Fruit of the Spirit (8): Meekness

“The fruit of the Spirit is…..MEEKNESS”(Gal 5:22). We are taught with such emphasis at school that adjectives qualify nouns and we forget the reverse is true. And the reverse is certainly true when the noun is “Jesus” and the adjective is “meek.”
If we think of meekness without taking Jesus into account, then straightaway the picture we get is of a weak, spineless, and effeminate quality, but we will never get that idea if we always link meekness Jesus, for there is nothing effeminate about him. In fact, few men can ever have lived a more strenuous life than Jesus. The variety of his teaching would have intellectually exhausted most men, and he was clearly especially taxed when working miracles. We should also take into account the physical demands of living without a home and making every journey on foot. However, despite living in this vigorous way Jesus was clearly unashamed to be called meek, and at all times, not least when he was rIding into Jerusalem on a donkey.
The NT word closely associated with the one used in Galatians meant “the taming of an animal to bring it under control.” Imagine a wild stallion being caught and broken in. By being tamed, the horse looses nothing of its animal magnificence. And that is the main thought behind “meekness.”
A meek man loses nothing of his manliness, he simply becomes usable, which is why the Bible can say, “Now the man Moses was very meek, above all men which were on the face of the earth.” (Num 12:3 KJV). Moses was a rugged man with something of the majesty of a tamed stallion about him; he had a controlled, usable power, without wildness – that is meekness!