Pride is said to be one of the seven deadly sins, although the Bible doesn’t actually call them that. It does mention that pride is a sin, just like lust, gluttony, greed, laziness, wrath, and envy. Those were put together by Pope Gregory 1, back in about 600 AD and given that name. They seem like strange things to list as the worst sins out there, especially when we consider sins like rape and murder. But these sorts of attitudes are what leads to things like murder.
When people talk about sin, they normally think only about what are known as the “sins of commission;” in other words, bad acts that we do. There’s a second category, called “sins of omission,” which includes things that we should do, but don’t. Pride, and these other “deadly sins” fall into a category called “sins of attitudes” and are dangerous because it is our attitudes which ultimately cause us to commit many other sins.
Yes, attitudes can be sins, as sin is anything that falls short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). Part of what makes such sins so dangerous is that we are very adept at justifying our attitudes, generally blaming them on others. We tend to ignore them as being sin, allowing them to continue working in our hearts. Those things are a deadly poison that will continue working on us until they kill our faith.
The Birth of Pride
Pride has a long history in the Bible; long enough that we really can’t put a date on it. Nevertheless, we do know that pride goes back to before the time of Adam and Eve. The author of that pride seems to be one archangel, named Lucifer.
Lucifer was one of God’s special creations, made for the purpose of being a leader of other angles. His specific job was to be the praise and worship leader in heaven and to complete that task, he was given special attributes, such as gemstones for a covering and musical instruments built into his body (Ezekiel 28:13). Yet that apparently wasn’t enough for Lucifer, who wanted to be “like God.”
How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, you who weakened the nations! 13 For you have said in your heart: ‘I will ascent into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation on the farthest sides of the north; 14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High.’ 15 Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol, to the lowest depths of the pit. – Isaiah 14:12-15
Apparently being one of the highest angels in heaven wasn’t enough for Lucifer. His pride wanted more; to be like God, or perhaps even to supplant God, taking His throne. He allowed his beauty and his position to lull him into forgetting how limited he was, when compared to his creator. God could not allow Lucifer to take such a place, so cast him out of heaven. Jesus was with His Father at that time and saw what happened to Lucifer.
And He said to them (His disciples), “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. – Luke 10:18
This may seem confusing, because Lucifer’s name changed to Satan; but in fact, the two are the same. Since all names in the Bible have meanings, it’s actually not unusual to see names change, especially when attributes of the person change. In this case, his name, in the original Hebrew, would be more correctly translated as “day star.” The translators of the Bible, back in the Middle Ages, used Lucifer for this, as that is a reasonable Latin translation. This has carried through and is used in some translations of the Old Testament. The name “Satan” comes from his title as the “accuser” or “adversary.”
It is clear from the Bible that when Satan, or Lucifer, fell from heaven, they fell to earth. We know this because he showed up in the Garden of Eden, where he either possessed a serpent or took on the appearance of a serpent to convince Eve that she should eat the forbidden fruit.
We shouldn’t be surprised that Satan tried to get Eve to eat of that fruit; he had wanted to be the one on the throne, receiving the worship, rather than the one leading that worship. Since he had been cast out of heaven and couldn’t receive that worship there, it only makes sense that he would try to receive it wherever he was. Since the only people available were Adam and Eve, he’d get them to obey him, breaking their covenant with God and getting them started on the road to worshiping him. In order to do this, he used what he was the most familiar with and appealed to their pride.
Satan or the serpent started out by questioning what God had told them, apparently trying to raise doubt in their minds of what they had heard. Then, once he had gotten the answer that he expected, he sprung his trap, bringing pride into the picture.
Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” – Genesis 3:4-5
If Satan couldn’t be like God, he’d convince Eve that she could; or so he apparently thought. While he was right, in the sense that Adam and Eve did gain an attribute that they hadn’t had before, knowing the difference between good and evil, that wasn’t all it cracked up to be. Rather, it merely showed them that God was good and that they had evil in their hearts.
Had it not been for pride, Eve wouldn’t have heeded the serpent’s words and Adam wouldn’t have followed her into that sin. But pride convinced them that what God had told them wasn’t what was best for them and in fact that the “new information” they had was better. They made what they thought was their own decision, leaving God out of it, because they thought they knew better.
Pride Causes us to Resist God
This story shows us the real problem with pride. That is, that pride always causes us to resist God in some way or another. Pride says “I know better” in one way or another, whether that is knowing better for our own life, for others lives or for what we are to do. We throw out God’s instruction, direction and commandments, in favor of our own.
Please note that there really is no difference between disobeying the commandments that God has put in the Law and disobeying anything else He tells us. Adam and Eve were only given one “thou shalt not” by God and they blew it anyway. It doesn’t matter how many commandments they had, what form they were in or how many they broke; in all cases, they broke God’s Law, even though it wasn’t written, meaning that they broke the whole of the Law.
For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all. – James 2:10
To put that into perspective, what Adam and Eve did, in eating of that fruit, was no different than us today, when we say that we don’t need to tithe, because we can’t find it in the New Testament (it’s there) or we choose to have premarital sex, because those commandments were written for a different time. We are saying that we know better than God and that His law is unjust. That’s pride.
To think that anyone would decide that they knew better than God is ludicrous, yet we all do it. There is not a single person on earth, who has not decided that they knew better than God. We don’t really sin by ignorance of the Law, but by willfully deciding to break it. No matter how we justify that in our own mind, it’s pride; it’s saying that we know better than God. What foolishness we have in our hearts!
