Before the time of Christ, the word humility was a word of contempt. It was a great insult to call a man humble. To call a man humble was to characterize him as cowardly and weak, but when Christ came, He took this hated word and made it one of the most honorable in our language. The virtue it expresses, once so despised, is now regarded as the crowning grace of life.
Humility is now considered a virtue so exalted that men seek to cultivate it. Columnist John R. Gunn writes, "One cannot pay a man a greater tribute today than to say that he possesses the grace of humility. The word humility means, literally, a low estimate of self, but this does not imply self-depreciation. When you hear someone depreciating himself, usually you can put it down as a sort of counterfeit humility. Someone has said, 'The true way to be humble is not to stoop until you are smaller than yourself, but to stand at your full height before some higher nature that will show you how small your greatness is. Walk humbly with thy God.' Here is where we learn true humility."
Walking with God; seeing ourselves by the side of His greatness, we see how little we are and seeing how little we are is the first step toward becoming what we can and ought to be. We never become truly great; we never do our best work until we are clothed with humility - until, like our Lord and saviour, we are willing to live to serve others.