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Meekness (2)

Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament

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MEEKNESS

1. The quality defined.—The Christian virtue of meekness has suffered the misfortune of being seriously misunderstood. In the popular mind it has been so conceived as to forfeit the right to be considered a virtue at all, being regarded as the equivalent of weak compliance—the temper of one devoid of manly vigour, who tamely allows himself to be slighted and injured without protest or resistance. That this conception is a caricature of meekness, is apparent in view of Christ’s Beatitude (Matthew 5:5); for not only is it incredible that our Lord should have pronounced a blessing on those of feeble character, but the nature of the promise attached to the Beatitude implies that in some sense meekness is a strong and victorious quality. Whatever it be, we must presume it to be a virtue replete with energy, robust and manly, the very opposite of everything that is weak. Otherwise Christ’s words are reduced to an absurdity.

In the NT use of the word, meekness (πραὐτης, πραότης) is commonly interpreted as meaning gentleness of disposition, peaceableness of temper in the face of provocation and wrong. It is the spirit of one who is not easily provoked, but keeps under control the natural instinct to assert oneself and to retaliate. It is the opposite of irascibility and the spirit of revenge. That is to say, it is conceived as a disposition restricted in its exercise to a man’s relation with his fellow-men. But in reality meekness has a deeper and wider significance. It is, to begin with, a disposition towards God, the humble submission to the Divine will, the quiet acceptance of the discipline of life as coming from One who in infinite wisdom and love directs the destinies of men. This is made clear by the Biblical history of πραΰς. In the LXX Septuagint , πραΰς is most frequently employed as the translation of עָנָו—one who bows himself down in lowliness beneath the hand of God. The πραεῖς are the class of afflicted ones who accept their sorrows without murmuring, and yield themselves in trust and in hope to the will of God. When Jesus pronounced His blessing on ‘the meek,’ it was this class of humble, uncomplaining, God-fearing sufferers that He had in view. His appropriation of the words in Psalms 37:11 is conclusive proof of that. That ‘the meek’ of the Beatitude have so often been exclusively conceived as those who are peaceable and unvindictive in their dealings with their fellow-men, is due to the fact that the Greek conception of πραΰτης* [Note: See, for the Greek conception of πραΰτης, Aristotle, Nic Eth. iv. 7.] has governed the interpretation, instead of the conception represented by the underlying Hebrew word. At the same time, this common interpretation of πραΰτης is not to be rejected as alien to the NT meaning. The attitude of humble submission to the will of God carries with it of necessity a disposition of gentleness and forbearance towards men who are harsh and provocative in their dealings, not only because they are to be regarded as the instruments of the Divine discipline, but because only through the loving restraint of angry and vindictive feelings can the gracious will of God be done in human relationships. The primary significance of meekness is the calm and trustful acceptance of God’s will, when it is adverse, as meaning our good; but this involves in regard to our fellow-men the quiet and patient endurance of scorn, annoyance, and opposition.

2. Meekness in relation to God.—Regarded as the submissive attitude of the soul towards God, meekness has its root in a humble, childlike faith. To use the words of Gregory of Nyssa, humility is ‘the mother of meekness.’ Humility and meekness are kindred virtues; hence they are often mentioned together (Ephesians 4:2, Colossians 3:12, cf. Matthew 11:29). Humility is the soul’s attitude induced by a proper sense of one’s creaturely weakness, ignorance, and unworthiness in presence of the Most High; meekness is the attendant disposition, born of humility, which constrains the soul to bow without complaining before the will of God in the hard and perplexing experiences of life. The soul that thus bows meekly beneath the Divine discipline is not open to the reproach of feebleness or insensibility; it is meek, not because it is too callous to feel the pain of sorrow and misfortune or too spiritless to protest against it, but because it bends in lowly and childlike trust before the unsearchable wisdom and love of God. Where there is faith in the universal operation of the all-wise love of God, meekness shows itself in the unmurmuring surrender to the Divine will and in the patient endurance of that will. And from this attitude towards God there flows the blessing of peace. Meekness is the channel by which the gracious love of God is communicated to the soul as waters of refreshment and rest. This is the truth taught under a different figure in Matthew 11:29. Meekness is the easy yoke of Jesus which enables the weary and heavy-laden to bear the discipline laid upon them without chafing and complaining. Amid outward conditions which are hard and oppressive, they who like Jesus are ‘meek and lowly of heart,’ who bow before God with a profound sense of His infinitely wise and perfect will, find ‘rest unto their souls’; they are freed from that inward restiveness and discontent which aggravate the outward burden and wear away the strength. Not only is meekness a strong and heroic quality which curbs the natural impulse to fume and rebel against God’s will, but it is the means whereby the soul is reinforced by a Divine power to endure life’s discipline with courage.

