For Reading and Meditation:
     1 Peter 3:1-12

We are seeing that meekness is not a natural quality, but a spiritual one, and by reason of this all Christians should possess it. Over the past couple of days we have examined the importance of meekness and seen something of its nature; today, we examine what meekness is not. First, meekness (or humility) is not indolence. There are people who appear to be spiritually meek, but really they are not so at all – they are indolent. Again, meekness is not an easy-going type of attitude – the attitude seen in those who just take life as it comes. That is not meekness; that is flabbiness. There are some Christians who have such a casual air about them that one can easily mistake this for the quality which Jesus is referring to in the Beatitudes. Another thing that meekness ought not to be confused with is niceness. There are people who are nice by nature. Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones said of such people: “Natural niceness is something biological, the kind of thing you get in animals. One dog is nicer than another, one cat nicer than another.” Finally, meekness is not passivity, or a desire to obtain peace at any price. How often is the person regarded as meek who adopts the attitude that anything is better than a disagreement. This is the kind of passivity which does not make for good mental or spiritual health. The most greatly used men and women of God down the ages have been people who were meek without being weak – strong men and women, yet meek men and women. They were meek enough to absorb the resources of God.

O Father, I see that so much depends on my understanding of what meekness really is. I pray yet again for Your continuing light to be shed around me as I pursue these thoughts day by day. I ask this in Jesus’ Name. Amen.