As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:
5Or
do you suppose that the Scripture says emptily the spirit dwelling in us lusts
toward envy? 6But He gives more grace, therefore it says, “God
opposes proud ones but gives grace to humble ones.”
As I said in my last post, verses 1 thru 5 are a very ugly
catalog of who we are: fighting, warring, killing, coveting, discontent,
adulteresses, enemies of God, and then having the audacity to think we’re “wise
and understanding” (3:13), to consider ourselves “religious” (1:26). Verse 6
finally pins down the real problem: we’re proud.
Pride. The devil’s sin. The root of it all. “I deserve better,” says my heart and from there on
it’s all downhill.
As I considered in that last post, God is a Giver. If we’ll
let Him, He gives more grace. But
horror of horrors, there is something in us that will utterly clog the funnel
of that grace. Our pride.
The Bible is full of examples of pride and its destruction:
Satan, Pharoah, Nebuchadnezzar, Haman, Herod, David, Uzziah, Hezekiah, and so
many others. The book of Obadiah is entirely given to judgment on the sin of
pride: “The pride of your heart has deceived you … though you soar like an
eagle, I will bring you down … Oh, what disaster awaits you … you will be
covered with shame, you will be destroyed forever …” (vv3-10).
God resists the proud. He opposes them. The Greek verb
actually means to “marshal one’s forces against.” What a shame. The God who is
a Giver has to be instead the General of His armies taking up their battle
lines to destroy us!
Pride. The twisted notion that we’re better, that we deserve
more, that I really should be “high and lifted up.” What I personally find most
terrifying is that it is a sin which conceals itself in my heart. As the Lord
said in Obadiah, “The pride of your heart has deceived you.” It is an insidious
sin. I can be consumed by it, my heart can be filled with the sin of pride, and
I won’t see it. We may see it in others but they don’t see it in themselves. It
lodged itself in the Devil’s heart and we’re not surprised to see it in evil
Haman, but what of David and Uzziah and Hezekiah? Some of the most godly men in
the Bible suffered horrifically because pride wormed its way into their heart.
How could they not have seen it? Because it is a deceiving
sin. It hides itself. And it hides
itself from even the most godly. I shouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t have too
big a challenge to hide itself in me! In fact, I look back and see that most of
my life, my heart has been full of the sin of pride. No wonder so many things
have gone “wrong.” No wonder so many things didn’t turn out at all like I
thought they would. In my heart of hearts, I thought I was destined to succeed
famously. And why not? I was exceptional. I was better. What a shame. In so
many things I can say I really did have good intentions. I often wanted to see
right things happen. But I didn’t see the pride, the arrogance, that was hiding
in my heart – and that the Lord could not bless me in those things. Instead He
had to marshal His forces against me. But I couldn’t see it. That to me is
terrifying.
Then what is also terrifying is to realize that God’s
judgment on pride is not just failure. That would be bad enough – to think that
even “good” endeavors will fail when pride hides in my heart. That would be bad
enough, but it’s worse. God’s judgment on the sin of pride is shame. Not just failure, but shame. As
He warned them in Obadiah, “Oh, what disaster awaits you … you will be covered
with shame …” Here I am thinking I’m “high and lifted up” and instead I find
myself wishing I could go back and right-click-delete the whole ugly business.
Insidious. Shameful. Utterly frightening. What I have
determined is that I cannot resolve to be watching for the sin of pride. When
it is there, I will not see it. It is born in a cloaking device. I have to
watch for its symptoms. When someone says something and I find it galls me, I
may be convinced what they said was just completely wrong. But what of this “galls?”
Why does it gall me? Saul was galled when he heard them singing, “Saul has
killed his thousands, but David his tens of thousands.” Why? He was proud. It
basically goes without saying that when I’m angry about anything – it’s
probably a sure symptom of the sin of pride. And that is what I must look for –
its symptoms.
It’s the same way hunting deer. A novice goes out looking
for a deer – looking for a big, brown, four-legged creature with ears twitching
and a big white tail. The problem is, by the time you see anything that
obvious, he’s already seen you! A deer’s deliberate intention is to hide, to
disappear. Even his color is intended to camouflage him in the woods. Hunters
often walk right by deer and never know it. You simply can’t hunt deer looking
for deer. That may work for a man sitting high up in a blind, but it will not
work for a stalker. One has to learn where to look and how to look first for
the signs that a deer might be there. Only then – when you learn to look, in a
sense, for the symptoms of their presence, will you have a chance to actually “see”
him – that is before he has long since seen you and bounded away.
That’s how pride is. And that is probably why we so seldom
do see it. You can’t look for it; you have to look for its symptoms. In case it
hasn’t occurred to anyone, that is precisely what James has been doing since
3:13. He’s calling us to consider the evidence – to look at our lives, to look
at our hearts, to do any honest evaluation and ask not what I imagine is going
on, but what does the evidence prove? I think I’m “religious” but what about
all this anger and envy? Finally he pins it down. What are we really looking
for? Pride. The devil’s sin, hiding its ugly evil, shameful destruction in our
hearts.
The other reason why I suspect we don’t see it is because
other sins are more obviously odious to us. I can see the sin of adultery and
how it destroys families. I can see the cruelty of murder and the injustice of
stealing. But, as long as another person’s arrogance doesn’t particularly hurt
me, I don’t really see the harm. In fact, I can survey my own life and as long
as I’m not cheating on my wife, haven’t murdered anyone (lately), haven’t
burglarized my neighbor’s house, I seem to have a pretty clean bill of health.
That my heart might be full of the sin of pride or that that is even a bad
thing doesn’t even occur to me.
Pride can center itself on any or all of what we think to be
beauty, strength, accomplishments, family, country, possessions, potential, and
even religion itself – any way we attach any undue importance to ourselves.
Even having said all of the above, I find something in my
heart wanting to ask, “What’s the harm? So I’m a little arrogant. As long as I
don’t hurt anyone, what’s so terribly bad about that?” But wait a minute. It is
the devil’s sin! When it is present, though I cannot see it, it makes me
compete with God Himself, not to mention all the people around me. And in the
end, God has already warned me, I will not succeed, in fact I will fail, in
fact, it’s even far worse, some way or another I will go down hard in shame. Why is my heart so determined to play down
pride, to minimize its evil, to not see its devilish face? Why? Because it was
born in a cloaking device. It hides itself. It deceives the deceived.
God alone can deliver us. He wants to. He gives more grace.
But there is a condition. He gives His grace to the humble.
He who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles
himself will be exalted.
We must assume our rightful place. We are created beings,
not God. We are created beings among created beings. We are no better than any
other created being. We may have more ability in some particular area. We may
be bigger, stronger, richer, more accomplished than someone else in some
specific ways but we all also have our weaknesses. Albert Einstein could figure
out that time is curved but couldn’t find his way home at night. Herod was rich
and powerful but died eaten by worms. It is one thing to recognize our
strengths – it is another to imagine somehow they make us “high and lifted up.”
We must assume our rightful place. We are here to love God
and others. That is our calling for this short journey in time. We take the
life He has given us, the particular array of abilities or gifts and give them
as a very small part of our God’s great eternal plan. We give of our strengths
and let our weaknesses remind us how much we need God … and others. We’re only
part of a great eternal whole.
Guess I’ll close by saying I fear we live in a generation
that has completely forgotten that God hates the sin of pride. It’s no wonder
we attempt so much and accomplish so little.
God help us.
God help me.
As Princess Leia said (sort of): “Help us, O great One,
Jesus; You’re our only hope!”
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