How Do I Kill My Pride?
00:00:00.000 | Well, how do I kill the pride inside me?
00:00:06.960 | Pride is a nefarious enemy, one of our great enemies, and one of God's ancient enemies.
00:00:11.680 | And yet, when the Lord gifts someone with natural skills and abilities beyond the norm,
00:00:15.800 | that struggle with pride can become even more intense.
00:00:19.260 | As we begin a new week on Ask Pastor John, our next question arises from a young woman
00:00:22.900 | who listens to the podcast.
00:00:24.800 | A pleasant good day to you, Pastor John.
00:00:26.440 | I'm so grateful for your ministry.
00:00:28.000 | It has immensely contributed to my spiritual development.
00:00:31.280 | I am a law student from the Caribbean island of St. Vincent.
00:00:35.000 | I love the Lord with all my heart and desire to do many exploits for the kingdom of God.
00:00:39.560 | However, I have one big problem, and I think it's hindering my effectiveness as a disciple
00:00:44.360 | of Christ.
00:00:45.720 | I have a deep-rooted issue with pride.
00:00:48.520 | I know it is a sin, and I've tried many times to deal with this problem, but it always seems
00:00:52.680 | to hide and then resurface.
00:00:54.920 | I have been called condescending by my peers and family.
00:00:58.120 | I am verbally aggressive.
00:01:00.040 | What steps can I take daily to kill the sin of my expressive pride?
00:01:04.520 | I wish I knew you better.
00:01:05.840 | I don't even know your name.
00:01:07.880 | I sure love your candor, and I think it's a great work of grace that you can even see
00:01:13.320 | and identify those things about pride, because you're certainly not the only one.
00:01:19.680 | If I knew you better, I would try to tailor this response to your particular kind of pride,
00:01:27.880 | if I understood it better.
00:01:30.080 | Everybody deals with pride.
00:01:32.000 | Not everybody knows it, because pride takes such subtle forms, but we all do.
00:01:37.940 | So I wish I knew better.
00:01:41.160 | But you give me some clues, so let me make a stab at what might be helpful.
00:01:46.600 | I pray, God, that it will help you and others, because pride is universal.
00:01:53.440 | Let me commend this way of battling pride, namely, a close look at the way God saved
00:02:02.680 | you.
00:02:03.720 | A close look, a repeated, regular attention to the way God saved you.
00:02:12.400 | He saved you in a way that no matter how you look at it, if you look at it biblically,
00:02:19.280 | it was designed to humble you and destroy your pride.
00:02:24.160 | That's the way you were saved.
00:02:26.760 | So what you need, and all of us need, is not some teaching that comes later, like at a
00:02:33.600 | mature stage of Christianity.
00:02:36.320 | What you need is to know and to feel the implications of how God saved you.
00:02:44.320 | Millions of Christians do not know how God saved them.
00:02:48.320 | That may sound strange, like you could be saved and not know how.
00:02:51.440 | That's right.
00:02:52.800 | Many people don't—they haven't been taught accurately what the Bible says about what
00:02:57.760 | God did to save them, either in history or by the Spirit in their lives.
00:03:02.200 | And therefore, they have been deprived of the power of this truth to work a deep humility
00:03:08.920 | and great boldness—deep humility, great boldness—in their lives.
00:03:15.520 | Many Christians think they themselves were the decisive cause of their own conversion
00:03:22.880 | to Christ.
00:03:23.880 | They've been taught that.
00:03:26.120 | And that God was merely a responder, not sovereign, not a sovereign Savior.
00:03:32.200 | Let's look at reality.
00:03:33.680 | First, there's the reality of sin that we have to be saved from.
00:03:40.960 | It's more profound and more terrible than anyone realizes.
00:03:46.320 | I mean anyone.
00:03:49.000 | The entire Old Testament is written to show us the dreadful power of sin and the utter
00:03:57.080 | hopelessness of even the people of God without the omnipotence of God's saving grace to
00:04:04.720 | convert them to Christ.
00:04:06.520 | So here's Romans 3:19.
00:04:09.120 | Now we know that whatever the law says—and I think he's referring to the whole Old Testament,
00:04:16.280 | not just the first five books.
00:04:18.520 | You can read why in the context.
00:04:20.960 | Whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth
00:04:29.040 | in the universe may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God.
00:04:37.960 | We were utterly helpless to free ourselves from the blindness and the bondage of sin.
00:04:44.400 | And Paul says we could not see it.
00:04:46.920 | We couldn't see the glory of Christ.
00:04:49.520 | We could not bring ourselves to life from death.
00:04:54.760 | Romans 8, 5-7, 1 Corinthians 2, 14, 2 Corinthians 4, 4.
00:05:02.200 | God appointed faith as a way, the only way of salvation.
00:05:07.520 | And this way, namely the way of faith, excludes pride.
00:05:13.680 | It does so in two ways.
00:05:16.200 | One is that faith by nature looks away from ourselves to God.
00:05:23.480 | That's what faith is, a looking away from ourselves to God.
00:05:28.680 | And the other way is that faith itself is a gift of God.
00:05:33.840 | So here's the first, Romans 3:27.
00:05:37.560 | Then what becomes of our boasting?
