Dr. Peter Masters
‘Serving the Lord with all humility of mind’ (Acts 20.19).
Ravages of pride
Pride is horrible, always starting in the mind. It goes before your every fall. It loses you true friends, surrounding you with proud people like yourself.
Pride looks so absurd and ugly. You may not recognise it in the mirror, but it is obvious to most others. Somehow it stamps its signature on your stance, sometimes the very tilt of your head, the look in your eyes, and even the tone of your voice. People know you are proud, and strangely, even if they are proud themselves, many will despise you for it.
Pride clouds your judgement, robbing you of the perspective that makes good decisions. Pride rejects counsel and trusts only its own conclusions. Pride is like the king in the Book of Proverbs, who surrounded himself with inadequate officers, and appointed fools as secretary of state and chief members of his cabinet because he felt threatened having gifted people around him. The foolishness of pride!
Most people regard proud people as insincere. Accordingly, if pride gets into a preacher he becomes disabled as an instrument of God. Misguided believers may admire him, but the unconverted will never trust him, thinking that he is all about himself.
Prognosis of pride
Pride brews in the mind and in day-dreams. It soon infects all a person’s thoughts and hopes, and if not fought early, can only be purged by a humbling fall or a sharp affliction. The Saviour said – ‘For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted’ (Luke 14.11). Surely this refers not only to final judgement, but to how the Lord, in mercy, deals even now to sanctify and bless his people.
Pride can be very lazy in witness and effort for the Lord, because the proud Christian overestimates the little he does. A minister of meagre accomplishment is probably deluded by pride that his small measure of effort is far greater than it really is.
In Colossians 3.12 Paul declares: ‘Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering.’ We must put on the garment of humility because we belong to God and represent him. How dare we flaunt ourselves and our imagined capabilities when we are commanded to ‘be clothed with humility’! (1 Peter 5.5.)
A picture of Paul
We think of dear Paul, the suffering apostle, possessor of a heart burdened for lost souls, for the wellbeing of Christians, and most of all for the glory of his divine Master.
We think of dear Paul, never aloof, never high and mighty, never too important for individuals or for lowly tasks. We think of dear Paul, never too sick or too old to be at full stretch as a bond-slave of Christ.
If Paul were alive today, we cannot imagine him being happy with flattering introductions at meetings, or idolising biographies. If we saw him in informal conversation with others keen to quiz him about himself, we would see him more interested in them, and in the things of the Lord. Perhaps only later would they appreciate how little they had gleaned from him, aside from his testimony of salvation and of Christ’s goodness.
Let us do all we possibly can to root out personal pride, hating its every manifestation and rejecting every self-parading thought. If only it could be true of us, that we served the Lord ‘with all humility of mind’. Let this be our burning desire, because this is the gateway to instrumentality in the service of Christ
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