- Pride may be the single most accurate word to describe our modern age. It permeates our politics and government, shapes business and education, drives entertainment and technology, and increasingly defines the broader culture. Tragically, its influence is also evident within much of the church. Yet pride is not a morally neutral trait or merely an unfortunate personality flaw; it carries profound spiritual consequences. Scripture speaks with unmistakable clarity about God’s view of pride—its nature, its danger, and its inevitable consequences. The more we learn to see pride from God’s perspective, the more clearly, we recognize its pervasive presence all around us—and within us.
How Do We Define Pride?
What’s interesting about Scripture is that it both deals with pride and demonstrates pride without naming it in many of its stories. The first time we’re really introduced to pride in Scripture is in the Garden of Eden, where Satan approaches Eve in Genesis chapter 3. He asks Eve this question: “Did God really say?” Now, Satan was not asking for clarification, as if he didn’t really understand what God’s rules were. This question is saying to Eve, “I want you to pull yourself out of the realm that God has made, the story God has prepared for you and Adam, and I want you to stand outside of the boundaries of right and wrong that God has set for you. Then you can make your decision, or judgment, about God’s decisions.”
This way of questioning placed Eve outside of God’s construction, in a “neutral” place where she thought she could make a judgment about God. In your car, you have forward, reverse, and neutral. You might have more options than that, but for the most part, all of us have neutral. You can decide if you’re going to go forward or backward from the position of neutral. Satan introduces the lie to Eve that makes her think life is that way. She can live in the “neutral zone,” where she gets to decide right and wrong, truth or falsity—where she gets to make those determinations because God is the one on trial. She is the “neutral” judge.
Scripture says in James 4:4 that we are, therefore, to be people who think of God with humility. Pride isn’t merely thinking, “I’m great and above all things!” Pride is believing the lie that our minds are in a neutral space where we can make independent judgments about God.
What Is the Opposite of Pride?
Pride is a result of believing, “I can, with my own judgments, my own morality, and my own ideas, decide if God’s way is right, if His way is logical enough for me or moral enough for me.” God has already given an explanation of the world through His Word. It is not as though we are standing in a world that has yet to be interpreted. We are standing in a pre-interpreted world. God has already done the interpretation. Our problem is that we do not want to submit to His interpretation of this world.
James 4:6 states, “God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble.” He opposes, He hates, He despises pride. And then it says in verse 7, “Submit therefore to God.” The idea of submitting means submitting to what God has declared—His criteria, the reality He made and in which you live. He has established the truth about what is right and wrong. All of it is His. And when you submit to it, that’s humility. So, this act of submitting yourself to God’s explanation of the world, “humbling yourself,” that is the opposite of pride. When you think you can stand beyond God’s explanation of the world and decide for yourself based on your own criteria, that’s pride.
What Instruction Does the Bible Give to Help a Person Recognize and Combat Pride?
One of the most difficult passages—that we’re not always sure how to understand—is Proverbs 1:7. Proverbs 1:7 reads this way: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.” We like that. We like that verse because it reminds us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. But I don’t know if we understand what that means when it comes to pride.
If we remember that pride is the outpouring of not thanking God or not honoring God (Rom.1:21), and that it places us in a position where we can question God according to our own personal criteria, then what we’re doing is demonstrating that we have no fear of God at that point. Think about what Satan was doing at that moment with Eve. At the moment he was talking to Eve, he was trying to make her no longer fear the Lord because, with the challenge he gives her, she begins to lessen her fear of the Lord. She felt more and more equal with the Lord that she might cast judgment upon His way and His Word. Eve, in seeking knowledge, loses knowledge. She becomes a fool because knowledge—real knowledge—must be connected to reality. The reality was: the entire story she was living in that gave context to all the truth around her, was a story of God’s making. There is no other reality to stand in. There is no distance away from the story to then look back upon it. To lose the fear of God is to enter into absolute falsehood and the delusion of neutrality.
We don’t live in the lobby of a giant hotel where we look at all the doors that represent all these possibilities—Judaism, Christianity, atheism—and, from the lobby of the hotel, decide about what we’re going to choose. Rather, true understanding begins with fearing the Lord, where you fear Him, thank Him, and honor Him. That is the access we have to the reality of the story. He has made us and established the reality of right and wrong. He has shown us in His Word His way, and His Word is truth. Standing before Him and fearing Him is the only way to gain access to that knowledge.
Therefore, for us to recognize and be able to see where pride is beginning to leak into our hearts, we must look for where we have stopped fearing the Lord, where we have started down the pathway to unbelief, and where we have begun questioning the Lord’s way and His Word. We combat pride by embracing and submitting to the reality of God’s authority and humble ourselves to an absolute reliance on him.
Conclusion
The danger of pride, then, is far greater than thinking too highly of ourselves. At its core, pride is the refusal to submit to the authority of our Creator. It is the ancient lie of Eden—that we can step outside God’s truth, stand in judgment over His Word, and decide for ourselves what is good, true, reasonable, and right. The remedy for pride is not merely thinking less of ourselves but recovering the fear of the Lord: honoring Him, thanking Him, trusting His Word, and submitting our judgments to His. Combating pride is returning to reality itself—the humble confession that God is God, we are His creatures, His Word is true, and knowledge begins when we fear Him.