Putting it simply, why wouldn’t God resist those who resist Him? Every commandment He has given us is ultimately for our own benefit. Yet we break those commandments in pride, standing before God and telling Him that we are better managers of our own lives. If He were to go along with us, He would be adding to our destruction. So, He resists us, trying to get us back onto a path which leads to life, instead of one that leads to death.
Pride always leads to some sort of punishment. God says that He resists the proud, while giving grace to the humble (James 4:6). Considering how much we need grace, I’d much rather be humble, so that I can receive that grace. I certainly don’t need God resisting me.
Pride in Our Speech
Of course, there are many ways for pride to be manifest in our lives, not just through disobedience. Much of our pride is manifest in the way that we speak, whether in our prayer life or in how we speak to others. A large percentage of that is in how we talk about ourselves, making ourselves sound better than we actually are. Luke recorded a parable by Jesus, which spoke of this very thing.
Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood and prayed this with himself, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men – extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.’ 13 And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!” – Luke 18:10-13
Do people actually pray like that? I suppose there are some who do. But I know for a fact that there are a lot of people who speak to others about themselves like that. They brag upon their accomplishments and how great they are, whether speaking of the spiritual or temporal; and they do it just to get the acclaim of men. Where is any form of godliness in that? Where is humility?
It is better to keep quiet about ourselves, allowing others to lift us up if we are to be lifted up. People won’t think much of us, when we lift ourselves up; but they will when others do. Not only that, but God will lift us up, when we stay humble.
The Lord lifts up the humble; he casts the wicked to the ground. – Psalms 147:6
For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. – Luke 14:11
False Humility is Still Pride
Some try to make a show of their humility, showing it off for all to see. This is a mere counterfeit for true humility. As such, it is probably another invention of Satan, given to us as a means of keeping us from truly becoming humble, while showing those around us just how “humble” we supposedly are.
The idea of false humility is to publicly demean ourselves, putting ourselves down in one way or another, so as to make it appear that we are not prideful. Nevertheless, it is prideful in that it still goes against God’s will, saying that we know what humility is, better than He does. Any time we operate in false humility, we are still attracting people’s attention to ourselves, rather than pointing them to God.
Let me give you a few examples of false humility, comparing it to pride and true humility.
| Pride Says: | False Humility Says: | True Humility Says: |
| Look at me | Don’t look at me | Let me point you to Jesus |
| I can | I can’t | I can do all things through Christ |
| I did it | I didn’t do it | God did it through me |
| It’s mine | It’s not mine | I’m God’s steward of it |
| This is my work | This isn’t my work | This is the work of God, through me |
| I’m worthy | I’m unworthy | I’m valuable to God, because He created me, then redeemed me |
| I’m special | I’m a nobody | I’m a child of God |
| I’m important | I’[m not important | Jesus is important; any importance I have, is due to Him |
| My opinion | I don’t have an opinion | The Bible says |
| I’m sad I didn’t get it | I’ll pretend I’m glad I didn’t get it | I’m glad that God blessed them |
| I want | I don’t want | I want what God wants me to have |
| I’m in charge | I can’t be in charge | God is in charge; I’m a servant |
| My will | Not my will | God’s will |
| I know | I know nothing | God knows, let’s see what He says |
| I must be right | I must be wrong | God’s right. Let’s find out what He says about it |
What makes these things false humility is more the attitude of the person’s heart, than the words that they say. There might be times when it is appropriate to say that we don’t know or we can’t do something, if that’s the truth. But why are we saying it? Is it to avoid a mistake and/or avoid leading someone into error, or is it for attention? Both are possible; but they are not possible at the same time.
So, What is Humility?
True humility is something that can’t be faked. No actor can pretend to be humble on the world’s stage. Anyone who tries will quickly show their true colors, as they will be showing false humility, rather than true humility. But when people are truly humble, it shows.
So, just what is true humility? In the Biblical sense, it is accepting what God says we are and what God says we are to do, rather than trying to tell God who we are and what we are to do. Can you imaging how it looks to God, when we go before Him, saying something along the lines of, “Here’s my plan God, please bless it” rather than asking Him what His plan is for our lives?
If we look at what the Bible says about us, we find that it says many positive and uplifting things. In fact, if we just accept what God says about us in the Bible, we will be better off than all the good things we can say about ourselves. There are a little over 1,000 names given to the believer in the Bible, and most of them attribute something very positive to us. We are called sons and daughters of God, the head and not the tail, more than conquerors, his chosen people, elect ones of God, friends of Christ, heirs of God, ambassadors, new creatures in Christ, redeemed ones and countless other names.
Saying these things, agreeing with God, is true humility. So is saying that you are a pastor, evangelist, or any other ministry gift, if God has told you that’s who you are. That’s the key, you are agreeing with God, rather than deciding for yourself who you are. We must all choose to do just that.
This is not to say that we are to brag about any of these things. Bragging is just another form of pride. There are times to say who you are in Christ and there are times to just keep your mouth closed, not saying anything. It takes some true discernment to know the difference between the two; discernment that we must learn. Agreeing with what God says we are and declaring it to the whole world can be prideful, if we are doing it just for attention. On the other hand, we can admit it, when necessary, without pride coming in.