decided that his only son would be born into the most humble social circumstances possible. God could have made Jesus into a king or a powerful religious authority; instead, God made Jesus the very image of humility.
We must perceive that God was attempting to teach us something about life by making this decision about Jesus’s circumstances. That the Son of God was born into humble conditions was no accident; indeed, many of Jesus’s most important teachings center around humility. As Jesus once said, “The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”
The Spiritual Side of Jesus’s Teachings
But it was not just poverty that Jesus taught to his followers: In a sense, what Jesus taught was spiritual humility; to a large degree, financial poverty was merely the outward expression of this concept. In many ways, Jesus showed us what it means to embrace the here and now. He taught us that spiritual rewards far outweigh material benefits. As Jesus said during the Sermon on the Mount, “Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven.”
By choosing to live a life of humility, in other words, we simply opt for a more fulfilling reward in the long-term. As Jesus shows, the spiritual benefits of a life of humility are profound.
During the holiday season, in fact, we should consider how we feel when we do something truly virtuous. The reward of helping others may not be financially or even socially beneficial to us; however, spiritual rewards can be far more meaningful in their effects on our characters.
Living Like Jesus
More importantly, our good works can help other people to live better lives. Whereas greed and selfishness are destructive traits which benefit only ourselves, good spiritual works are constructive traits which help society. Humility isn’t just about how we spend money; it is about how much mental effort we devote to material rather than to spiritual rewards.
At a time when greed and selfishness is doing great harm to society, perhaps that is a lesson that more of us could put to use. Each day, we should ask ourselves whether we are givers in society or takers from society. When the balance of our character is finally measured by God, can we say that we gave back more than we took? After all, Jesus gave everything that he had in order to help others: He even laid down his life for humanity. How many of us would be willing to do the same?
A Holiday Prayer
Here is a prayer for the holiday season to help us consider the example that Jesus set for us.
Heavenly Father, as we celebrate the birth of your only son this Christmas, please help us to live according to his example. Help us to better understand the spiritual benefits of a life devoted to helping others. Help us to remain humble in the face of materialism; help us to escape from the trap of materialistic thinking.
Most importantly, help us to direct our thoughts to others in need during this difficult time. Let us act with goodness and righteousness to our fellow human beings in the new year. Allow us above all else to make a positive difference on the lives of others.
Amen