“The Utmost Evil”
I Corinthians 13:4
December 15, 2002
Love of Another Kind – I Corinthians 13
Don’t look in your Bibles yet; let’s play a little “word association” first: when I say the term “the utmost evil”, what comes first to your mind? C.S. Lewis called bragging “the utmost evil.” In I Corinthians 13, Paul paints for us a picture of what love ought to look like in the life of the believer in Jesus Christ indwelt by God’s Holy Spirit. Turn there with me if you would! (Read and pray).
Aren’t you glad to have campaign season behind you? We are bombarded, for two months, with campaign advertisements; when a candidate isn’t trashing his opponent, he/she is bragging about all of the supposed accomplishments made during their term of service, and bragging about all of the things that will be accomplished if only we have the good foresight to return them to their position of power. But alas, we are now well into the Christmas season, and ads of a different nature are upon us, urging us to buy all of the things we need to make us happy. But in a way, there is a similarity: each ad, at least the ones that I can understand, goes to lengths to brag on their product. Bragging of one sort or another goes on all the time all around us; it’s somewhat of a national pastime, it would seem! Paul takes up the subject here.
Rare word (nowhere else used in the N.T.) used here for “boast” or “brag” (GK. Perpereuomai) means literally “be a windbag”! Fee says it suggests self-centered actions in which there is an inordinate desire to call attention to oneself. It may refer to “bragging without foundation”. For the believer, it connotes not bragging about our accomplishments from the standpoint of our own merit and ability. This refers to a parading of one’s accomplishments; it can be seen as the “other side of jealousy”, for it involves attempting to make others jealous of what we have. While jealousy seeks to put others down, bragging is an attempt to lift our own selves up; it is a particular sin of the person insecure in who she is.
I. The problem in Corinth: pride
Always remember, when reading an epistle in the New Testament, that the writer, generally Paul, is writing with regard to a particular situation or circumstance that is taking place in the particular fellowship. The situation at Corinth was a mess, but the root of all of the sin that was happening in their midst was pride. Today we are thinking particularly about the outworking of that pride in its most blatant and obvious form, the sin of arrogant boasting, which the Corinthians were engaged in. Corinthians were spiritual show-offs, parading their gifts before others in a conspicuous manner. Each tried to do his own thing as prominently as possible, it seemed. Corinthians were conceited about their giftings, their teachers, and their knowledge. Amazingly, they even boasted in their worldliness, which was pretty worldly: idolatry, immorality, even incest of a kind not even practiced by pagans, Paul says in 5:1.
We find evidence of one such example in I Corinthians 4, which echoes some things that Paul has talked about in chapter 1. The Corinthians were lining up and dividing their loyalties behind different teachers and leaders; some were of the “Paul” group, while others had loyalties to Apollos, a silver-tongued orator of the church. Still others claimed that they were above the fray, because they merely followed Jesus. Now, there’s nothing wrong with having one’s favorite Bible teachers and preachers; I love Ravi Zacharias and Alistair Begg myself, while some others may favor Adrian Rogers, John MacArthur, or David Jeremiah. That’s fine, but the problem in the church at Corinth was that they were boasting about their own “leaders” to the exclusion of others, as though they were truly spiritual because of their preferences. Even those of the “Jesus Group” were pious and sanctimonious instead of humble. And Paul chastises them, and rightly so, for their bragging and the arrogance behind it. Even though their reason for bragging strikes us as a little odd, we can nonetheless identify with the bragging itself.
II. What God says about it – (Proverbs)
A. “Pride is dishonorable” – 11:2
Who likes a braggart? Even though we engage in it ourselves, we hate it when we see it in others. Pride is the only disease known to man that makes everyone sick except the one who has it.
B. “Pride is destructive” – 16:18
“Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before stumbling.”
How many relationships remain broken to this day because of pride? In a congregation of this size, there are undoubtedly some folks who are estranged from others because someone’s pride makes someone unwilling to admit blame, to forgive, to reconcile. Perhaps it is a family member or a neighbor, a co-worker or someone who is seated within eyesight of you right now! Is your pride keeping you from reconciliation?
C. “I hate it” – 8:13
“Nothing is more distasteful to God than self-conceit. This first and fundamental sin in essence aims at enthroning self at the expense of God. Pride is a sin of whose presence its victim is least conscious. If we are honest, when we measure ourselves by the life of our Lord who humbled Himself even to death on a cross, we cannot but be overwhelmed with the tawdriness and shabbiness, and even the vileness, of our hearts” (Oswald Sanders in Spiritual Leadership). Arrogance is no small matter; someone has spoken of pride as “the ultimate anti-God state of mind.” Pride reaches up to God’s throne, removes Him, and puts me in His place. Pride, among other sins, is at the root of the very first temptation; the serpent promises Eve that she will be like God if she eats of the fruit. Since we understand that God is first and foremost concerned about His own glory; since we understand that God will not give His glory to another, we understand how much God must hate it when mortal people such as you and I would attempt to usurp His place.
III. The problem with pride – it divides
This is why love is not arrogant, why love does not boast: love brings people together, but pride and arrogance divide. Satan is a great divider, a great alienator. It is his desire to keep people from true, intimate, strong relationships with God and with each other. And pride is one of his chief weapons!
He encourages pride in people, because prideful people are usually more concerned with getting their point of view out to others than to honestly listening to what others are trying to say. Francis of Assisi prayed, “Lord, may I seek more to understand than to be understood”; the prideful person who is too busy running his bragging mouth is usually a poor listener to others, and thus experiences interpersonal problems.
