“Now pride is a great vice, and the first of vices, the beginning, origin and cause of all sins.”[1] Many theologians throughout church history echo Augustine’s understanding of pride as the fountainhead of all sin. While Solomon doesn’t ascribe this capital position to pride, he does make it clear that pride is far from a peccadillo. Pride portrayed as “exalted eyes” in Proverbs 6.17 is on the list of the seven things God considers an abomination, those things that attack and distort creation so as to disorder it that it brings desolation. Wisdom hates pride (8.13) and the heart from which it springs (16.5). Everything that guides the proud heart and everything that the proud heart produces, even providing for a family, is sin (21.4). Pride seeks to overturn God’s order at the most fundamental levels. Solomon, training the king-in-waiting, warns him of pride because it is his responsibility to set the world right, beginning with himself. Where there is pride, this can’t be done.
Pride can be quite obvious at times, but it is also slippery. As with all other sins, pride is not an ex nihilo creation. Pride finds a righteous host, attaches itself to it, distorts it, and sucks all the life out of it until it is a corpse. The good creation from which pride leeches is glory.
Glory is weightiness, the beautiful weight that comes with position, power, and possessions. When God prescribed clothes for the high priest, he made them for glory and beauty (Ex 28.2). Aaron’s clothes were made from plants, animals, and minerals, and they were heavy, representing all the responsibility he carried before God and the people. His position reflected in his clothes was beautiful, but the beauty was not separated from his position and responsibility.
Man is created glorious (Ps 8.5). Adam is given dominion from the beginning. The plan is to move creation (of which he is a part) from glory to glory as he humbly submitted to God and fulfilled his task of making the world fruitful or more glorious. As God judged man faithful, he would grant the man new status, more glory. Because of our created glory and the promise of glory, man knows that he has worth and hungers for more. Neither of these is wrong if he always gratefully acknowledges that his glory is a gift from God at every stage of life.
Pride refuses to acknowledge glory as a gift and, in fact, redefines glory. Pride’s exalted eyes look down on God and everyone else. God’s understanding of him and the world is wrong. He knows better how to put his life and the world together. He makes his own laws, and, because of that, he is right in his own eyes (12.15). He is a good man because he has defined what good is, and good is always what he is doing. He is self-justifying. Wherever and whenever we put our judgment and wills above God’s, pride is rearing its ugly head.
The prideful man is also self-confident. Because he is a god, he is in control, not subject to the limitations of other mere mortals. He has control of his future (27.1) because he is quite confident in his abilities without anyone having to tell him (27.2). He makes his own way and gives thanks to no one along the way, including and especially God himself. When he does give thanks like the Pharisee in Luke 18, he is using prayer as a pretense to praise himself (Lk 18.9, 11).
Pride lives in a fantasy world; a world of make-believe where the entire world is built by me and around me. The proud man has lost touch with reality because he doesn’t acknowledge his dependence upon the God who creates and sustains the world. Consequently, the proud man’s quest for glory always ends in destruction (16.18), which is quite the opposite of the glory God intends for man.
The path to glory, true glory, is through humility. Humility is not a self-deprecating mentality that is always looking at the tops of its shoes. Humility is the grateful acceptance of God’s judgments concerning me—the good and the bad—the way created me, the callings he has given me, and happily conforms my life to his judgments declared to me through his Word. Humility is happy to stay in the lane God made for me, accepting my limitations but confidently using everything he has given me to serve others. The humble man can be confident before the world because his confidence is first in God.
The difference between pride and humility is not a small matter. The proud man is the enemy of God, but God gives grace to the humble (3.34), counting the humble as his true sons. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you in due time (1Pt 5.6).
[1] Augustine, Sermon 340a.
