The Deadliest Sin

Philippians 2:6-8

Watch on YouTube – Watch on Facebook

In Christian thought, there is something known as the Seven Deadly Sins. You’ve probably heard of a number of them before. Sins like wrath or gluttony or lust. But what’s said to be the most deadly of the seven deadly sins and sometimes even referred to as the father of all sin, is the sin of pride.

Now, I hadn’t considered the sin of pride very much until I got to college, and I read C.S. Lewis’ wonderful book Mere Christianity, breaks down the basics of Christian Doctrine. And in Mere Christianity he has an entire chapter devoted to what he labels the great sin, the sin of pride. But he says, if you want to know if the sin of pride affects you, consider how much it bothers you when you see it in somebody else. And that’s what really hit home to me like a thunderbolt. Because I thought, you know, I’m a pretty good Christian, but man, if someone thought they were better than me or someone talked down to me, or if they would snub me in some way, shape or form, the way that that just bothered me so much.

Through that reading, I came to the realization that that’s well, that’s my pride. That’s my pride that I can’t stand to see that. And so besides thinking about the way that pride had affected my relationships with other people, I also then thought and meditated on how pride had affected my relationship with God. Now, growing up in the church, knowing the Law of God as I reflected upon it, you know, how often did I know what God wanted me to do, and what was right and what was wrong, and what Scripture said, but instead of either doing the right thing, or when I did sin confessing my sin to God laying before him, how often would and I find myself trying to justify what I had done or twisting God’s word just a little bit? In order to make it so, well, I can be like God, I suppose in a small way. I can justify myself. I can define what’s right and what’s wrong.

But beyond just dwelling on the pride that resides in my heart, and maybe as you dwell on the pride that resides in your heart, what’s good for us to do as Christians is consider what is the exact opposite of pride. The antithesis of pride. And that’s Christ. Paul puts it so well in Philippians chapter two.

Christ, though he was by very nature God. So the greatest of all things. He didn’t consider equality with God as something to be grasped. But took on the form of a servant. He took on human nature. And what does he do? He humbled himself. Being humble, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. He traded pride for humility. And it wasn’t just to be an example for us. But Christ in his humility did it so he could save us. Because then in his humility, in his death, on the cross, all of your sin, all of my sin, even the sin of pride that was plaguing my heart. That sin is taken from you and from me, and it’s placed on him. So as far as the East is from the West, so far has that’s been removed from us. Our sin is gone because of the humility of Christ.

And then the amazing thing that we can do as Christians is we can go to God. We can lay our sins at his feet and know that they’re removed from us. And then we can pray to God our Father and say, Lord, create in me a new heart. Renewal a right spirit within me. God, make my heart, this prideful heart of mine, take it and make it just a little bit more like the heart of your Son.

And though we’re always a work in progress, we never get it perfectly right, to a certain extent, though, that does happen. Christ works within our life. And when you have a little bit more of the heart of Christ. When you see someone who’s maybe more gifted, more talented, greater than you are, instead of looking at them with envy and the pride that bothers our hearts, we can say, Well, God be praised. They have wonderful gifts. Good for them.

And then another opportunity that we have when we come across somebody who maybe is less fortunate or less gifted than us or has less resources than we do. Instead of looking down on them with disdain or disgust. We have just the slightest opportunity that we can show that same kind of serving love and humility that Christ showed for us. And what a blessing that is in our lives. Praise be to Christ who humbled himself to the point of death, to take our sin from us. Amen.