Tenderness—Stiffness

God gives grace to the humble. The humble person is promoted and exalted; he continues to grow in the knowledge of Christ, in an understanding of life, precisely as long as he remains humble.

There is wisdom with the humble. The wisdom that is from above is willing to yield. A wise man can be silent for a long time in order to listen, while a conceited person cannot sit still.

A conceited person is stiff; he is not willing to yield. He is as stubborn as a mule, inflexible, adamant, and disagreeable. Being pliable is totally foreign to him.

In this way a person becomes lean in spiritual content—thin and pale. Therefore he also shows little understanding when it comes to most things and to people.

If a person has been humble at any time, he will also have received wisdom at that time, and through that, the knowledge of God. This knowledge is obviously immovable, for it has been given by God. I can use this knowledge at all times without being put to shame on that account; but I can nevertheless be put to shame for other reasons.

This knowledge that I have received in the past cannot replace the increase in knowledge I would have received if I had remained in the spirit of wisdom. The knowledge I have received will remain, but the spirit of wisdom can leave me at any time. It is found only with the humble.

Solomon says, “He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty . . . .” Such mighty men in their confidence decide every matter in a second. What they feel sure about is perfect; that is the end of the matter; there is no room for discussion.

Even their memory, which is subject to corruption, is perfect. It is simply impossible for them to remember something incorrectly.

In this way we make ourselves unreceptive to further progress; we become inflexible. Wisdom is more agile than all agility. Its owner is flexible. A wise man is willing to yield and willing to be instructed; therefore he becomes even wiser. He becomes longsuffering, flexible, pliable, compliant, and agile—first for his own sake, and then by serving the others for their sake.

The humble person is wise and does not consider it unusual that he remembers incorrectly or that there is something to be learned by listening to another person or that another person, by God’s wise leading, could possibly come up with a better suggestion.

As far as he is concerned, a matter has not been decided on the basis of what he already knew; he waits patiently and with longsuffering in order to hear and see what might emerge at the moment.

In other words, he has more confidence in what the invisible God has in store than in what has already been revealed to him.