The worst kind of pride
(Newman Hall, “Leaves of Healing
from the Garden of Grief” 1891)
“But to keep me from getting puffed up, I was given
a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment
me and keep me from getting proud.” 2 Corinth. 12:7
The thorn in the flesh saved Paul from pride in the spirit.
How exposed are the most useful Christians to this
temptation! To be proud of . . .
our beauty,
our strength,
our riches,
our station,
our power,
our learning and genius
–this is absurd, for what do we have,
which we have not received from God?
But to be proud of . . .
our piety,
our spiritual experience,
our prayerfulness,
our zeal,
our usefulness–this is . . .
the worst kind of pride,
most offensive to God,
most injurious to our own soul,
most obstructive to usefulness.
If so, how beneficent the thorn, in whatever
shape, that checks such self-destructive abuse
of heavenly gifts!
“But to keep me from getting puffed up, I was given
a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment
me and keep me from getting proud.” 2 Corinth. 12:7
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I’ve ran across a boatload of people who’ve been PROUD of their HUMILITY. They are quick to evaluate others’ supposed ‘lack’ of humility, and constantly quote that ‘learning’ only makes one more proud…..yet they are not quick to look in their own hearts and see their own ‘pride’ in their supposed piety before God!
They look down their spiritual noses, taking time and opportunity to point out to everyone they deem as ‘unspiritual’ how they should instead carry themselves. They take their supposed ‘advanced spirituality’ as proof that correction and learning are not necessary and only a hindrance to spiritual growth and seek to bring others to their view as well. They do so, moved along by their own hunches and urgings and passing it off as the Spirit of God moving them.
What grave injury this does to the body of Christ! For if a man thinks himself, in his puffed up fleshly mind, to be so spiritual that he is beyond correction by those he deems less spiritual than himself, he has succumbed to the very pride he condemns in others – and even a more subtle and deadly form…. for false humility gathers a quicker audience and following than those who only (supposedly ‘show off their intellect’.
May the Lord, this day, grant you the humility to be able to accept correction, no matter who it comes from. May He break the built up areas of pride in your life that you deem as ‘beyond reproach’ and show you your heart as it truly is – “desperately wicked” (Jer. 17:9) and only declared ‘clean’ because Christ’s righteousness is draped over it like a white robe (Phil. 3:8-10).
SDG
-KG
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