00:05:39.040 | It is excluded, Paul says.
00:05:41.280 | By what kind of law?
00:05:42.740 | By a law of works?
00:05:44.360 | No.
00:05:45.360 | By the law of faith.
00:05:48.560 | Faith excludes boasting.
00:05:50.740 | You are not trusting God when you are boasting.
00:05:54.280 | And you are not boasting when you are trusting God.
00:05:58.740 | Faith is what a child does when it is happy to be helpless and safe in daddy's arms.
00:06:06.440 | Let me say that again.
00:06:09.640 | Faith is what a child has or does when it is happy to be helpless and safe in daddy's
00:06:18.800 | arms.
00:06:19.960 | It does not boast.
00:06:21.200 | The child doesn't boast in its self-sufficiency.
00:06:23.480 | "Oh, look how smart I am to be in daddy's arms."
00:06:28.000 | It boasts in daddy.
00:06:30.000 | Look at his arms.
00:06:31.600 | Look at his smile.
00:06:34.400 | And on top of that, faith is a gift.
00:06:37.560 | For by grace you have been saved through faith.
00:06:39.760 | This is not your own doing.
00:06:41.040 | It is the gift of God, not of works, so that no one may boast.
00:06:48.480 | There's a principle here that Paul expresses in 1 Corinthians 4:7.
00:06:53.920 | What do you have that you did not receive?
00:06:55.480 | And if you received it, why do you boast as though it were not a gift?
00:07:00.640 | So God appointed faith as the way of salvation to doubly exclude boasting.
00:07:09.000 | Its nature is like a child to call attention to daddy's strength, not its own.
00:07:15.560 | And even that is a gift of God.
00:07:20.240 | Now why does God save us in this way, choosing to give faith to one person and not to another?
00:07:27.560 | Because if it's a gift, some have it and some don't, and you see election.
00:07:31.840 | God is choosing.
00:07:33.480 | He gives it to one.
00:07:34.480 | He doesn't give it to all.
00:07:36.160 | Why?
00:07:37.160 | Is it because he chooses us on the basis of some admirable quality so that we can boast
00:07:43.000 | in being chosen?
00:07:44.640 | No, he doesn't.
00:07:46.480 | And Paul says—I mean, this is probably the clearest text in the Bible about the relationship
00:07:55.480 | between election and humility, or election and the destruction of pride.
00:08:01.160 | Listen to 1 Corinthians 1:26, "For consider your calling, brothers.
00:08:07.160 | Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards.
00:08:10.600 | Not many were powerful.
00:08:12.180 | Not many were of noble birth.
00:08:14.320 | But God chose"—here's the key word—"God chose what is foolish in the world to shame
00:08:20.960 | the wise.
00:08:22.240 | God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.
00:08:26.760 | God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring
00:08:32.720 | to nothing things that are."
00:08:33.920 | And here's the purpose for all those choosings.
00:08:36.520 | "So that no human being might boast in the presence of God.
00:08:43.720 | It is slain by election."
00:08:48.360 | Free, sovereign, God-willed, not man-determined election.
00:08:55.240 | God chose, God chose, God chose.
00:08:57.280 | So that no human being might boast.
00:09:00.600 | And then it continues like this, "And because of Him," because of God, "you are in Christ
00:09:07.360 | Jesus."
00:09:08.360 | You didn't do that.
00:09:09.360 | You didn't jump into Christ.
00:09:10.600 | You didn't raise yourself from the dead.
00:09:12.920 | Because of God, you are in Christ Jesus, "who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness,
00:09:18.200 | sanctification, and redemption."
00:09:20.160 | One more time.
00:09:21.480 | "So that, as it is written, 'Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.'"
00:09:29.960 | First Corinthians 1, 26-31.
00:09:32.440 | So the entire method of saving us is designed for this.
00:09:40.880 | Negatively, that no human being might boast in the presence of the Lord.
00:09:45.920 | Simply, "Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord."
00:09:50.960 | So let this sink in.
00:09:53.800 | Let us all pray that it would sink in.
00:09:58.160 | We are saved in such a way that it makes God's sovereign grace shine as glorious and makes
00:10:08.520 | us look utterly helpless in ourselves, utterly dependent on God.
00:10:14.900 | We were dead, blind, helpless, which means that we were no more worthy of salvation than
00:10:22.320 | anyone else.
00:10:24.240 | Everybody, everybody that you would boast over, you're like them or worse than them,
00:10:32.720 | except for one thing, grace, grace, grace.
00:10:37.600 | All self-exaltation is a recrucifixion of Christ, because he died to kill pride.
00:10:45.940 | Every boast, therefore, mocks the suffering of Jesus, and—I end on this—and every
00:10:54.820 | humble attitude, every humble act of faith glorifies the grace of God in Christ.
00:11:04.500 | That's very helpful, Counselor.
00:11:05.500 | Pastor John, thank you.
00:11:06.500 | And, well, for anything that you need to know about this podcast, to ask a question, to
00:11:11.340 | listen to old episodes, find links, to subscribe to the podcast, whatever you need, go to DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:11:18.060 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:11:22.340 | We'll see you back here on Wednesday.
00:11:23.900 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.
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