The Christian Life
"Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall."
Proverbs 16:18
There is one sin that has a peculiar property: it blinds the person committing it while remaining perfectly visible to everyone around him. A man knows when he has lied. He knows when he has stolen. But almost nobody knows when he is proud — and the prouder he becomes, the less likely he is to suspect it, because the very instrument he would use to examine himself has already been corrupted.
This is why an article on pride is a dangerous thing to read. There is a strong pull, from the first sentence, to think of somebody else. If that is happening as you read, the article has already failed, and the sin has already demonstrated exactly how it works.
So let it be said at the outset that this is written by a man who needs it, for readers who need it. Nobody is exempt, and the people most in danger are those who feel safest.
Pride was the first sin in the universe, and it appeared not in a man but in the highest created being there was.
"How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit." (Isaiah 14:12-15)
Read what actually happened there. Count the phrase: I will... I will... I will... I will... I will. Five times. Nothing was stolen, nobody was murdered, no lie was told at that stage. There was simply a creature who decided that the centre of things ought to be himself.
And notice where it took place: thou hast said in thine heart. Not aloud. Not yet in any act. The whole catastrophe began as an unspoken sentence in a private place, and by the time anyone could see it from outside, it was already finished.
That is how pride always begins, and it explains why it is so hard to catch. Its earliest stages produce no visible behaviour at all.
Scripture gives us a case that is almost unbearably specific.
A king walked in his palace at the height of his power. He had built one of the wonders of the world. He had been warned, twelve months earlier, and told exactly what would happen if he did not break off his sins and show mercy to the poor. He had a whole year to consider it. And then, looking out over his achievement, he spoke.
"The king spake, and said, Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty?" (Daniel 4:30)
Weigh the sentence, because every word of it is a symptom. I have built — the achievement is entirely his. The might of my power — the ability is his own, received from nobody. The honour of my majesty — and the purpose of the whole thing is his glory.
What follows is one of the most arresting sequences in Scripture:
"While the word was in the king's mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, saying, O king Nebuchadnezzar, to thee it is spoken; The kingdom is departed from thee." (Daniel 4:31)
While the word was in the king's mouth. He had not finished the sentence. And the greatest monarch on earth lost his reason, was driven out from men, and ate grass like an ox until his hair grew like eagles' feathers and his nails like birds' claws.
God did not strike him dead. He simply removed the one thing that had made the man's self-importance possible — his mind — and let him see what he was without what he had been given.
Scripture does not merely say that God dislikes pride. It says something far more active:
"Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble. Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time." (1 Peter 5:5-6)
God resisteth the proud. This is not passive disapproval; it is opposition. It means that a proud man is not merely making a mistake — he has set himself against the current of God's own action, and God is working against him. Whatever he builds, God is quietly taking apart.
And the reason is not that God is insecure about His glory. It is that pride is a lie about reality, and God will not underwrite a lie. The proud man is claiming as his own what was given to him: his intelligence, his health, his opportunities, his gifts, the family he was born into, the very breath in his body. He did not produce one of them. Scripture asks the question that ends the argument: what do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as though you had not?
"Every one that is proud in heart is an abomination to the LORD: though hand join in hand, he shall not be unpunished." (Proverbs 16:5)
Note the phrase though hand join in hand — though he gather allies, though others agree with him, though a whole group stands with him. Numbers do not alter God's assessment. A proud man surrounded by supporters is still a proud man standing against God.
There is a passage naming things God hates — six, and a seventh that is an abomination to Him. It includes lying, murder, wicked scheming, false witness, and the sowing of discord among brethren.
And the first item on that list is not any of those. It is a proud look.
Placed at the head, before the shedding of innocent blood. That ordering is deliberate, and it tells us something: pride is not one sin among many but the root from which a great many of the others grow. The man who lies usually lies to protect his image. The man who will not forgive usually cannot bear to be the one in the wrong. The man who divides a community usually needs to be at the centre of one. Pull up the root and much of the rest comes with it.
Pride rarely announces itself, and it almost never uses the word. It disguises itself as other things, and the disguises are worth naming.
It appears as sensitivity. The man who cannot take a correction, who remembers every slight, who is wounded by small omissions of respect — that is not a tender heart. A tender heart is easily moved by others' pain. What is easily wounded by disregard is something else.
It appears as confidence about one's own judgment. Not merely holding a view, but being unable to imagine being wrong; treating one's impressions as facts; requiring no evidence when the conclusion is already comfortable.
It appears as needing the room. A discomfort when someone else is praised. A subtle steering of conversation back toward oneself. A preference for occasions where one is central and a strange flatness about occasions where one is not.
It appears as contempt. Looking down on people for being less educated, less refined, less articulate, less accomplished, less spiritual. Contempt is pride with the mask off, and it is remarkably easy to feel while believing oneself humble.
