Perilous Pride and Healthy Humility

Behind in sermon preparation, I decided not to have personal devotions one Sunday morning. “I’ll get the sermon ready, preach, then pray and read my Bible after church,” I told myself. I got my sermon ready with no time to spare and went off to preach it.

The sermon was a disaster. The words were fine, but I felt totally alone in the pulpit. The harder I tried, the harder everyone looked at their watches. The remaining minutes felt like hours—for me and them.

What went wrong? I depended on my study rather than the Spirit. I trusted in my preaching rather than in prayer. I constructed a sermon alone, therefore self-destructed alone. Or as Solomon puts it here, “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall” (16:18).

Why is pride so dangerous, and how do we stay safe?

Pride Will Destroy Us (16:18)

Pride is an excessive satisfaction and confidence in oneself, which results in self-sufficiency, independence, and contempt for others.

Solomon himself was the prime Old Testament example of this. He got puffed up with his own importance, discarded God’s word and God’s morals, and fell into gross immorality. He knew the rules but decided the rules did not apply to him.

Peter is the ultimate New Testament example of this immutable law at work. Thinking himself invulnerable and impregnable, he adamantly rejected any possibility of falling, yet fell when a young girl challenged him (Luke 22).

There are few principles with so many proofs, as history—both sacred and secular, both ancient and modern—confirms time and again. We probably don’t need to look any further than our own lives for proof. How many times have we risen in our own opinion of ourselves only to be shocked back to earth again by God’s providence?

Self-exaltation is self-execution.

So how do I find safety?

Humility Protects Us (16:18)

As with all of God’s principles, the negative implies the positive and vice versa. Both the positive and negative of this principle are placed beside one another elsewhere: “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 14:11).

What is humility? It is having a right estimation of self that credits any value or virtue to God. Tim Keller calls it “self-forgetfulness,” not so much thinking less of ourselves, but thinking less about ourselves.

The place of humility is the safest place on planet Earth. As Charles Spurgeon put it, “Lord, keep me down, and then I need fear no fall.”

Go up to go down or go down to go up.

Changing Our Story with God’s Story

The ultimate example of pride is Satan and the ultimate example of humility is Christ. Satan’s downfall was rooted in his pride, whereas Christ’s salvation is rooted in his humility.

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

(Phil. 2:5–11)

Summary: Why is pride so dangerous and how do we find safety? Go down to Christ and go down like Christ and God will lift you up at the right time and in the right way.

Question: How can you get humility and stay humble each day?

Prayer: Most High God, who became most low, keep me low here so that I can be high with you hereafter.