Romans 12:3-8 (NIV) 3 For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. 4 For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5 so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. 6 We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; 7 if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; 8 if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.
Pride has both a positive and a negative meaning. Positively, it means having a healthy sense of self-respect and self-confidence. But, there is the pride that is not healthy, pride after sin gets hold of it. Here pride is an exaggerated sense of self-importance. It is undue concern about self where pride becomes vanity, haughtiness, arrogance, egotism and selfishness. The essence of this pride is the refusal to be who God created, but to desire to be more than that.
Pride is responsible for harm, hurt, and destruction and is at the heart of prejudice. As we may well guess, pride is deeply rooted in our lives, so much so that often we do not recognize the presence of pride in our life or what it is doing to us. Pride is like a virus that cannot be seen by the naked eye, but is detected by what it does to our life.
Pride says that we always have to be right. Pride is very fond of taking a very trivial issue and blowing it out of proportion. Pride places in us a strong drive to perfectionism, often inflicting condemnation on others who do not measure up to our standards of perfection. Pride causes us to believe that we can be somebody else’s savior if they are just smart enough to listen to the wisdom of our advice.
All of the ways that pride manifests itself in our life can be healed and overcome. But, the real tragedy of pride is that it often refuses help that is available. Pride makes us defensive, keeps us from receiving the healing and help that is so readily and abundantly available in Jesus Christ.
Yet God is not easily put off. God sent Jesus Christ to live among us, a man completely free of rebellious pride who demonstrated in the flesh what life looks like without pride. Can we look at the cross and say it really was not necessary for Christ to go through all the pain and suffering for us? The very fact that He did it destroys our pride while telling us we are worth it. The fact that we are worth it begins to build up self-esteem in a way that makes us modest in our thinking about ourselves.
Most of us can admit that pride is present in our life. How many of us are willing to take our pride to the Cross of Jesus Christ?
from a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope February 23, 1975
© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell
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