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Pride

 Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall. (Proverbs 16:18)

In The Christian in Complete Armour, Willian Gurnall describes a number of subspecies of pride to which Christians succumb. One is a pride of grace, which leads us to trust in the strength of our own goodness or righteousness. This pride tells us that we can earn God’s approval.

A second is a pride of privileges, in which the person is puffed up about his position, about his persecutions, or about his blessings. Think of the disciples who asked Jesus if they should call down lightning on the cities that rejected their message, or of Simon the Magician, who wanted to buy the power the Apostles had.

A third sort of pride is more miscellaneous. On one hand, it is a pride disguised as humility, lamenting how big the person’s sin is: so much so that God cannot possibly forgive. On the other hand, it is competitive. “I may have sinned, but not nearly so badly as that person over there.” Or, it may be said, “I may have sinned, but I’ve never committed X, Y, or Z – which are the really bad sins.”

Effectively, pride is when we take our eyes off of Christ and put them on ourselves. Not surprisingly, the solution is to take our eyes off of ourselves and put them on Jesus. He is the source of our grace. He causes it to be effective, and it is effective in addressing all our sins, just as it is effective in addressing all the sins of the person who sins less, and the person who sins more.

And it is the Holy Spirit that trains us against the temptations to which we do not succumb. His strength made available to us that allows us to overcome and that protects  us from destruction. There’s no room for pride.

However, something needs to be said here of false accusations of pride or arrogance. There are those who (like Haman) accuse people of pride who (like Mordecai) refuse to bow down to their dictates. If one says that X is wrong, one is proud, they say. If one says “Scripture says that X is wrong” one is still accused of arrogant use of the Bible as authority and arrogant interpretation of the text – as if you might know better than they, or better than the “Higher Critics” who have Ph.D.s in the interpretation of the Bible.

This is where we need discernment and wisdom – winnowing out the chaff from the grain by recognizing what is temptation to pride, and what is false accusation of pride, and what is truly pride. Submitting to what Scripture says as truth is not pride. 

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