Today is June 1st. This happens to be Melissa and I’s 8th wedding
anniversary. But besides God’s gift of marriage that we enjoy, the secular
culture tends to focus on one word this month of June. This word is pride.
Now, this word shows up during other months. We hear about school
pride, Panther Pride, Black Pride. We hear others and maybe even ourselves say,
“I am proud of my child for this or that. I am proud of myself. I am proud of
my team.”
But, this month, we hear that word “pride” each time we turn on
the television set as we watch the news or even during the commercial breaks,
we see this word printed on the headlines of our newspapers, we read this word
on the covers of news magazines.
As big business, the government, and the culture at large promote
pride, God, in fact, warns His people against pride. God says to us:
“The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance and
the way of evil and perverted speech I hate” (Proverbs 8:13), “When pride comes,
then comes disgrace, but with the humble is wisdom” (Proverbs
11:2), “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a
fall” (Proverbs 16:18), “For all that is in the world — the
desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions — is
not from the Father but is from the world” (1 John 2:16), and if God
had not said enough, Jesus includes pride among the list of sins that are evil
things that defile a person (Mark 7:14-23).
C.S. Lewis picks up on this as he wrote in Mere
Christianity that pride is “the great sin.” He wrote, “Unchastity,
anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are more fleabites in comparison: it
was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other
vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.”
Pride is, in fact, against God. Pride means enmity — it is
hostility. And not only hostility between man and man, but hostility to God.
Lewis writes, “Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of
love, or contentment, or even common sense.”
Pride promotes the attitude that “I am better than you,” and “I
know more than you.” Pride separates us from each other. Pride separates us
from God.
Now, admiration for one’s good deed is not pride. For, “the child
who is patted on the back for doing a lesson well, the woman whose beauty is
praised by her boyfriend or husband, the saved soul to whom Christ says, ‘Well
done,’ are pleased and ought to be. So, as Christians, we are to take pleasure
in those times.
For us in Christ, we are not to be prideful, but we can be
pleased.
When it comes to sin, we are all guilty. We are all poor, filthy,
sinful beings. We all deserve temporal and eternal punishment for not loving
God and our neighbor as we ought. But we are not doomed to eternal punishment
due to our loving God. Even in our dreaded sinful state, God the Father sent
His only begotten Son Jesus Christ to bear our sin and be our Savior as Christ
willingly suffered and died for our sins. And Christ did not remain dead and
lifeless in the tomb, for He rose for us and our justification!
Since Christ has died and rose for all of creation, for everyone
in Christ, we are a new creation. We are no longer dead to sin, but alive to
God as slaves of righteousness.
In doing so, we all bear the light of Christ in this dark world as
we love God and love our neighbor and we speak the truth in love, for Christ is
“the Way, and the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6).
Let us pray:
Almighty God and Father, although You accomplished everything for
our salvation, we often look inward to ourselves, help us to turn away from
pride and turn to You, for in You we have true peace, for You live and reign
with the Son, and the Holy Spirit as one God, now and forever. Amen.
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