Tag Archives: Love wins!

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Warning: Pride Kills Love

It Blinds Us To The World Around Us—And Within Us

SYNOPSIS: You cannot be loving and prideful at the same time. One destroys the other. You see, pride blinds us to the world around us—and to the world within us. It makes us think others are worse than they are and we are better than we are. And if that weren’t bad enough, it blinds us to God—to who He is, to what He is doing, and to what He wants from us. In reality, pride blinds us to our own pride, and that is what makes it so destructive. That is why the God of love hates pride. We should, too, especially our own pride.

New Article: Pride Kills Love

Make Love Work // 1 Corinthians 13:4 (NLT)

Love is … not proud.

It is helpful to remember that Paul is describing love, both positively (it is patient, kind, truth-loving, determined, faithful, hopeful, and enduring) and negatively (it is not jealous, boastful, proud, rude, selfish, irritable, resentful, or unjust) in the context of Christian worship and service. While this can be applied to marriage, family, and friendships, the primary application is how those in the body of Christ are to relate to one another.

As Paul teaches elsewhere, Christ-followers are to, “Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.” (Rom 12:10) Jesus said the preeminent quality that will draw the world’s attention to him will be the love his disciples display to each other: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:35)

That high call to love, wherever it is found in the New Testament writings, requires an attitude of humility, servanthood, and selflessness and is therefore impossible when human pride resides in the heart. How is that?

Pride blinds us to the world around us … and to the world within us. It makes us think others are worse than they are and we are better than we are. And if that weren’t bad enough, it blinds us to God—to who He is, to what He is doing, and to what He wants from us. In reality, pride blinds us to our own pride, and that is what makes it so destructive.

In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis noted, “A proud person is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.”

Ultimately, our pride’s ability to blind will lead us to the opposite of love: a life of lovelessness, insensitivity, judgment attitudes, and even hatred, which is simply a life that doesn’t proactively demonstrate love. Lewis went on to say that at the end of the day, without proactive love, “we shall insist on seeing everything—God and our friends and ourselves included—as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.”

Lewis then described the corrosive effects of human pride:

Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, ‘Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black.

That is how we begin to see others as bad and not be able to stop doing it. We become judgmental, critical, harsh, and superior. Sadly, that is how we become forever fixed in a universe where lovelessness rules our lives.

And that is why pride is the core of all sin, why it is so dangerous, and why the God of love hates it so viscerally and vociferously! Don’t believe me, consider the following verses

I hate pride and arrogance, evil behavior and perverse speech. (Prov 8:13)

When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom. (Prov 11:2)

The LORD detests all the proud of heart. Be sure of this: They will not go unpunished. (Prov 16:5)

Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall. (Prov 16:18)

What do those verses say about you and me and our propensity for pride? Again, simply this: you cannot exhibit God’s love if you tolerate pride in your life. One will destroy the other.

So at all costs, make sure love wins in your life!

Take A Moment: Since pride blinds you to your own pride, ask someone you trust, someone who knows you, someone who will speak loving truth to you, if pride exists in your heart. Above all, refuse to allow pride to fix you in a universe of lovelessness.

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How We Kill Our Christian Witness

Being With Jesus:
John 3:16-17

“God did not send his Son into the world to condemn it, but to save it. There is no eternal doom awaiting those who trust him to save them. But those who don’t trust him have already been tried and condemned for not believing in the only Son of God.”

Unfortunately for too many Christians, John 3:17 gets lost in the shadows of the verse that immediately precedes it—John 3:16. Who doesn’t love that verse? It is the heart of God—his sacrificial love for a sinful world; it’s the Bible summed up in one short verse; it’s the simplest yet most powerful collection of words the world has ever known. The truth that Jesus declares in John 3:16 is the only hope for the world.

But Jesus’ followers often miss what follows: he didn’t come to force his gracious offer of eternal life down the throats of those who resisted. His plan wasn’t to set up a spiritual police state to enforce adherence to his sacrificial love. He wasn’t even going to publically condemn those who foolishly, perhaps even violently, rejected the divine plan to eternal life.

So why do so many believers have an insatiable need to condemn the unbelieving world? If condemnation were what sinners needed, Jesus would have done that. Rather, Jesus understood that their very resistance of his grace and rejection of his atonement was all the condemnation that was needed. The unbelieving world already stood condemned. Why condemn what was already condemned?

Contrary to Jesus’ approach, condemnation seems too often to be our leading evangelistic strategy. But when believers, churches and spiritual leaders take to their social media outlets to decry the current crisis of morality in America, or lash out on the airwaves about the obvious failures of our out-of-control government, or write in their blogs about the evils of gay marriage or the horror of late term abortion or the ills of our increasingly secular culture, we are well on our way to destroying whatever Christian witness we might have once been able to exert. Does that mean I am in favor of those things, or believe that we should never speak out about sin or injustice in the world? Not at all!

It’s just sadly interesting to me that we tend to pass too quickly over the greatest truth in the Bible, John 3:16, and go right for the jugular vein in condemning what already stands condemned when Jesus himself, the one we represent, didn’t even do that. Christian pollster George Barna summarized recently some research on the church’s perception in the world by stating, “the Christian community is not known for love.” If Jesus was known for loving the world so much that he gave his life to redeem it, why should that be any less true of his followers? He concludes that this perception renders ineffective most of our evangelistic efforts. Our condemning voice overshadows our loving heart.

So what should be our response to all of these ills in the world that need to be set aright? Are we to just idly stand by, do nothing and say nothing? No—we would be derelict in our discipleship to take that approach.

We would, however, be far more effective in reaching and redeeming the world if we would do what Jesus did. The best evangelism remains that by our love—for the Lord, for each other, and for the lost—that an unbelieving world will be attracted to our Savior. Like Jesus, when we demonstrate selfless, stubborn, sacrificial love, we will have the undeniable effect that Jesus had: the world will be both repulsed yet attracted by God’s irresistible love in us.

That is the strange thing about God’s love: while every human being fundamentally craves it, because of sin, many foolishly, sadly reject. Those who do stand condemned already. Yet the fact remains, whether our witness is embraced or repulsed, we have an undeniable impact in forgoing condemnation and letting love speak for itself. The Apostle Peter,

“You’ve been chosen…to declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his light …[So] live such good lives among unbelievers that even if they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us…Always be ready [to share your faith], but do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.” (I Peter 2:9 & 12, 3:16)

I watch too many believers who are anything but that as they engage in politics, cultural issues or theological debates. It seems that some Christian’s are more passionate about their point of view than pointing people to Jesus. We would win more debates, elections and, souls too, if we’d learn to offer our opinions with more love and less condemnation.

The word “evangelism” is from a compound Greek word, “eu,” meaning “good” (euphoria) and “aggelos” meaning “messenger” (angel). So euaggelos is simply “a good messenger.” Our task is just translating the Good News by our selfless, sacrificial lives in a way that connects—or reconnects—lost people with a loving God.

Bottom line: Jesus didn’t condemn; he just fiercely, stubbornly, unconditionally loved. We should go and do likewise.

_____________________

“You must be the good news before you can share the good news.”
(Joe Aldrich)

 

Getting To Know Jesus: Your assignment this week will be to light a candle instead of cursing darkness when you come across the temptation to condemn. And believe me, you will face such a temptation.