Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:
3For I am saying, by the grace given to me, to all the ones being among you, not to think too highly of yourself, from what it is necessary to think, but to think into being sensibly minded, as God has given to each a measure of faith..
Here we go again. This one little verse is another complete bombshell. After eleven chapters of the glorious Gospel and two verses calling us to the life God wants us to live, what is the very first issue which must be addressed?
Pride. We’re admonished not to think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think.
Pride. The devil’s sin.
“The pride of your heart has deceived you” (Jer.49:16; Obadiah 1:3).
“God resists the proud, but gives His grace to the humble” (I Pet. 5:5).
This issue is the terror of my heart. I honestly think, as I study the Bible, this is the most unrecognized sin out of them all. How can that be? For anyone to “think highly of themselves” is what we all call arrogance. We deplore it in others, yet are quite sure it’s no problem for me. It is such an obnoxious sin. Yet, if we know our Bibles at all and listen to the Spirit, it seems to be the very skin in which we all dwell. The key (and the first reason I call it a terror) is because, as Jeremiah and Obadiah warned us, “The pride of your heart has deceived you.” Its deception didn’t end in the Garden – that’s where it started for us humans and that same evil pride would still drag us all down to hell.
My pride deceives me. It hides from me. It hates the light. It is, in fact, so subtle, we (I) can actually be proud of how humble I am! All of that leads me to my second terror, that “God resists the proud.” The word translated “resists” is actually a military word that could be translated, “God marshals His troops against the proud.”
There you go. The last thing in the universe I need is to have God declare war on me!!!! Being born again, He became my Father and “nothing shall separate us from the love of Christ.” However, that relationship and that security do not shelter me from my Father’s chastening hand! In fact, if anything, it makes it worse!
Our Lord knows this is the devil’s sin. He knows it deceives us. And He knows this one sin can utterly destroy all the other good you and I can do, all the spiritual growth which could have been ours, literally everything you ever hoped or dreamed of. In His great Fatherly love, then, He may literally seem to “marshal His troops against us,” if that’s what it takes to cook this sin out of our hearts! Just think of the brutal treatments a person must endure to overcome cancer in our bodies. How much worse the surgery we must suffer to extract that self-destructive evil pride from our hearts! …and we don’t even see it’s there!
All of that is why I say it terrifies me.
One evidence of pride’s deception is right there in the Bible lying before us. I have probably read Romans 12:3 countless times in my life, but not once did it occur to me the verse is addressing my pride. And not only me, but I have read a large number of commentaries on the verse and only one slowed down long enough to realize how serious it is! Charles Simeon, a British pastor from around 1800, was the only man whose heart jumped reading this verse. I hope to quote him at length later, but first I want to acknowledge that I didn’t see it and seemingly nor did anyone else! Deception.
What do we read? “By the grace given me” – the authority of his apostleship! – “I say to every one of you…” Verse 1 started with the general entreaty, “Therefore, brothers…” Now we read, “I say to everyone of you…” This is probably one of the most individualized verses in the Bible. “Everyone of you…” Paul is making it clear he’s speaking to every one of us personally. Yes, he means me. I’m cornered. Pride? “Think more highly of myself than I ought to think?” Oh, no. Not me. Oh, really? Not me? I hope you feel what I do – that “surely not me!” is lurking somewhere just under my skin.
Yes, me. It’s time to step out into the light and pray seriously, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts and cares; And see if there be any wicked way in me; And lead me in the way everlasting” (Ps, 139:23,24). Lord, help me today to live in genuine humility, like Jesus, to see others as more important than myself, to seek to serve rather than be served. Renew my mind and may Your Spirit be my spirit today.
I said I wanted to quote Charles Simeon at length. Here is part of what he wrote about this passage:
“Nothing renders a man more contemptible than vanity: it invariably defeats its own ends, and sinks us in the estimation of all whose applause we covet. But, independent of that, the more we arrogate to ourselves, the less will people be disposed to concede to us: and, if they cannot refuse us some degree of credit on those points wherein we excel, they will be sure to search out some faults to put into the balance against it; so that, on the whole, we shall be gainers to as small an amount as possible. On the other hand, modesty gives effect to all our other excellencies: and the more meekly we bear our honours, the more liberal will even the most envious of our rivals be in the bestowment of them. To “prefer others in honour before ourselves (Note: ver. 10 and Philippians 2:3),” is the way to disarm their hostility, to allay their jealousies, to conciliate their regard; so that, even if we had no better object in view than the advancement of ourselves in the estimation of man, we should seek it, not by self-conceit and self-preference, but by sobriety in self-estimation, and by modesty in our whole deportment. To this effect, the wisest of men has taught us, “To seek our own glory, is not glory (Note: Proverbs 25:27):” on the contrary, “when pride cometh, then cometh shame: but with the lowly is wisdom (Note: Proverbs 11:2).”
