Devotions - Read Online
Wednesday | 15 August 2018
The pride of life can present itself in many different ways. For example, many of us will know someone who is completely consumed with trying to be successful and achieving their goals in life. We may know others who are less motivated, but still maintain that they are free to ‘do what they want to do’ and to ‘be what they want to be’. One of the most common forms of pride for a Christian is the desire to present well, or to make a ‘good showing in the flesh’. Gal 6:12. They become like a clever chameleon and behave differently according to the circumstance they find themselves in – at school, at church or at home – in order to be accepted. Jud 1:12.
Christians can also easily fall into the trap of misusing God’s word to support their own self-centred ambitions. Even someone putting themselves down, claiming they are ‘a nobody’ and are incapable of doing what the Lord has asked of them, is an example of pride!
Regardless of what form our pride takes, it is always driven by the same mechanism – the desire to be the origin of our own image, and the source of our own life and works. A person living according to this self-defined wisdom is ‘walking according to the flesh’. Rom 8:3-5. They are using their natural senses and their own perception of good and evil to assess themselves, their environment, and those around them. They chase after what they decide to be ‘good’ and run away from what they decide to be ‘evil’.
To live our life presuming that we know better than the Lord is the ultimate arrogance. Rom 9:20-21. Concerning such pride, the prophet Isaiah declared, ‘Woe to the one who quarrels with his Maker. Shall the potter be considered as equal with the clay, that what is made would say to its maker, “He did not make me”; or what is formed say to him who formed it, “He has no understanding”?’ Isa 29:16.
Further Study:
Jude 1
Daily Proverb:
References:
Gal 6:12
Those who desire to make a good showing in the flesh try to compel you to be circumcised, simply so that they will not be persecuted for the cross of Christ.
Jud 1:12
These are the men who are hidden reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves; clouds without water, carried along by winds; autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted.
Rom 8:3-5
For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.
Rom 9:20-21
On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, ‘Why did you make me like this,’ will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?
Isa 29:16
You turn things around! Shall the potter be considered as equal with the clay, That what is made would say to its maker, ‘He did not make me’; Or what is formed say to him who formed it, ‘He has no understanding’?