Transcription
And pride is your greatest enemy, humility is your greatest friend.
One of the reasons that we see pride mentioned so often in scripture is because God hates pride. He hates it, and the reason He hates it is because He knows what it will do to us. He knows that pride will destroy us.
David knew this. David understood it. He wrote this in Psalm 31: "He said, 'The Lord preserves those who are true to Him, but the proud He pays back in full.'"
And Peter writes this in one of his letters: "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble."
And then Matthew writes in his gospel: "But those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted."
I read a lot of C.S. Lewis, and so that's probably not a surprise to many of you because I quote him all the time. But he, he talked a lot about pride, and here's what he says. He says that, "Make no mistake, pride is the greatest sin. It is the devil's most effective and destructive tool. Pride is spiritual cancer. It eats up the very possibility of love, contentment, or even common sense. Pride leads to every other vice. It is an anti-God state of mind. It is pride that has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began."
Safe to say, C.S. Lewis has some big feelings on pride, right? But he's right. He's right because pride entitles us, in our minds, to do things to one another that are just unspeakable. Pride also emboldens us to say to the God who made us, "Thanks, God, but I'll take it from here. Thanks for the life that You made for me, but I got it now."
And pride is often what precedes deception because pride is usually at the heart of every misinterpretation of scripture. Pride tells us that we can shape God and His Word into whatever suits our life choices, which is dangerous.
On the other hand, just as pride comes before the rejection of God and His Word, humility often helps us to submit to the authority of God and His Word. Humility allows us to see God as He truly is, not as we may want Him to be. And this is because humility keeps us open to the possibility that we might be wrong, and that all we think we know about God may not be all there is to know about God.
Tim Keller talks about a season in his life when he was leaving for college. And he'd grown up in a Christian home all his life. He knew a lot about God, but he wasn't sure he wanted to continue to be a Christian, not in college anyway, which is, he thought, you know, college would be the opportunity for him to kind of break free and explore. But he found himself in this freshman religion class, which was confusing for him. And so he picked up two books. He picked up *Basic Christianity* by John Stott and *Mere Christianity* by C.S. Lewis, arguably the two best apologetic works in the last hundred years. Which, all that means is, if you're looking for evidence that Jesus was who He said He was and did what He said He did, these are a great place to start.
But he found himself in this class, read these two books, and they totally messed up his plans. He thought, he thought he could keep God contained within this neat little area of his life and then he could have authority over the rest. But he was humbled by a picture that God gave him as he was reading these two books. And later in his life, he framed it as an analogy. And he says this: "Imagine, imagine a friend was at your house and a debt collector came by, uh, for repayment on a debt, and they paid your debt. They paid your debt for you. How many of you would be thankful?" Yeah, of course, we'd all be thankful for that.
"But would it change your life?" Well, now, that depends on the size of the debt, doesn't it? That depends on the size of the debt. Let's say it was a water bill, 50 bucks, 100 bucks, right? You might be like, "Well, thanks, that's really thoughtful of you. I appreciate that. That's really thoughtful." Let's say it was your monthly mortgage payment or your rent payment. You might think, "You have no idea how helpful that'll be to us this month. Thank you so much for doing that." Say it was your entire mortgage. For most people, that represents hundreds of thousands of dollars. You'd be blown away by that act of generosity, wouldn't you?
Now, let's say it was a tax bill. A tax bill that you kind of knew was there, but you just hoped it would kind of go away, wouldn't be a big deal. And as it turns out, it became a very big deal, kept earning interest until it became an amount of money so large that you wouldn't be able to repay it in 10 lifetimes. So as much as they were coming to collect on the debt, they were really coming to take you to prison for the rest of your life. Say your friend paid off that debt for you. You'd be speechless. You wouldn't know what to say, but you would owe them your life.
You see, he was humbled to discover that God's mercy towards him was far greater than he'd ever imagined. And he discovered that the thirst he felt within himself was not for this world. It was for the presence of the God who paid his debt and set him free.
Are we humble enough? Are we humble enough to take a fresh look at God, even if it means He might change our lives forever? Are we humble enough to admit that what we know about God may not be all there is to know about God? You see, the proud person can't do this because they know everything already. But the humble person can remain open to whatever God wants to reveal about Himself and about us.
And that's why Paul thinks humility is so important. Because without humility, we will never surrender to the God who took our debt upon Himself. That's why pride is your greatest enemy and humility is your greatest friend.