As Don Carson says, ‘A meek person is not necessarily indecisive or timid. He is not so unsure of himself that he could be pushed over by a hard slap from a wet noodle’!

When we come to look at some biblical examples of meekness we will see that the people concerned were powerhouses, not pushovers.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle taught that meekness was the mean between two extremes, such as that between unjustified anger and the total lack of anger at anything

John Brown is exactly right: ‘An enlightened conviction of the infinite greatness and excellence, the sovereignty, and wisdom, and holiness, and righteousness, and condescension and kindness of God, and of our own insignificance as creatures, and demerit as sinners, lies at the foundation of that meekness which forms an essential part of the character of a genuine Christian.’

A W Pink’s summarized definition of meekness as ‘the opposite of self-will toward God and of ill-will toward men’

Thomas Watson says, ‘Though they were in a storm, he was in a calm.’

the eighteenth-century Bible expositor Matthew Henry, ‘He was as bold as a lion in the cause of God, but as mild as a lamb in his own.’

His God-honouring denunciation of his enemies’ sin, coupled with his calm acceptance of his own wrongful murder, confirms that we must never confuse meekness with lack of power.

Meekness is not weakness, nor is it impotence. It is power under control, a by-product of that brokenness of spirit which leaves no room for self-pity, has no time for defending or promoting one’s own reputation, and sees no point in turning all one’s rights into claims.