Alba 4-6-2025
THE DANGER OF PRIDE
I Corinthians 4:6-13
In the Peanuts cartoon, one day Linus tells Charlie Brown, “When I get big, I'm going to be a humble, little country doctor. I'll live in the city, and every morning I'll get up, climb into my sports car, and zoom into the country. Then I'll start healing people...I'll heal everyone for miles around. I'll be a world-famous, humble, little country doctor.”
Linus should have paid more attention to the following Bible verses: Proverbs 16:18 – “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” And James 4:6 – “God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Pride hinders our relationship with God. Jesus said in Luke 18:14, “...everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
But, wait a minute, why is humility so important? Is pride really that big of a problem? The short answer is, yes, pride is a problem. Now, we need to realize that the word “pride” has a couple of different meanings. So in a sense there is a good pride and a bad pride. When a parent sees their child accomplish something, that is a good type of pride. And whenever we accomplish something good, it is only natural to have a positive emotional reaction. There is nothing wrong with celebrating an achievement, but there is a darker side to pride that can be ugly.
I heard about a fellow who thought he was so wonderful that people said he’d go broke just paying the taxes on what he thought he was worth. In fact, he joined the Navy just so the world could see him. Someone said: “Pride is the dandelion of the soul. It's root goes deep; only a little left behind, and it sprouts again. It's seeds lodge in the tiniest cracks.” Pride is destructive because...
1. It Causes Division
Let's take a look at the situation in Corinth. Pride was a common attitude in the church. They had come to faith in Christ through Paul’s ministry to them. He had planted the church, and he was their spiritual father in the faith. After 18 months of church planting Paul moved away from Corinth. Apollos came to Corinth as the minister to the congregation. People in the congregation were divided over who they followed as their leader. Many of the folks at Corinth had picked their favorite teacher, formed a little clique, and decided their group was better than all the others.
Some followed Paul, others followed Apollos, and others even followed Cephas (whom we also know as Peter). The believers in Corinth were struggling with pride in their favorite leader, and it was tearing the church apart. The Corinthians were using worldly values to judge the relative value of one leader over another, claiming that their leader was better than the others. Consequently, each had his or her favorite. It was not wrong for them to appreciate style differences or differences in demeanor, but they had gone beyond appreciation, and were beginning to demean and depreciate others whose style or demeanor they did not enjoy. So the apostle Paul writes to them in I Corinthians 4:6-7 the following:
“Now these things, brethren, I have figuratively transferred to myself and Apollos for your sakes, that you may learn in us not to think beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up on behalf of one against the other. For who makes you differ from another? And what do you have that you did not receive? Now if you did indeed receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?”
Paul's words, “puffed up”, are literally translated “puffed up like an air bag”. So the point to it all is that when someone acts that way, it’s nothing but hot air. It’s meaningless. It means nothing. I can picture the members of the Corinthian church as balloons that are blown up really big and are floating around the church, each trying to rise higher than the other. The stuff inside the balloons is the pride of the Corinthian Christians, and the method Paul uses to burst those balloons is sarcasm. Paul asks, “What do you have that you did not receive?” Whether the preacher you admire, or the evangelist that has blessed you so greatly with his service, or even the gift you have received and for which you are responsible—do you actually have anything that God didn’t give you?
They are told not to go “beyond what is written”. The Corinthians had failed to pay attention to what was written in Scripture as to how leaders were to be viewed. If they had done so, then they would not take pride in one man over another. “What is written” may be referring to the Bible as a whole (what they had of it by that time), or to the Scripture verses Paul had already quoted.
Whether it was the Bible or those verses, the idea is the same: we need to use God's mindset, not worldly values when it comes to how we live our lives. We must be careful to stay within the outlines of Scripture—that is, the revealed Word of God. A motto of our Christian Churches from the beginning was, “No book but the Bible”. It is our instruction book for life, for now and eternity.
People who ignore the scriptures are like people who take responsibility for some intricate machinery without checking the instruction book. In fact, they'd be pretty dumb to just ignore all the things that had been written down in the instruction book, wouldn’t they? It could even be a dangerous thing to do.
Yet, that’s what some people do as they try to reinvent what it means to be a Christian. They throw out the instruction book. They go beyond what’s been written, and invent their own rules for living... not to mention for judging what’s right and what’s wrong, or what’s wise and what’s foolish. And like little Jack Horner, they stick in their thumb and pull out a plum and say, “What a good boy am I!”
We need to make sure that we don’t go beyond what is written, beyond the revelation of God that we find in His Word. And why not? So that none of us will be puffed up. Pride leads to division. Verse seven asks, “For who makes you differ from another?” The expected answer was “No one.” Although the different groups in Corinth were elevating themselves over one another, they really were not better than anyone else. May we realize none of us is more special than another, and that we have all been blessed in the same way by the same God by His mercy and grace.
There is another danger of pride.
2. It Gives a False Sense of Position
Pride says "I don't need anyone or anything. I'm something special in my own right, and I deserve everything and will not be accountable or serve anyone but myself." Pride has at its center the letter "I". Pride is the default position. It says “Whatever I want”, “Whatever is best for me”.
In I Corinthians 4:8-9 the apostle Paul uses some more sarcasm. He writes, “You are already full! You are already rich! You have reigned as kings without us—and indeed I could wish you did reign, that we also might reign with you! For I think that God has displayed us, the apostles, last, as men condemned to death; for we have been made a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men.”
Those people thought they were hot stuff! Paul points out that there were a good number of people in the Corinthian church who thought they were very important. They considered themselves as kings and as rich. They considered themselves to be wise. They considered themselves as strong. They considered themselves as honorable. And on top of that they had the attitude that, “My teacher is better than yours, therefore I am better than you.”
