Completely

"Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love" (Ephesians 4:2).

Sometimes a word or idea completely grabs you, completely overwhelms you, or in some other way completely grabs your attention. Do you completely yet know which word in this verse I'm talking about? Yes, you're right, it's "humble." No, no, seriously...it's that word of quantity, the word that tells us how humble and how gentle we are supposed to be. I am supposed to be. Not a little humble. Not somewhat gentle. Paul doesn't mince words here. He doesn't want us to be 50% humble or 82% gentle. He doesn't expect us to be 33.33% Christlike. We are to be completely humble and completely gentle.

Going to the Greek text doesn't help me any here, either. There's no mistranslation. There's no mistake. The word Paul uses means what the translation says it means—all, every, whole, complete. There's no wiggle room. Completely means "completely."

But then we shouldn't be surprised. Paul was consistent in his writings. He expected those who followed Jesus to be like Jesus. What a novel concept! I had a pastor friend of mine retire several years ago who he said he retired because he was tired of expecting Christians to act like Christians. Maybe those words were spoken in a moment of frustration, but let's be honest: no matter how long we've followed Jesus, there are moments when we don't act very much like him. Can we truly call ourselves "Christians" ("little Christs") if we don't live completely in humble and gentle ways? Maybe, but we must not lost sight of the goal, even in our failures.

Linguistically, humility and gentleness are two sides of the same coin. One leads to the other, which leads back to the other. Humility and gentleness involve putting the other person first, or not putting ourselves first. It's what Paul wrote to the Philippians: "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves" (2:3). When we add "that word" (you know the word—completely), it means that we're always looking for ways to serve, to care for, to honor others. It's not about me. It's at least about we. And it might be about you over me.

This is a hard word, one I (honestly) rarely live up to completely. But, rather than beating myself up and giving up, my prayer each day is that God would use me in a new way this day so that today I am more completely humble and gentle than I was yesterday. And, by God's grace, more tomorrow than today. That's my prayer. That's my hope. That's my longing. And that's the goal I cannot reach without Christ in me.