And it appears as false humility — the display of lowliness arranged to be noticed. This is pride's cleverest form, because it can even take pride in its own humility, and there is no exit from that room except honesty.
The most dangerous place for pride is not the marketplace. It is the service of God, because there it can wear the clothes of devotion, and because there the stakes are other people's souls.
Scripture addresses this directly and without diplomacy. Speaking to those who lead God's people, it says:
"Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind; Neither as being lords over God's heritage, but being ensamples to the flock. And when the chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away." (1 Peter 5:2-4)
Take that apart, because every clause closes a door.
Feed the flock — the work is feeding, not ruling. A shepherd's first duty is that the sheep are nourished.
Not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind — the ministry is not a livelihood to be secured, an asset to be protected, or a position from which to draw advantage. The moment it is treated as a career or an inheritance rather than a stewardship, something has gone wrong at the root, however orthodox the preaching remains.
Neither as being lords over God's heritage — and note the phrase God's heritage. The people are not the leader's. They belong to Another. A man who begins to speak of the work as his own, who requires deference, who treats disagreement as disloyalty and questions as attacks, has forgotten whose flock it is.
But being ensamples to the flock — leading by being what he asks others to be.
And when the chief Shepherd shall appear — there is a Shepherd above the shepherds, and every under-shepherd is answerable to Him. The crown is given, not seized, and it is given later rather than now.
Scripture adds a further warning, which is that a novice should not be placed in such a position, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil. That phrase is worth pausing on. The condemnation of the devil is the judgment that fell on the being of Isaiah 14 — and Scripture says a man in the service of God can fall into the same one by the same route.
There is a chapter every Christian can quote, and it contains a line that settles this subject.
Charity, it says, suffers long and is kind. It envies not. It vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up. It does not behave itself unseemly, seeks not her own, is not easily provoked, thinks no evil.
Read that list slowly and notice that almost every item is a direct denial of pride. Seeketh not her own — pride always does. Is not easily provoked — pride always is, because it is perpetually on guard for slights. Thinketh no evil — pride assumes bad motives in others because it needs them to be lesser.
The conclusion is unavoidable: to the exact degree that a man is proud, he cannot love. He may serve, preach, give, and work tirelessly — and the same chapter says that without charity all of it profits him nothing. That is a solemn arithmetic. A life of religious activity can total zero.
Scripture states a law that operates whether or not anyone believes in it: God is not mocked, and whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
The word mocked is worth noting. It means to turn up the nose — to imagine that God can be treated as though He were not looking, that appearances can be managed, that a thing done for one's own glory can be presented as done for His and the difference will not register.
It always registers. Sow contempt and you will reap it. Sow the requirement that others defer to you and you will find, in time, that those who remain are the ones who benefit from deferring, which is a poor harvest. Sow humility and you reap something else entirely.
"Better it is to be of an humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud." (Proverbs 16:19)
Note that the proud in that verse are dividing spoil — they have won something. And Scripture says the humble man with nothing has the better portion.
Every argument in this article stands or falls on a Person, because Christianity does not merely condemn pride; it points to its opposite, embodied.
The Lord Jesus Christ said of Himself that He was meek and lowly in heart. He is the only person in history entitled to claim anything, and He claimed nothing for Himself.
"Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." (Philippians 2:6-8)
Trace the direction. The being of Isaiah 14 said I will ascend, five times, and went down. The Lord Jesus Christ descended — from the form of God to the form of a servant, from a servant to death, from death to the death of a cross — and God highly exalted Him.
Two movements, in opposite directions, with opposite results. That is the whole doctrine, and it is why Scripture can say plainly that whoever exalts himself shall be abased, and he that humbles himself shall be exalted. It is not a moral preference. It is the way the universe is built.
And observe what humility actually looked like in Him. It was not weakness — He drove men out of the temple and called religious leaders whitewashed tombs. It was not indecision. It was simply the total absence of self-seeking. He never needed the room, never required deference, washed feet that belonged to men who would abandon Him that night, and did not once defend His own reputation when it would have cost Him nothing but truth.
General resolutions about humility accomplish nothing. Here are questions with edges.
When was I last corrected, and what did I feel in the first three seconds? Not what I said — what I felt.
Do I find it difficult to say plainly, without qualification, I was wrong? Is there anyone from whom I could not receive a rebuke?
When someone I do not much like is praised, what happens inside me?
Do I speak more readily of what I have done than of what has been given to me?
Have I mistaken my position, my gifts, or my knowledge for my worth — so that a threat to any of them feels like a threat to my existence?
And the question that catches almost everyone: who has been telling me the truth lately? If nobody around you contradicts you, that is not a sign that you are right. It is usually a sign that people have learned it costs too much.