Meekness before God is, then, the natural ethical outcome of humble faith in the Divine Father who in unerring wisdom and holy love orders the life of men. It is seen in its crowning manifestation in Jesus Christ (cf. 2 Corinthians 10:1), for whom alike in the tasks which He undertook and in the sorrows which He bore the Father’s will was supreme. When faithfulness to His mission brought upon Him unmerited suffering, He endured it in meekness, assured that it was God’s holy will for Him. That His meekness was not merely a passive virtue, but one that was pervaded by a moral vigour and strength of purpose, is made clear by the conflict in Gethsemane. In the prayer of lowly submission, ‘Not my will but thine be done,’ we see the meekness of Jesus, in respect of God’s dealings with Him, in its Divinest light. The agony and the bloody sweat, the prayer, ‘If it be possible, let this cup pass away from me,’ not only set in vivid relief the moral grandeur of Christ’s willing acceptance of His Father’s will, but they show with convincing power that true meekness is not the easy outcome of insensibility or tameness of spirit, but the victory of a strong nature over personal desires which conflict with the will of God.

3. Meekness in relation to men.—When we think of meekness in regard to the wrongs and opposition of men, we find that it is characterized by the same heroic qualities and is attended by similar blessed results. It is a virile and noble thing. The outward garb of meekness may, indeed, be worn by men in whom there are none of the robust and gracious qualities which make true meekness so worthy of admiration and honour. There are those who, by natural disposition, are timid and compliant, who have not manliness enough to resent injustice, who do not retaliate when they are wronged simply because they dare not. Similarly, there are those who, when slighted, show no sign of resentment, because they are too dull to feel an affront, or because they are controlled by feelings of scorn or by considerations of self-interest and policy. Of none of these can it be said that he is meek, nor does his conduct deserve our admiration. True meekness, which is worthy of all honour, is seen only in those who, with an acute sense of wrong, control the natural impulse to show anger and to retaliate, not from fear, or pride, or policy, or scorn of others, but because in obedience to the will of God they accept the provocation or wrong as discipline, and as an opportunity for showing the Divine spirit of patience and love. The meek man is not quick-tempered or vindictive, because, swayed by feelings of benevolence and love, he remains master of himself. Where there is no love, there is no meekness. ‘Meekness is the power of love to quell the ebullition of anger, to restrain the violent and hasty temper’ (Martensen). The irritation may be keenly felt; the temptation to retaliate may be very strong; but love keeps the upper hand and imposes calmness and self-restraint. It follows from all this that true meekness is not open to the contemptuous charge, so often brought against it, of softness and mean-spiritedness. It is a strong quality, for it means victory over the hot desire to retaliate; it is a gracious quality, for it means love triumphing over the selfish and self-assertive impulses of one’s nature, in its anxiety to avoid the embittering of friendly relations and to subdue ill-feeling by gentleness and kindness.

Meekness, then, is an expression of the love which ‘is not easily provoked’ (1 Corinthians 13:5). It is the self-restraint imposed by love when one is irritated or suffers a personal wrong. But this gentle and peaceable disposition is not inconsistent with a burning indignation at the injustice and evil conduct of men, when wider interests are concerned. The meek man is not bound over to keep the peace at any price. Meekness does not mean incapacity for indignation. When the interests of the Divine Kingdom are at stake, in the face of flagrant and defiant wrongdoing, the duty of the meek is not silence and self-repression, but indignant and active opposition to evil. Indignation has a vastly greater moral value and influence when it proceeds from one who in personal matters endures provocation with calmness and self-restraint. It is the meekness of Jesus that makes His anger so terrible. When He was subjected in His own person to insult or wrong, He bore it with patience and with compassion on those who wronged Him (1 Peter 2:23). When He was wounded to the heart by the treachery of Judas, and the betrayal was sealed by a hypocritical kiss, His answer to the traitor showed how superior He was to the natural resentment of men: ‘Comrade, is it for this that thou art come?’ (Matthew 26:50). When He hung upon the cross in agony, He was so far master of Himself and so deeply moved by compassion for His enemies, that He found some ground for extenuating their conduct and prayed for their forgiveness. But when the interests of the weak and helpless were involved (Matthew 18:6), when the sacred name of religion was profaned (Matthew 21:12), and the Kingdom of God was thwarted by those who were so blind as to imagine they were defending it (Matthew 23:13 ff.), ‘the wrath of the Lamb’ flamed on the heads of the wrong-doers. So far from anger being inconsistent with meekness, it is only when meekness is associated with it that anger has a pure moral worth. The wrath of an irascible and violent man is deservedly discounted; that of a meek man scorches where it falls. Even when it is most vehement, the indignation that is associated with meekness is kept within bounds. It is not allowed to degenerate into uncontrollable and self-willed passion. Behind its severity there is the moderating power of love, which even in the act of showing indignation regrets its necessity (cf. Mark 3:5).

