There is one reason given in my text, which Peter quotes from the Old
Testament. 'God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble.'
That is often true even in regard to outward life. Providence and man
often seem to be in league together to lift up the lowly ones and thwart
the proud. If a man walks with his head very high, in this low-roofed
world, he is pretty sure to get it knocked against the rafters before he
has done. But it is the spiritual region that the Apostle is thinking
about, in which the one condition of receiving God's grace is a lowly
sense of my own character and nature, which is conscious of sin and
weakness, and waits before Him. And the one condition of not receiving
any of that grace is to keep a stiff upper lip and a high head. If I
think that I am rich, 'and increased with goods, and have need of
nothing,' that 'nothing' is exactly what I shall get from God, and if I
have need of everything, and know that I have, that 'everything' is what
I shall get from Him. 'He resisteth the proud, and He giveth grace to
the humble.' On the high barren mountain-tops the dew and the rain slide
off and find their way down to the lowly valleys, where they run as
fertilising rivers. And the man that is humble and of a contrite heart,
'with that man will I dwell, saith the Lord.' If we gird ourselves with
the slave's dress of humility, then we shall one day have to say, 'My
soul shall rejoice in the Lord, for He hath clothed me with the garments
of salvation; and He hath covered me with the robe of righteousness; as
a bridegroom decketh himself with his ornaments, and as a bride adorneth
herself with her jewels.'