Walking with the Wise #79: The Problem of Pride

“When pride comes, then comes disgrace,

but with the humble is wisdom.”
—Proverbs 11:2

At the root of every other sin is pride. Pride, at its core, is ultimately self-love that trumps God’s love. The greatest sin is pride. It was the sin of the devil, and the root of all other sins. It’s so difficult to see because it can be easily disguised as self-esteem, self-love, or self-determination, but at the core of pride is ultimately a love of self.

Today, pride can be found everywhere and in almost anyone. We must remember that the devil was proud, even though he had access to the manifest presence of God. So, just being a Christian does not eliminate the possibility of the sin of pride; in fact, it might even amplify it. A proud person wants glory for himself, and there is no better way of gaining glory for oneself than having God on one’s side. When God is on our side, we can make ourselves look better and smarter than everybody else.

Pride may deceive the proud one into excusing wicked behavior because it can be falsely perceived and portrayed as a holy self-love. The great difficulty is that our self is riddled with the problem of sin, and our "desperately wicked" hearts deceive us, causing our desires to be tainted and unreliable, always prone to pride. So, sometimes, aspirations of holiness, rather than helping to resist pride, instead breed self-righteousness and sanctimony, even more wicked than the pride of one who makes no claim to righteousness.

Consider for a moment God’s judgment on the world during the time of Noah. As the Bible says,

“Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. And God said to Noah, ‘I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth’”—Genesis 6:11-13.

Man had become “corrupt” on the earth. Jesus tells us that during the days of Noah, man was busy

“eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all”—Luke 17:27.  

And Peter tells us of the same time that “God’s patience waited in the days of Noah” (1 Peter 3:20), all of which means that man was busy living his life without any thought of God, foolishly believing that God didn’t take notice of his life. God was patient, not wanting to destroy the wicked, so that they might come to the knowledge of Him. But the opposite happened; man did not repent, but kept on living life oblivious to God, and God’s judgment came in the flood, in which all of the ungodly were swept away and Noah and his family were preserved.

The rainbow is a symbol of God’s mercy. It represents His promise that He will not flood the earth again (cf. Genesis 9:11-17). Today, however, the rainbow has a far different connotation. Instead of being seen as a symbol of God’s mercy in the face of man’s sinful pride, it has become a symbol of man’s sinful pride in the face of God’s mercy.

The homosexual movement, touted as “Gay Pride,” is exactly that—a movement that prides itself in practicing homosexuality. It is ironic that, as a movement, Gay Pride has adopted the rainbow, the same symbol of God’s mercy. Promoting sinful practices under the banner of the very symbol of His mercy, which is nothing more than self-love expressed through the sinful pleasures that have been corrupted through the fall, is wicked.

The Bible is clear that such a movement, though upheld by those of this world, will ultimately lead to disgrace. Just because man might trumpet it as proper and defensible does not mean that God does. No, it simply multiplies God’s judgment to those who choose to give in to it.

The only way to escape the devastating effects of pride is through humbling oneself before God. The pride of man can only be eradicated by the mercy and grace of God—which was exemplified in the cross of Christ. The cross was God’s judgment on man’s pride, as God the Son showed that true love is humbly giving oneself for another. As Christians, we must make sure that we are not walking in pride, but are humbling ourselves before the Lord of glory because He is the one to whom we must give an account. He is the one who was born of a virgin, He was the one who lived the perfect life we could not, and He is the only one whose death could pay the price for our sins. He casts down our pride by becoming humble and obedient, so obedient that He would die a criminal’s death—one that we deserved—for us.

Are we exalting ourselves in the face of God? Are we ready to surrender to Him our sins? Are we too proud to bow before His throne? May God enable us to come to Him humbly, making sure that we are not promoting that which God has deemed sinful. Rather, may we follow the example of the crucified carpenter, living lives that surrender to His plan and purposes, making sure that we are leaving our lives of sin behind because of our love for the Savior. Amen.