“Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” (Proverbs 16:18)
One of the greatest enemies of the Christian life is pride. In fact, some have said that pride is the root sin from which all other sins sprout. It was pride that got Adam and Eve kicked out of the Garden of Eden. And it was pride that got Satan kicked out of Heaven. Pride is to be avoided, and humility is to be sought after for the Christian. But pride is often a very sneaky sin to diagnose in the human heart.
A humble heart is one that doesn’t think too highly of itself. But eventually, the humble heart is in danger of becoming impressed with how “humble” it is, thus leading to pride over its humility. As ironic as it sounds, we can be guilty of being too proud of how humble we are. Though we may not say it aloud, we can secretly wish that others would be more like us. We can do charitable deeds, all the while longing for others to notice us. We can become privately impressed with out own piety, while secretly sneering at the rest of the world for failing to be as godly as we are. In short, we can become proud of our humility.
The potential for sinful pride is always existent in the human heart. Which is why we have to daily be on guard against it. Not only must we live a life pleasing to God…we also have to check the motivation of our heart and make sure that it is love and not pride that drives us in our actions. We must live our lives for God’s approval and be largely unconcerned with what people think of us. We must search our hearts for pride, and destroy it when we find it. And when we find ourselves needing a model for such living, we must look to our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom it was said: “although He existed in the form of God, He did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but He emptied Himself taking the form of a slave.” (Philippians 2:6-7)
Are you proud, or are you humble? Or worse, are you proud of how humble you are? The sin of pride is sneaky. Watch out for it! Avoid it! Destroy it! Then humbly give all the glory in your life to God.