Where pride cannot live

(the following is by Spurgeon)

"He humbled himself." -Philippians 2:8

Jesus is the great teacher of lowliness of heart.

We need daily to learn of him. See the Master
taking a towel and washing his disciples' feet!

Follower of Christ, will you not humble yourself?

See him as the Servant of servants, and surely
you can not be proud! Is not this sentence the
compendium of his biography- "He humbled himself."

Was he not on earth always stripping off first one
robe of honor and then another, until, naked, he
was fastened to the cross, and there did he not
empty out his inmost self, pouring out his life blood,
giving up for all of us, until they laid him penniless
in a borrowed grave?

How low was our dear Redeemer brought!
How then can we be proud?

Stand at the foot of the cross, and count the purple
drops by which you have been cleansed; see the
thorn crown; mark his scourged shoulders, still
gushing with encrimsoned rills; see hands and
feet given up to the rough iron, and his whole
self to mockery and scorn. See the bitterness,
and the pangs, and the throes of inward grief,
showing themselves in his outward frame.
Hear the chilling shriek, "My God, my God,
why have you forsaken me?"

And if you do not lie prostrate on the ground
before that cross, you have never seen it.

If you are not humbled in the presence of Jesus,
you do not know him. You were so lost that
nothing could save you but the sacrifice of God's
only begotten. Think of that, and as Jesus stooped
for you, bow yourself in lowliness at his feet.

A sense of Christ's amazing love to us has a
greater tendency to humble us than even a
consciousness of our own guilt.

May the Lord bring us in contemplation to Calvary,
then our position will no longer be that of the
pompous man of pride, but we shall take the
humble place of one who loves much because
much has been forgiven him.

Pride cannot live beneath the cross!

Let us sit there and learn our lesson,
and then rise and carry it into practice.