The man who wrote this stands under those questions with every reader. Anyone who finishes an article on pride feeling comfortable has read it wrongly.
Here is the reason this article is not despair, and it is the best thing in it.
Return to that king. The story does not end with a man eating grass in a field. It ends like this:
"Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honour the King of heaven, all whose works are truth, and his ways judgment: and those that walk in pride he is able to abase." (Daniel 4:37)
The proudest man in the ancient world wrote that sentence himself. He lifted his eyes to heaven, his understanding returned, and he spent the remainder of his life telling everyone what God had done to him and why. He did not hide it. He published it.
That is what repentance from pride actually looks like, and notice that God's dealing with him was not punishment for its own sake but surgery. The purpose was not to destroy him; it was to bring him to the sentence in verse thirty-seven.
So if this article has found something in you — and it will have, in every honest reader — the response is not to defend it or to be crushed by it. It is to say so, plainly, to God, and then to the people it has affected.
God resists the proud. But the same verse says He gives grace to the humble — and there is no waiting period, no probation, no ladder to climb back up. The moment a man stops insisting on himself, grace is there.
"For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23)
"For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Romans 6:23)
"But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8)
"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (1 John 1:9)
"But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name." (John 1:12)
And there is a mercy in the gospel itself that deals with pride at the root. Salvation is a gift, not a wage — which means that no one in heaven will have anything whatever to boast of. God arranged it that way deliberately, so that pride could not survive the entrance.
Everything that could make a man proud was handed to him. The mind he thinks with, the strength he works with, the years he has been given, the gifts he did not choose, and the mercy he did not earn — all of it received, none of it produced.
A man who genuinely grasps that is not crushed by it. He is set free. He no longer has a reputation to defend, because it was never his to begin with, and a man with nothing to protect can afford to be honest, to be corrected, to be overlooked, and to serve people who will never thank him.
Pride goes before destruction — and it has never once failed to. But the humble receive grace, and they receive it today, and the door is not locked from the outside.
"Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time."1 Peter 5:6
Our gracious heavenly Father, we come before Your throne of grace through the precious name and perfect merit of our Lord Jesus Christ, who alone has opened the way into Your presence.
We thank You for Your beloved Son, and for Him who humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. We praise You for Your preserved Word, which declares "Pride goeth before destruction" (Proverbs 16:18), and which cannot be broken.
We confess before You of the pride that hides so well in men who preach against it. Forgive us, we pray, and cleanse us, for You are faithful and just to forgive us our sins.
We beseech You for every soul reading these words who is yet without Christ. Send forth Your Holy Ghost to convince them of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment; open their understanding; and draw them to Your Son before this day is done.
Strengthen Your people who read it. Comfort the discouraged, establish the wavering, and let none go away empty. And use this message to break every proud heart that reads it, gently, before it is broken otherwise, for Your glory and not for ours.
We pray all of this to You, O God, our Holy and Heavenly Father, in the precious name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by the power and anointing of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Before you close this page, one question matters more than everything you have just read: if you died tonight, do you know where you would be?
You cannot be saved by joining a church, by being baptized, by giving money, or by living a decent life. Salvation is not a wage that is earned; it is a gift that is received. Every one of us has sinned, the wages of sin is death, and there is a real hell prepared for sin — but the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died on the cross in the sinner's place, was buried, and rose again the third day.
If you know yourself to be a sinner, and you are willing to turn from your sin and trust Him alone, then speak to God now. There are no magic words — but if these words are the cry of your heart, pray them and mean them:
Dear Holy and Almighty God, I come to You just as I am. I confess that I am a sinner. I have broken Your law, I have gone my own way, and I deserve the judgment and the everlasting fire that my sin has earned. I cannot save myself, and I bring You nothing.
I believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is Your Son; that He loved me and died on the cross in my place, shedding His precious blood for my sins; that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day.
Here and now I turn from my sin, and I trust Him alone — not my works, not my religion, not my goodness — to save me. Lord Jesus, come into my heart, forgive my sin, and be my Saviour from this moment and for ever.
In the precious name of our Lord Jesus Christ I pray. Amen.
1. Tell somebody today. "That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved" (Romans 10:9).
2. Begin reading the Bible. Start with the Gospel of John, then Acts, then Romans. Read a little every day. "As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby" (1 Peter 2:2).
3. Talk to your Father every day. You may now come boldly, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. No appointment is needed and no man's permission.
4. Find a Bible-believing church and be baptized. Not to be saved — you already are — but in obedience, and as the public confession of what has happened to you.
5. Rest in this, and do not be shaken by your feelings. "He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life" (John 5:24). You will still sin; when you do, confess it and go on — "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9).