This is one of the sayings which we gather from the Gospels to have been frequently in our Lord's mouth, and this means that it had some variety of application now graver, now lighter. In the passage which we just read, it was His comment on an exhibition of what we should call vanity.On the surface He seemed to point not so much to the spiritual fault which was at the root of the pushing for the first seats, as to its futility, to the punishment which certainly and speedily overtook. The first seat, so claimed, could only be held for a moment, till the host came. Then the guests would be sorted; to have placed himself too low would bring credit, and to have placed himself too high humiliation.
I. What our Lord said was typical. It was a parable in the sense that it was of a character He spoke. This was only a traitof it. Those who chose the chief places at the feast were the same class of persons as in other and more serious ways thrust themselves forward "trusted in themselves and despised others." And it was a parable, in the sense that while speaking of an outward act and of an immediate and visible reward, He was thinking of the whole view of human life, and of the objects and rewards of human endeavour of which those were a type. It was a parable of the false and of the true estimate of greatness, of the reversal of human judgments, of the blindness and littleness of human ambitions.
II. Humility is the necessary and inevitable attitude of a Christian soul of a soul which keeps in sight the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, which knows itself a child of God, fallen, lost, yet restored and pardoned in Him. This attitude is never lost. It affects all relations. As between themselves men vary of course greatly. God has ordered human life, and all its natural motives and situations are part of His providence. He does not wish us to blind our reason, and to say that that is good which conscience and common sense tell us to be mean and bad. He makes the desire to excel, the pleasure of success, to be the springs of energy which are generally necessary to a manly and useful life. We may sometimes puzzle ourselves if we try in theory to make it clear how such judgments on others and such natural ambitions can harmonise with the spirit of perfect humility. But the honest heart solves the difficulty in action.
E. C. Wickham, Wellington College Sermons,p. 188.