Satan encourages pride because prideful people are slow to admit that they are wrong. This past week I counseled a young couple who plan to marry this coming summer. I asked them if they had ever had a fight. Now, they’ve been going together since high school, and so I knew that the answer would be “yes”, and it was. This is important, because no marriage can thrive in which partners are unable to say “I’m sorry”, to ask forgiveness, and to grant it. Prideful people are slow to admit guilt, and Satan uses this to divide people.
Satan encourages pride because pride causes me to cover up, to not reveal my true self, to cower in fear at the thought of knowing and being known. As we said earlier, bragging is often a characteristic of an insecure person, of one who is fearful that he or she will be found by others as less than they want to be seen as. The prideful person is often fearful of true intimacy, and this portends a host of problems in relationships in general and in marriages in particular. In their pride, the first reaction of Adam and Eve was to cover up, and we have been doing the same ever since!
For a variety of reasons, pride divides, and thus is the opposite of those relationships characterized by love that God would have for us. This is why love does not boast, and is not arrogant! But the question for this morning is this: how can I overcome pride?
IV. Overcoming pride
I appreciate the input of Mel Newland on these thoughts.
A. Acknowledge your mortality.
“Life is a vapor”, we’re reminded time and time again. Last Sunday we prayed for a family whose teenage daughter, a good friend of Zane Sanders, was killed in an auto accident. One moment everything was just fine; the next, a truck slammed into her car and she never regained consciousness. Two weeks ago, an Amish family of eleven went to bed; by morning, five of the eleven had passed into eternity without awakening. We do not control life in our hands; only God does! Pride causes us to forget our place in life and our status, but remembering that our lives here on earth are temporary and hang so precariously, we will be on our way to overcoming the sin of pride.
B. Acknowledge your fallibility.
Time to do it again; every several years, I ask people to repeat, after me out loud, a very liberating phrase. It is a phrase that we all would do well to repeat to ourselves from time to time, because it is a tough one to say, and yet it is true: “hey, I just might be wrong!” Your opinions? They might be wrong! Your political beliefs? They might be wrong! What you said this morning to your spouse or your roommate that you just knew needed to be said? It might have been the wrong thing to say! Your position on a particular fine point of theology? It just might be wrong! Just go ahead and ‘fess up; you just might be wrong—and in fact, about one thing or another, in one way or another, all of us are! I hope that all of my theological beliefs are right—but I’m pretty certain that I’m bound to be wrong on something! I hope that I act as Jesus would each day—but I’m pretty sure I don’t, in my actions, my attitudes, or my motives. Someone has said that learning two foundational truths about life will stand us in good stead: one, there is a God, and two, you’re not Him! So get over it! Not just in a doctrinal sense, wherein you acknowledge that “I am a sinner”, but also in a practical sense, we often get it wrong—no matter what “it” is. Face it!
C. Acknowledge God’s sovereignty.
While we are mortal, destined one day to die, and while we are fallible, failing with regularity, God is immortal and infallible. And He is in control, not you.
Quick question: what do you have that God didn’t give you, that He in His sovereignty doesn’t bless you with, doesn’t allow you to have in His grace? What do you possess that He cannot take away? An auto accident and your good looks might be gone. A fire and your home might be gone. A stroke and your mind might be gone. A financial collapse and your money might be gone. A terminal disease and your life might be gone. And we all know that all of these things happen all the time to people just like us.
When we act with pride, when we are arrogant and brag, we act as though we have forgotten that God is in sovereign control and not us.
D. See others through Jesus’ eyes.
When I am filled with pride, I see myself as more important than others. When I am filled with love, I’m not so concerned to put myself forward, but I am concerned to “consider others as better than myself”, as Paul counsels us in Philippians 2. And I do that as I see them through Jesus’ eyes.
Of all people who had reason to brag, certainly Jesus could have pointed to His list of accomplishments and been justified in doing so. “See that star up there? I did a pretty good job making that one, don’t you think? Like that mountain? Isn’t it picturesque? Yeah, I really slaved over that one for, oh, a few milliseconds.” And yet what do we see Him doing? Showing His love for a rejected Samaritan hussy. Calling the little children to come to Him. Not fearing to touch a leper, or a Gentile, or the scum of the earth, a tax-collector. Shining from His eyes was a genuine love for other people which did not fear to engage them at their point of need.
When I am looking at people from Jesus’ perspective, through eyes of grace, I will not lift myself up, but rather I will seek to love them and to
E. Serve them!
“The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many”, the Scripture teaches us. And He took a towel and cleaned the nasty feet of 12 disciples, men who had regularly argued among themselves as to who was the greatest and who deserved the first place of honor in glory.
Ruth Harms Calkin poses an convicting question to herself—and to us. She writes:
“You know, Lord, how I serve You, with great emotional fervor, in the limelight. You know how eagerly I speak for You at a women’s club. You know how I effervesce when I promote a fellowship group. You know my genuine enthusiasm at a Bible study.
“But how would I react, I wonder, if You pointed to a basin of water, and asked me to wash the calloused feet of a bent and wrinkled old woman, day after day, month after month, in a room where nobody saw, and nobody knew?”
Question: how did you serve someone else this week, not for pay, not for glory, not for thanks, but because the love of God in your heart prompted you to?
It’s all about love, Paul reminds us, and it doesn’t matter what else we think we’ve got down right, he tells us; if we don’t love, then we are nothing. Love does not boast!