In the matter of personal wrongs, meekness is shown in the refusal to retaliate in the spirit of the aggressor. It will not requite evil with evil. Much rather will it endure the wrong and yield no room in the heart to the spirit of revenge. The motive for this meek endurance of wrong is love, which does not suffer us to forget that the wrong doer is a brother-man, whom we should strive to win to penitence and friendly relations by patience and forbearance (Galatians 6:1, 2 Timothy 2:25, Titus 3:2).

Whether there should be any bounds to this acceptance of personal wrong is a question which has been brought into great prominence in our day by the teaching of Tolstoi. According to the Russian moralist, who has preached with great power the Quaker doctrine of non-resistance to evil, the old right of requital was abolished by Christ; not only should there be no private retaliation against wrong, but there should be no recourse to any legal tribunal when one has suffered injury or injustice. The law of non-resistance in Tolstoi’s view is absolute; when we are wronged, we should suffer meekly in the hope that through our meekness evil will be overcome of good. Against this interpretation of the law of Christ in an absolute sense we have to set not only Christ’s own example, when in the sacred name of justice He challenged the man who smote Him at the bar of judgment (John 18:23), but also the whole tenor of the Christian law. When Jesus, in inculcating meekness and love to our enemies, said, ‘Resist not evil’ (Matthew 5:39), the context shows that He was not laying down a law which should be rigidly interpreted according to the letter, but that He was requiring a new spirit—the spirit of forbearance and love in dealing with those who wrong us. Christ’s aim in requiring meekness of His followers was a moral aim—the furtherance of the Divine Kingdom, the lessening of the amount of evil in the world—a result which the meek endurance of wrong often brings with it in the disarming of enmity and in the quenching of the fires of ill-will, whereas retaliation adds to the evil and inflames the bitterness that already exists; but when it has become clear that forbearance and patience with a wrong-doer only confirm him in his evil courses, Christian love not only does not forbid but actually requires, in the interest both of public righteousness and of the wrongdoer himself, recourse to a civil tribunal that requital may be given. So long as there is any reasonable hope that meek endurance of wrong will turn the wrongdoer to a better frame of mind, we should be willing to suffer injustice; but when that hope has proved itself vain, there is nothing inconsistent with the spirit of meekness and Christian love in securing that justice shall be done and evil defeated by the procedure of civil law.

4. The dominion of meekness.—Meekness, though feeble to all outward seeming, is ‘a world-conquering principle’ (Tholuck). ‘Blessed are the meek,’ Christ said, ‘for they shall inherit the earth.’ ‘To inherit the earth’ (or, rather, ‘the land’) was originally the formula for the Israelitish possession of the Promised Land (Genesis 15:7, Deuteronomy 4:38). In OT times, however, it had already, as in Psalms 37:9; Psalms 37:11, become ‘a symbolic expression for the totality of Divine blessing and Messianic happiness’ (Holtzmann). On the lips of Jesus the phrase has a spiritual significance; it expresses the highest good along with the collateral idea of world-wide influence. The inheritance of the earth by the meek does not come through outward possession, but by spiritual sovereignty. The meek, in accepting God’s will in His disciplinary dealing with them, are not in bondage to earthly things, but are their true masters. They derive from life the highest good that it can bestow. They who rebel against the appointments of Providence miss the real gains of life. Only when the conditions of life are seen to be instinct with spiritual significance and intention as the expression of God’s will, do they yield up the purest blessings that are hidden in them, and become the means of inward enrichment (cf. 1 Timothy 6:6). Further, they who are meek under provocation and wrong have a large spiritual dominion. They are the true rulers of men. Human hearts are won only by gentleness and love. God’s Kingdom on earth grows not by requiting evil with evil, but by overcoming evil with good. That is the sovereignty of the Cross. And the future is with the meek. They are destined to have a world-wide dominion. Because God reigns and they accept and do the will of God, they are on the winning side. Meekness will one day claim the whole earth for its own, when men, conquered by the meek endurance of the Cross, bow humbly before God and live together in peace and brotherhood.

Literature.—Trench, NT Synonyms, 142 ff.; Comm. on Matthew 5:5; works on the Sermon on the Mount (Tholuck, Dykes, Gore, Boyd-Carpenter, etc.); art. ‘Sermon on the Mount’ in Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible , Ext. Vol. 19 (Votaw); Sermons by MacLaren (‘The Beatitudes’), Leckie (‘Life and Religion’ [excellent]), Channing (‘Self-Denial’), etc.; Tholuck, Hours of Christian Devotion, 378 ff.; Martensen, Christliche Ethik, Spec. Th. i. 307 ff.; Moulton, Expos. Aug. 1906; Tolstoi, My Religion, and The Kingdom of God is within you.

A. F. Findlay.