SPIRITUAL PRIDE KILLS

Spiritual pride is the worst form of pride. Why? It usurps what belongs to God for its own selfish purposes. It is also the supreme temptation. Its lips are soft and full, concealing its deadly fangs.

Spiritual pride wears pious robes. One robe is the robe of spiritual knowledge, even God’s knowledge. Pride takes God’s knowledge captive for its own selfish purposes:

·       Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that “all of us possess knowledge.” This “knowledge” puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God. (1 Corinthians 8:1-3; ESV)

While we are free to eat food offered to idols, we use such knowledge as a way to exalt ourselves above our brethren (Romans 14:3). It “puffs us up,” making us think, “I am wiser and freer than you.” It also gives birth to lovelessness:

·       For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol’s temple, will he not be encouraged, if his conscience is weak, to eat food offered to idols? And so by your knowledge this weak person is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died. Thus, sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. (1 Corinthians 8:10-12)

The fruit of spiritual pride is sin and the wounding of those we are to love. It is more concerned for itself than for others. However, it seems to do more damage than other forms of pride. It can actually destroy “the brother for whom Christ died.”

What gives it such power? Two things – It wears the robes of spiritual wisdom and respected leadership. Consequently, carefully hidden, spiritual pride blindsides the “weak” in faith.

Spiritual pride is such a destructive evil that God humbles us to show us our true motives. He had instructed Ananias to lay hands on Paul to receive his sight. However, knowing that Paul was persecuting the Church, Ananias protested:

·       But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.” (Acts 9:15-16)

And the Lord was true to His word. Suffering must precede service in order to expose our pride for what it is. Paul had explained his sufferings this way:

·       …far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. (2 Corinthians 11:23-25)

However, the Lord deemed that even this wasn’t enough to humble Paul:

·       So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. (2 Corinthians 12:7)

This is God’s testimony to the power of pride or conceit, and it needs to be kept under control.

Spiritual pride is a chameleon. It can manifest itself in many ways. Jesus had often criticized the religious leadership of His day regarding their pride. They had been so influential, that Jesus warned his disciples:

·       “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward…And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. (Matthew 6:1-2,16)

Jesus even instructed them to lock themselves in a closet when they prayed. Why? So that they would discover their prideful motivations! Were they praying to gain the respect of others? We all do. Therefore, our relationship to our Savior must always be clothed with confession and dependence upon Him.

Spiritual pride can even masquerade as love and tolerance, even to tolerate what is most abominable:

·       It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father’s wife. And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you. (1 Corinthians 5:1-2)

This church had been tolerating this sin in their midst. Paul warned that by allowing it, they would allow its influence to corrupt the entire church (5:6). But why did Paul accuse them of arrogance? In the same verse, he also accused them of “boasting,” but boasting about what? They had been placing their own judgment above the Word of God. Paul had written them to not associate with those who were sexually immoral, and, evidently, they flaunted his instructions (5:9-12; along with the teachings of the Old Testament), convinced in their own judgment, that tolerating sin in their midst was more important than Scripture.

Pride convinces us that our judgment is superior to that of the Scriptures. Meanwhile, we use many pious rationalizations – “God is love, and so we will love and tolerate the sinner into the Kingdom,” or “The Holy Spirit will convert them as they sit under our love-soaked Gospel.”

Meanwhile, such a church accepts of the stubbornly unrepentant, while Jesus does not (Luke 13:1-5). Which posture represents love? Paul argued that the church’s non-acceptance, besides conveying God’s displeasure to the unrepentant, could possibly save the sinner:

·       …you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. (1 Corinthians 5:5)

Convinced of its own superiority and entitlement, spiritual pride knows no mercy. It will eventually kill its own. Ahithophel had been the wisest man of his times. However, his identity was invested in his wisdom and the respect it had won for him. What would happen when respect is withheld?

·       When Ahithophel saw that his counsel was not followed, he saddled his donkey and went off home to his own city. He set his house in order and hanged himself, and he died and was buried in the tomb of his father. (2 Samuel 17:23)

Spiritual pride is a killer. Ahithophel’s earthly wisdom was unmerciful, even to himself.

In contrast to spiritual pride, humility understands that it is helpless without the Savior (John 15:4-5; 2 Corinthians 3:5). Therefore, knowing its own corruption, it always is self-examining (1 Corinthians 11:28-30). It does not trust in its own understanding. Instead, it embraces God’s Word and cannot look down on anyone. Consequently, it is grateful for what it has and knows to pass on God’s mercy to others.

Humility also knows the power of spiritual pride and cries out for the help that comes only from above, while the proud are willfully blind to it and march on to its drumbeat, ignorant of its destination.