Khazar
Member
There is a weed that is likely to grow in the garden of your love and squeeze out the flower of agape is pride. The Bible tells us that in God’s love there is no room for pride. “Love does not parade itself, is not puffed up” (1 Corinthians 13:4). I like how J. B. Phillips has translates that: “Love is neither anxious to impress, nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own importance.” There are two expressions here: one speaks of what love does on the outside if it gets caught up with pride. The other has to do with what pride is on the inside.
First I'd like to take a look at pride on the outside. Boasting is what happens to a proud person on the outside. As you read through the Old and New Testaments you will see many different catalogs of sins, but the sin of pride finds its way to the top of every list. Proverbs tells us there are six things which God hates. At the very top of that list is a proud look. Someone has defined pride as an exaggerated and dishonest self-evaluation. It says, “I want people to accept me despite my own awareness that it is a false evaluation.” Pride seeks value, honor, importance, reputation, and significance that it does not deserve. Pride is an ego-motivated maneuver to hide from the truth about myself. It cannot co-exist with love, for agape love always seeks the best interest of the other. Pride is so consumed with its own best interests that it has no time to look at the concerns of others. Pride is the enemy of love.
Then we have pride on the inside. Paul had a lot to say about the church at Corinth. If you had visited that church, you would have met Christians who were haughty, arrogant, and preoccupied with their own importance. Paul confronted them about their pride, using the unique phrase, love “is not puffed up.” Being puffed up is what happens to a proud person on the inside. You can trace the use of that word in 1 Corinthians.
In the fifth chapter we have the story of immorality in the church, but the church didn’t do anything about it. The reason behind the toleration of such sin is given to us in 1 Corinthians 5:1, “It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and such sexual immorality as is not even named among the Gentiles—that a man has his father’s wife! You are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he who has done this deed might be taken away from among you.”
Paul says it is not so much that the sin should happen, but that they are so proud they cannot see the sin for what it is. They wanted to sit back in their sophisticated way and say, “It’s just the age. It’s just the time. It’s just the way things are now in this grown up, sophisticated society.” Paul says the problem is pride— pride in the church, too much pride to face sin for what it is!
Now consider 1 Corinthians 8:1: “Now concerning things offered to idols: We know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies.” There is a play on words here, for the word “edify” means to “build up” and Paul gives us a choice: to puff up or build up. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. That is an excellent lesson for the superbly educated 20th century in which we live. Knowledge without love is simply an opportunity for us to build pride within our own spirit, but when we have love we can avoid the pride trap.
The word for “puffed up” in the Greek language gives us a picture of a blacksmith’s bellows filled up with air. Paul’s idea is that love is neither conceited nor arrogant, and doesn’t try to appear more grand than it really is. Have you ever been around people who are puffed up? Sometimes it is all you can do to resist sticking a pin in them so they will deflate. There is a story in Aesop’s fables of a fly that is sitting on the axle of a chariot, and exclaiming, “What dust do I raise!” It reminds me of people I know who really have nothing to say, but keep on bragging as if there were something worthy to hear.
I'd love to hear what anyone else has to say about their understanding of the dangers of pride.
First I'd like to take a look at pride on the outside. Boasting is what happens to a proud person on the outside. As you read through the Old and New Testaments you will see many different catalogs of sins, but the sin of pride finds its way to the top of every list. Proverbs tells us there are six things which God hates. At the very top of that list is a proud look. Someone has defined pride as an exaggerated and dishonest self-evaluation. It says, “I want people to accept me despite my own awareness that it is a false evaluation.” Pride seeks value, honor, importance, reputation, and significance that it does not deserve. Pride is an ego-motivated maneuver to hide from the truth about myself. It cannot co-exist with love, for agape love always seeks the best interest of the other. Pride is so consumed with its own best interests that it has no time to look at the concerns of others. Pride is the enemy of love.
Then we have pride on the inside. Paul had a lot to say about the church at Corinth. If you had visited that church, you would have met Christians who were haughty, arrogant, and preoccupied with their own importance. Paul confronted them about their pride, using the unique phrase, love “is not puffed up.” Being puffed up is what happens to a proud person on the inside. You can trace the use of that word in 1 Corinthians.
In the fifth chapter we have the story of immorality in the church, but the church didn’t do anything about it. The reason behind the toleration of such sin is given to us in 1 Corinthians 5:1, “It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and such sexual immorality as is not even named among the Gentiles—that a man has his father’s wife! You are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he who has done this deed might be taken away from among you.”
Paul says it is not so much that the sin should happen, but that they are so proud they cannot see the sin for what it is. They wanted to sit back in their sophisticated way and say, “It’s just the age. It’s just the time. It’s just the way things are now in this grown up, sophisticated society.” Paul says the problem is pride— pride in the church, too much pride to face sin for what it is!
Now consider 1 Corinthians 8:1: “Now concerning things offered to idols: We know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies.” There is a play on words here, for the word “edify” means to “build up” and Paul gives us a choice: to puff up or build up. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. That is an excellent lesson for the superbly educated 20th century in which we live. Knowledge without love is simply an opportunity for us to build pride within our own spirit, but when we have love we can avoid the pride trap.
The word for “puffed up” in the Greek language gives us a picture of a blacksmith’s bellows filled up with air. Paul’s idea is that love is neither conceited nor arrogant, and doesn’t try to appear more grand than it really is. Have you ever been around people who are puffed up? Sometimes it is all you can do to resist sticking a pin in them so they will deflate. There is a story in Aesop’s fables of a fly that is sitting on the axle of a chariot, and exclaiming, “What dust do I raise!” It reminds me of people I know who really have nothing to say, but keep on bragging as if there were something worthy to hear.
I'd love to hear what anyone else has to say about their understanding of the dangers of pride.
