People that pursue God remain humble (teachable) because when you pursue God, you see God, you hear God, you get to know God and you realize there is no end to learning things about God. This is why humility is the fruit of someone who truly is seeking God. Humility is not abasement, it is not thinking low of yourself, it is being teachable, it is not thinking you know so much, it is confidence in God, not in what you know or think you know. Humility is being teachable and consistently pursuing God.

People who are proud, who are religious, who think they are scholars in the things of God, stop learning once they master what they believe about God. Jesus ran into religion consistently and in Mark 2 it says, “When the religious scholars and the Pharisees found out that Jesus was keeping company and dining with sinners and tax collectors, they were indignant. So they approached Jesus’ disciples and said to them, ‘Why is it that someone like Jesus defiles himself by eating with sinners and tax collectors?’ But when Jesus overheard their complaint, he said to them, ‘Who goes to the doctor for a cure? Those who are well or those who are sick? I have not come to call the ‘righteous,’ but those who are sinners and bring them to repentance.”’ Jesus did not speak like this to the crowds He was teaching but to the religious leaders and scholars who were clueless about what He was doing.

I lingered over these verses today as the Holy Spirit revealed to me how repentance was teaching people about the kingdom of God so they could change the way they think about God and His kingdom. The crowds/sinner were “ignorant” in the eyes of the religious leaders, but they were teachable and open to the words of Jesus. The crowds want to know the truth that will set them free, the same was true then and the same is true now. The enemies of the gospel of the kingdom are not the crowds, the sinners, it is the religious who think they know too much.