Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 324 · November 20
Clothed With Humility
“Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder. Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.”
"Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility." Peter has just spoken to the elders, and then to the younger ones, and now he turns to everybody. The word he reaches for is a clothing word.
Stay with "clothed" for a moment, because the Greek verb behind it appears nowhere else in the New Testament. It means tying a garment on so that it stays in place. Inside the word is the name of a servant's apron, the kind you tie over your clothes when there is dirty work to be done. So Peter is picturing somebody putting something on in order to do a job. An apron goes on and comes off, and everyone in the house can see it. Peter had watched this happen once: "He riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself." The one who objected, out of what he thought was reverence, was Peter himself: "Thou shalt never wash my feet."
Five verses further on, Peter gives his own blessing: "But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you." Every one of those verbs is something God does for you while you are wearing the apron. You tie it on, and He does the making and the settling.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 324 is Authority Over the Enemy (Luke 10:19).