| 1 Peter 5:6-7 – Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, [by] casting all your anxieties on him, [why?] because he cares for you.
A Heavenly Treasure by Eric Blick, March 6, 2026
The apostle Peter commands us to humility here in chapter 5 of his epistle. He says to humble ourselves. But how do we know if we are a humble person? What is strong humility? And how do we know if we are not just faking it with “false humility”?
There are real reasons why we may struggle with anxiety and a lack of peace in this world. There is brokenness all around us, and in us. So what do we do with this? How do we not just collapse in a constant and consistent state of anxiety?
The participial phrase “casting all your anxieties on him” answers the question to HOW we can demonstrate our humility. We humble ourselves BY casting your anxieties on him. This is a “by” phrase that explains the “how”. You want to be humble? Cast your anxieties on him.
John Piper in his sermon on this passage says it this way, “God alone is worthy to bow our knee. So how do we walk in humility? We give him our anxiety. There is pride at the root of worry. He is powerful, bring it to him… One way to be humble is to cast your anxieties on God. Which means that one hindrance to casting your anxieties on God is pride. Which means that undue worry about your future is probably a form of pride” (1).
So what keeps us from bringing our anxieties to God? Why do we say, “No thank you, I got myself into this mess, I have to get myself out.” Or, “If only people would do as I say and I could have MY plans accomplished, I would not be anxious.”
Why should we bring anxieties to God? Why should we cast our real reasons in this broken world to be anxious to HIM? There are two lies that we tend to believe that can result in anxious living. And I think the text gives us two great answers as to WHY we should instead bring our cares to God. There are two answers that dispel these two lies that are at the root of why we are anxious:
1. We bring our raw, anxious prayers to him BECAUSE he cares.
Why do we bring these things to God? Peter says we do it BECAUSE he cares. It’s not a business transaction with God. We don’t “muscle prayers to explain our reasons for anxiety and then magic happens.” No, this is done in the backdrop of incredible love. He knows the brokenness of this world. He knows that things do not go as planned. He knows that we break. We can bring our anxiety to Him because he deeply cares for and loves his own.
Lie number 1: Not believing at our core that God really cares for us and loves us, so we have to be anxious. Most Christians wouldn’t SAY that God does not love them. We know the Bible says He does. But do we feel that love and believe it is there each moment of the day? Are we instead believing the same lie of Satan to Adam and Eve in the garden that questions God’s love. Satan’s lie put a cloud of doubt right over God’s faithful love to Adam and Eve. His lie made them question God’s goodness. If God is good, then why is he holding out on us and keeping the “best” tree in the garden for himself? Just like Adam and Eve, this seed of doubt can trip us up. When we don’t functionally believe that God is good and loving, and that he is for us, we don’t bring our anxieties to him.
Peter dispels this first lie by clearly stating God does love us, and he shows it by his deep care for us. This is WHY we can bring our anxieties to him and receive peace. He loves his own with a deep, covenant, abiding, intimate love.
2. We bring our raw, anxious prayers to him because HE ALONE is the Mighty Hand.
Look again at our verse. Peter says to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God. There is nothing more mighty than the Sovereign Lord! He rules over all. He is the “mighty hand”, and we are not.
Lie number 2: Like Adam and Eve in the garden, we believe Satan’s lie that we can be god, an independent one just like him. We can tend to think that we are better at solving our problems than God is. We believe we are like god, that we don’t need him for everything, and that we can generate our own meaning apart from him. But then, when we can’t solve things and fix our problems, we are anxious. The lie of the garden is towards self-sufficiency, and it hinders us from embracing our finitude and our dependence on God.
The truth is that we are created to be dependent on the Sovereign. There is only one independent God, not many gods. There is only one INFINITE being, and it is not us. We are finite. He is the only true Independent One. And, even before sin, we were made to be dependent on God, on each other, and on his beautiful creation. That is what it means to be human. We do not have the “mighty hand” that God has. When we think we can control things like God, and think we can be independent from God, we get anxious.
So what is humility? It is not rooted in our sin after the fall. It is rooted in our humanity. We are not humble just because we choose not to be prideful in sin. We are humble when we remember we are, by our nature, dependent on Him, the only Independent One. We are built in his image not in our image. Needing God is not a result of our sin. We need him for our next breath just like Adam and Eve did. We need him for life.
The posture of prayer is dependence: “God, help me, I cannot help myself. I need you. I am an anxious mess without you. I am miserable trying to be a god. You are better. I trust you and rejoice in my dependence on you.”
One author put it this way, “Christians have often grounded the need for humility in our sin… If there had been no sin and no fall, would we have needed humility? Is humility, as discussed in the Old and New Testaments, precisely a rejection of sin and no more? As serious as sin is, to treat it as the most important aspect of our existence and then to use it as the starting point for understanding what it means to be human is to build on a foundation that opposes God and all goodness in creation… Instead of starting with sin, we must ground our theology of humility in the goodness of creation. Humility is a distinctly biblical virtue because it begins with the knowledge that there is a good Creator Lord and we are the finite creatures he made to live in fellowship with him” (2). We are not the “Strong Hand”, the powerful One, that Peter talks about. There is only One, and he is the Sovereign God. He is the One to whom we bring our anxious thoughts.
Conclusion: What difference does God as Sovereign make in our daily lives? It gives us reason to not live anxious lives with fretful hearts. Taking it all to him destroys our anxiety. This is what David Rich reminded us of in his Heavenly Treasure – there is a direct correlation between our peace and our trust in this Sovereign.
Peter’s call to humility is a call for us to remember God’s deep love and care for us. It is a call to remember that even before the fall we were created to be gloriously dependent upon him. His hand is the “mighty hand” that will save us, not us.
Are we humble enough to be carefree?
Prayer
Holy, uncreated One, the only true sovereign, we worship you. Forgive us for thinking we can run things better than you and without you and be fine. Help us to joyfully depend on you, our Maker, our sustainer, our rock, the One for whom we were made. Thank you for making us in your image. Help us to image your glory back to your radiance in how we think, act, and pray. Thank you for loving us so deeply that we can bring our anxieties to you because you really do care for us!
Amen!
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(1) Source: Are You Humble Enough to Be Care-Free? Message by John Piper, desiringgod.org, Scripture: 1 Peter 5:5–7
(2) Source: You’re Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News, Kelly M. Kapic |
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