That kind of pride reminds me of a story about a beaver and a rabbit who were staring up at the immense wall of the Hoover Dam. The beaver said, “No, I didn’t actually build it myself. But it was based on an idea of mine.” Isaiah 5:21 says, “Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight.” (NIV)
The underlying deception that had gripped the people of the Corinthian church was in large part the reason for their boasting and pride. They thought they had made it spiritually. We learn later in this letter that they had been blessed with every kind of spiritual gift, and particularly the supernatural sign gifts. They believed that they had received all that there was to receive. The New Living Translation has verse eight this way, “You think you already have everything you need. You think you are already rich. You have begun to reign in God’s kingdom without us! I wish you really were reigning already, for then we would be reigning with you.”
Paul kind of mocks them for their self-satisfaction, and for having become victims of the illusion that possessing a certain gift marked them as having “arrived”. They had no basis for pride whatsoever because everything they possessed was simply a free gift from God. When we try to take credit for what God has given, pride has become a problem. Pride becomes a problem if we think we are better than someone else because of something we have done, or are able to do, or because of who we are, or even what type of Christian we are.
Yes, we are Christians. But we need to remember that it is because of Jesus' death on the cross, dying in our place that we are forgiven of our sins and on the way to heaven. This does not make us superior to others. We have received God’s grace through Jesus, but none of us earned it or deserve it. Without our Lord, there would be no salvation. “For the wages of sin (what we have earned) is death, but the gift of God (what we could never earn) is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23).
Like the Pharisees in the gospels, there were those in the Corinthian church who looked at themselves as being spiritually superior to others. Some even considered themselves better than Paul and the other apostles! Now, if we asked ourselves an honest question, would we get an honest answer? Do we think we have made it spiritually and have become all that we should be? Certainly, most of would say, “Definitely not!” Yet, we have the tendency to get complacent about our journey with Christ.
When complacency slips into our midst, it is accompanied by satisfaction. We begin to be satisfied, proud with where we are spiritually, thinking there is nothing more to learn, or to do, or to be. Paul’s retort to that would be, “If you have arrived, what happened to me and the other apostles? We are still having a tough time.”
There is another danger of pride.
3. It Can Distort Reality
It will blind you to your true condition. The Corinthian believers thought that they had everything in themselves, but in fact they did not. Paul knew that he and the other apostles had nothing in themselves. They had a completely different view of the Christian life than the Corinthians.
Paul says in I Corinthians 4:9-13, “For I think that God has displayed us, the apostles, last, as men condemned to death; for we have been made a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men. We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are distinguished, but we are dishonored! To the present hour we both hunger and thirst, and we are poorly clothed, and beaten, and homeless. And we labor, working with our own hands. Being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we endure; being defamed, we entreat. We have been made as the filth of the world, the offscouring of all things until now.”
Paul tells us what a servant of Christ should expect a world that is hostile to our Lord to think of us: Fools for Christ; the scum of the earth; the refuse of the world. That description could be understood as the mark of a true servant of the Lord. It marks one who is willing to suffer shame for the cause of Jesus Christ. Consider how Paul was slandered, made poor, and stripped of all his privileges for the sake of Christ.
Far from reigning as kings, the apostles were like captives who bring up the rear of a parade in which the conquering king marches into his city with a trail of captives. The conquered army, with the king, officers, and soldiers who are now prisoners bound in chains, would come at the end of the parade disgraced and condemned to die.
Real life Christianity is no “Hallmark” production! You know what I’m talking about. Hallmark plays on your emotions in the cards they sell, the commercials they produce, and the movies they sponsor. There is always some sort of tension, but by the end of the show or the commercial everything is right again. All is right with the world.
Yet there are thousands of individual Christians who continually feel like something is wrong with their faith, because for some reason bad things continue to happen in their lives. They keep waiting for the “Hallmark moment” when everything will be made right. But Paul’s experience was almost exactly the opposite. Real life Christianity means following Jesus even when it hurts.
Paul’s point in referring to the apostles as spectacles, fools, sufferers, and scum is to show that no Christian is above experiencing these things. Jesus said in Matthew 5:11-12, “Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
In the midst of humiliating trials, Paul and the other apostles acted in the character of the Lord Jesus. When reviled, they blessed; when persecuted, they endured. We have to understand, if we live for Christ, the world will call us fools. But if we don't live for Him, we will truly be fools. There is no in-between. Those who lose their lives for His sake will find them and live with Him forever.
What matters is that we never become ashamed of our Lord. Actually, what really matters is that our Lord does not become ashamed of us. What is it to us if we be regarded as scum of the world, if our Lord regards us as good and faithful servants? What is it to us if we be treated as the refuse of all things, if the Lord treats us as brother or sister, as children of the King?
Our job is not to convince people how wonderful we are, but to show them how glorious Jesus Christ is. Our purpose in life is not to try to get people to praise us, but rather for us to give praise to God. Pride will hinder that. Our only hope is the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ! Jesus is still the Way.
CLOSE:
There is a story about a man who was visiting a church and was asked to give his testimony. This was a well-known Christian businessman.
As he gave his testimony of praise, he said, “I have a fine family, a large house, a successful business, and a good reputation. I have plenty of money so I can support some Christian ministries very generously. Many organizations want me on their board of directors. I have good health and almost unlimited opportunities. What more could I ask from God?”
As he paused for effect, a voice shouted from the back of the auditorium, “How about asking Him for a good dose of humility?”
May we humble ourselves before the Lord and surrender all to Him who gave His life for us.
