The Danger of Pride

“Blessed is the one who fears the Lord always, but whoever hardens his heart will fall into calamity.”  Proverbs 28:14

We’ve all heard the famous line from Proverbs that pride goes before the fall.  There’s danger in that because we can hear something so often that it loses its impact and we think we know it but we don’t.  We start to think that pride isn’t in our heart – that the Bible isn’t talking about us but, rather, about really haughty people.  We might think, in our day, of “the rich” or some politician or movie star we don’t like.  But not ourselves.  And we think like this because there’s a way that seems right to us – and that way is our default setting.  Surely, I’m not perfect, we say, but my real problems are “out there”.  

Of course, as Albert Mohler points out, Christianity tells us the opposite.  It says that our problem is “in here”, that is, it’s sin, and the answer is out there – it’s Christ.  

So, let’s consider pride from the biblical perspective.  Only in this way can we see what God means when he speaks of humility.  The book of Proverbs is replete with admonitions and warnings against pride.  Just as well, in true biblical fashion, it’s also full of great and, indeed, incredible promises for those who humble themselves before the Lord.  In the above verse, for example, we learn that the one who truly fears the Lord is blessed.  This use of the word fear is different from the others.  It doesn’t mean to hold Him in reverent awe as it so often does.  Instead, it speaks of us “trembling” and “shaking” before the Lord.  And, yes, to the prideful ear, that sounds foolish, even repugnant.  The prideful heart doesn’t want to submit to anyone and finds the whole notion  objectionable.  

At this point we’re confronted with the bold truth of life and that is that God actually should make us tremble.  He’s God…He’s holy and we’re not.  He’s righteous and we’re sinful.  He’s omniscient and that means He knows and sees all our sins, even the desires of our hearts.  That’s frightening because that means our every motive and thought are known. After the fall, Adam hid in shame and that’s what we’re still doing today without Christ.  This verse means that the sinner knows his true and dilapidated condition, knows he deserves hell, and comes trembling to the cross.  It’s there that he, the sinner who deserves judgment, gets the blessing of grace.  

The fool is prideful, though, and won’t come to Christ and the cross because he doesn’t think he needs grace.  He’ll pull himself up by the boot-straps.  He’ll do something…get a better job, hit the lottery, get a new spouse…something…anything but the cross.  And the worst thing to happen to him is that he gets some of these things that he chases.  But he chases them in futility, that is, without God’s guidance so they never work out the way he wants.  He gets something and this something brings another problem with it and on and on it goes.  So much vexation and chasing after the wind.  

This is how the heart gets hard.  You see, in his foolishness, the fool, and the scoffer, reap the consequences of sin and then blame God for it.  This is how one’s heart gets hard.  God’s kindness and forbearance are meant to lead us to repentance by showing us His wonderful and undeserved mercy.  But the fool, in pride, figures that these things are simply his due and he doesn’t give thanks.  But when something happens to frustrate him – a job doesn’t pan out, the money he makes isn’t enough to live the way he thinks he deserves and things like that – he blames God and rails against the system.  A hard heart is both the consequence and judgment of sin and folly.

The pursuit of happiness, according to our own terms, by our own standards, is sure to lead to a hard heart because we’re made to worship and know God.  This is why trying to achieve happiness without God is a fool’s errand, a literal death sentence.  God created us and the world we live in so any attempt to define the terms of reality on our own is, well…foolish, to say the least.  Sometimes it seems that the term fool is rather pointed but when seen this way it’s clear that it’s God’s clinical definition of the facts of reality.  Pride will keep us from the very thing we most desperately need – the forgiveness of God through faith in Christ.  

Our study of pride and humility, therefore, is a study of the cross.  Man’s central problem is that he insists upon making himself the center of the universe instead of God.  This is the basic state of all sinners and it’s why when the Bible talks about pride it isn’t talking about an elite few but everyone, for all have sinned and fallen for the lie that we can be as gods.  Humility is, then, true repentance.  It’s turning away from living as a little god and kneeling low, even falling on our face before the God who saves sinners and died for them.  Proverbs isn’t talking about someone who looks in the mirror too much or thinks “too” highly of him or herself.  The issue is so much deeper than that and strikes at the core of our worldview.  

Hence we see that “blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked…” (Psalm 1) because our great problem is our problem with God, which arose from sin.  Man’s pride problem is like an addict’s – we won’t admit that we have the problem – and we see that terrible parallel in addictions, all the self-destructiveness.  It’s a picture of what we are without Christ.  With Him, though, we are truly and unspeakably blessed and that’s the whole point to the issue.