The Truth About Gentleness Most People Miss

Funny how a word like gentleness can step all over the ways you’ve tried to do things for God, tried to do them your way. By yourself.

It’s more comfortable to tackle the things you can master or offer on your own. Let pride mask as excellence and work ethic. Serve God with your best but forget to get out of the way. Truth is I need the things I can’t do—the things that take a God-sized miracle—to remind me it’s neither up to me or about me at all.

A gentle spirit runs counter to what culture celebrates: independence and rightness. Self-made success. Goal setting and exponential growing. We buy into the lie that we don’t need God. But gentleness is an invitation to humility—and mind-flexibility as I like to remind my girl with a bendy back and a double dose of my stubbornness. It encourages us to move aside and let God be big. Maybe that’s precisely why Jesus blessed gentleness in the Sermon on the Mount.

In The Passion Translation, the third Beatitude reads like this: “What blessing comes to you when gentleness lives in you! For you will inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5 TPT).

In this version, the English word “gentleness” is translated from “the Aramaic word ‘makeekheh,’ [which] implies being both gentle and flexible,” according to the footnote (Dr. Brian Simmons). Think open hands. Humility over pride. Less resisting and more accepting. Less proving and more surrendering.

The footnote offers this explanation: “Jesus is saying that when you claim nothing as yours, everything will be given to you” (Dr. Brian Simmons).

Gentleness is not entitlement, self-confidence, or stubbornness. It’s trust with wild abandon. Stilling and abiding. Listening and responding. Letting go of our need to be seen as right, capable, worthy. Boldly declaring God is worthy always. And it’s Jesus’s invitation for me and you.

More Than a Foot Washing

Let’s fast forward past the Sermon on the Mount for a moment and join Jesus and His disciples the night before Passover. Jesus knew this was their last night together, and He “longed to show them the full measure of [His] love,” as we read in John 13:1 TPT. So what does He do? He washes feet.

As Jennie Allen explains in her book Nothing to Prove, “Jesus’s men had been trying to measure up, trying to be the greatest, trying to hide their dirt, still thinking God wanted their performance, when all He wanted was their souls. Just as He wants ours” (p. 199).

Peter resists. I know my self-proving nature would protest too. Nothing feels more vulnerable than when our pride is exposed.

Like Peter, I’ve been blind to my need for Jesus. Also like Peter, I sometimes need Jesus to keep pressing in. Because I’m tempted to say, “I’m good over here” the first time He comes knocking.

Jesus persists in His pursuit of us, just like He did with Peter. Because He’s after a whole lot more than clean feet, as Jennie Allen points out. He wants us to understand the gravity of our sin so we can grasp our need for Him. Find healing and freedom so we can join His mission to heal and free others all around us.

Imagine Jesus right in front of you, kneeling, reaching for your foot. His eyes are kind with traces of both joy and sorrow. His hands are wet from the others’ feet He just finished washing. Before He speaks your name, you shift further back in your seat, drop your eyes. When you look up, He’s still there. And then He leans close, speaks softly into your ear. It’s these words, written by Jennie Allen, and right now, they’re not for Peter. They’re for you:

I wash your pride that thinks that I need you.

I wash your doubt that you think I can’t handle.

I wash your fear that stops you from obeying.

I wash your shame that makes you hide.

I wash your independence that makes you think you don’t need Me.

I wash your performance that you think proves your worth.

I wash your betrayal that haunts you.

I wash your arrogance that resists your need of forgiveness.

I wash your striving for your own name.

I wash your love for your own honor.

I wash your mistakes that you cannot name.

I wash your anger that lashes out sometimes.

I wash your feet and set them on My path—a path of service, a path of love, a path of rejection, a path of suffering, a path of joy, a path of setting people free.

Nothing to Prove, p. 203

That gentle way that Jesus turns my world upside-down, asks me if I want to be free, beckons me to follow—it changes how I understand gentleness. Jesus doesn’t call me to weakness, but wholeness. Not my-ownness, but hands wide open. Humility and flexibility.

The Blessing in Gentleness

The promise in Matthew 5:5 is that when gentleness overflows from inside us, we “inherit the earth.” Let’s try to wrap our heads around how deep and beautiful this is.

As children adopted into God’s family, we inherit

• All that God named as good
• The big and wide and great overflow of His creative heart
• Belonging
• Responsibility
• God’s trust, invitation, and blessing

God says, What’s Mine is yours. What comes from Me and exists through Me, I give to you. I give you my heart and my creation to treasure and tend. I give you my attention and my devotion. I give you My name and nature. I give Myself fully to you.

There’s more in this Beatitude than I’ve seen before now. Because gentleness isn’t about being timid or naive, but giving up our way for the best way. So we know who God is and who we are. So we can join His mission to bring hope, healing, and freedom to others.

Let’s pray

Jesus, I repent of the ways I’ve tried to self-impose, self-seek, self-honor. I’ve been Peter, pushing away what I need most. Show me how greatly I need You. Wash me of my pride. Here’s my surrendered heart.

Just a friend over here in your corner,

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