The Danger Of Pride

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.