Lay Aside the Weight of Pride
by Jon Bloom
Many of the burdens I bear in life are
made far heavier by adding on top of them
an oversized image of myself. I simply
have a tendency to think more often about
and more highly of myself than I ought to
think (Romans 12:3).
Ironically, the emotional effect of my
oversized self-image is often a low self-
image. I feel bad about myself.
I can feel embarrassed about my poor
memory when it comes to people’s names,
Scripture quotes, book titles, what last
week’s sermon was about, the main points
of my last article, and that fourth thing
I’m supposed to pick up at the store. I
find this embarrassing not because it’s a
moral failure, but because it exposes the
fact that my memory is weaker than most of
my peers. My memory struggles weigh
heavier on me than they should because I
want to be great and I’m not.
I can feel discouraged, even shame, when
the family worship I lead isn’t more
organized, systematic, regular, or
inspiring to my kids (“Dad, are we almost
done?”). While continuing to press toward
greater effectiveness here is a good
thing, this weighs heavier on me than it
should because I want to be the sage,
spiritual father. I want to be known for
knowing what and how to teach, and for
raising children who someday recount the
profound benefit they received from the
fountain of my godly wisdom. I want to be
great and I’m not.
The Weight of Wanting to Be Great
I could go on rehearsing my feelings of
inadequacy — over my breadth of reading,
slowness in writing, gaps in parenting,
productivity in general, paralysis in
certain kinds of decision making,
concentration struggles, impatience with
ambiguity, and numerous other limitations,
weaknesses, and sins. You probably know
these struggles or others like them.
My cumulative sense of inadequacy often
feels like a low self-image. But actually
it’s largely due to thinking more highly
of myself than I ought to think and
wanting others to admire me more than I
deserve. My shame comes from an
exaggeratedly high self-image that feels
exposed by my limitations, weaknesses, and
sins, making living with or fighting them
much more burdensome than necessary.
Wretched man that I am! Who will free me
from this great weight of pride? Thanks be
to God through Jesus Christ our Lord, who
invites me to take up his easy yoke and
light burden of embracing the role,
status, and reputation of a servant
(Matthew 11:30; Mark 9:35).
The Liberation of Service
A profound, pervasive liberation is
available to anyone who will embrace
Jesus’s call to servanthood:
“You know that those who are considered
rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them,
and their great ones exercise authority
over them. But it shall not be so among
you. But whoever would be great among you
must be your servant, and whoever would be
first among you must be slave of all. For
even the Son of Man came not to be served
but to serve, and to give his life as a
ransom for many.” (Mark 10:42–45)
There is liberation in becoming a servant,
even a slave, of everyone else? What is
this strange paradox of Jesus? He sets us
free (John 8:36) to be enslaved?
Yes! Because the greatest tyrant known to
humanity is the sinful, pathologically
selfish, self-exalting pride that lives in
each one of us. When it’s focused inward,
it enslaves us to perceptions and pursuits
of success, beauty, competency, security,
and a coveted reputation, and in the
process heaps upon us burdens we cannot
bear. When we fail, it pressures us to lie
and deceive in order to hide what we feel
too ashamed (too proud) to admit. When
focused outward, it heaps great burdens
upon (“lords it over”) others. That’s why
God mercifully opposes our pride (1 Peter
5:5).
Jesus’s call to servanthood is a call to
freedom (paradoxical as it is). Freedom
from the oppressive pressure of trying to
be good enough, and the chronic shame of
never being good enough. And it’s a
freedom from our tyrannical tendency to
manipulate others into serving our
prideful pursuits.
When our god-sized self-image meets our
fallen man-sized capacities and failures,
we become enslaved to pride-fueled sins in
a futile effort to bridge the chasm. But
in embracing Jesus’s servant-like
humility, we throw off the unbearably
heavy yoke of bondage to such sin and take
up Jesus’s easy yoke of grace-empowered
faith and love, for God truly does “[give]
grace to the humble” (1 Peter 5:5).
How to Lay Aside Pride
To identify our greatest strongholds of
pride, we must remember that often they
don’t feel like a boastful sense of
arrogant superiority (though they can).
Often they feel like areas of low self-
esteem, because what’s fueling our low
self-esteem is a frustrated and ashamed
desire to be great.
To this Jesus gives us a gracious promise:
“Everyone who exalts himself will be
humbled, and he who humbles himself will
be exalted” (Luke 14:11). And he reminds
us that he came to us “as the one who
serves” (Luke 22:27), and that we should
have this mind too, doing “nothing from
selfish ambition or conceit, but in
humility count[ing] others more
significant than [ourselves]” (Philippians
2:3, 5).
Laying aside the weight of wanting to be
great occurs when we shift our attention
off our achievements, status, and
reputation and focus it on Christ —
specifically on the person(s) in the
church, often “the least of these”
(Matthew 25:40), whom Christ places before
us today to serve. Not only does this
service force us to put love into action,
but it also liberates us from the tyranny
of self-absorbed pride and enables us to
experience the deep, joy-producing reality
that “it is more blessed to give than to
receive” (Acts 20:35).
How to Read a Bible Full of Promises
D. A. Carson / November 17, 2016
How to Read a Bible Full of Promises
The Bible portrays the unfolding of
history under the sovereignty of God to
bring about his purposes in line with his
promises.
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