“31 But eagerly desire the greater gifts. And now I will show you the most excellent way. 1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud.”
By any reckoning, Winston Churchill was one of the most influential men of the past century. The fact that he believed himself to be so is not among his many endearing character traits.
He was once in a heated argument with his butler, David Inches. Churchill rebuked the man saying, “You’re very rude to me, Inches.” The butler replied, “You’re very rude to me, sir.” Churchill responded, “yes, but I am a great man.” Churchill walked out of the room and Inches said under his breath, “No, you’re not,” and the rest of what he said is unrepeatable in a sanctuary.
Churchill’s pride certainly had an impact on Inches. It was not the impact of love. Churchill saw only his own greatness in that moment. He saw only a great man. Inches saw only Churchill’s pride. He certainly didn’t see a great man. Now Churchill’s pride had an effect on David Inches. Your pride has an effect on others. My pride has an effect on others.
Pride has an impact. So does love. Make the impact of love. That is the claim of this sermon: Pride has an impact. So does love. Make the impact of love.
We will see this in two points. First: love is not proud. Second: love is humble.
First: love is not proud. A prideful man is full of himself. He is bloated with his own importance. Great man though he was, Churchill was in the wrong to be full of himself. Now if Churchill has no right to be full of himself, then I’m certainly without an excuse. Imagine any of us being rude to a bank teller and explaining ourselves with the words of Churchill, “yes, but I am a great man.” It would be preposterous; pride is always preposterous.
A prideful man is inflated with his own importance to paraphrase Anthony Thiselton. What makes this inflation tragic is that the prideful man is always inflated with nothing but hot air. You didn’t excuse Churchill’s pride. No one will excuse yours.
You were created to love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. You were created to give total allegiance to God. Pride causes you to love yourself with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. Pride causes you to give total allegiance to yourself. Pride makes you full of yourself.
There is no way to be rightly full of yourself because, of course, Jesus wasn’t full of himself. The disciples all thought they were too important to wash the dirt and dung off each other’s feet, but Jesus, “got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.” You can’t imagine Jesus being rude to a man and acknowledging this rudeness by saying, “yes, but I’m God.” If Jesus wasn’t full of himself, you and I have no business doing so.
Yet we are often full of ourselves. The Corinthians were full of themselves. This word for ‘pride’ in this verse is quite common in this letter. The Corinthians’ pride had resulted in factions within the church. Each side was puffed up with itself and it was tearing the church apart.
Each side acted as if they knew the hearts on the people of the other side. Such is the arrogance of pride. Rather than asking questions and listening, we make assumptions. “Let everyone be quick to listen and slow to speak and slow to anger.” This is a reminder for us in anything that threatens to divide us as a church. We are doing this series to focus on unity. We are all prone to pride and self-justification. We have a tendency to think we know each other’s hearts and can discern each other’s motivations.
The Corinthians were divided by pride over many matters, but the one of which we’ve already spoken in this series is spiritual gifts. Rather than using their gifts to build up the church, they used their gifts to puff themselves up. Some of them could speak in tongues and they seemed to think this made them somehow better than others within the congregation. “This is precisely what Paul finds so disturbing and so un-Christ-like among the Christians in Corinth,” writes Thiselton. “They like to parade their ‘gifts’ and ‘spirituality.’”
Now the fact that a man can be sinfully and divisively proud of his spirituality is a terrifying thought because it shows the depravity of the human heart. We humans are capable of making even grace all about ourselves. That is messed up.
Pride is profoundly messed up, and in a way, this sin lurks under all the other sins. Whenever you sin, you sin out of pride. You sin because your own will seems more important to you than God’s will. You sin because you have become the goal of your own life rather than God being the goal of your life. This is one reason why sin is never a minor matter. It is always a sin of pride.
Pride was endemic in Corinth. It was so pronounced that church members were prideful towards Paul. They thought that he was imprisoned far too many times to be a man of God. They thought his preaching was rather lackluster. They didn’t regard him as much of an authority. They frankly thought he was a bit of a disappointment. Thanks to this sin of pride, even a man who wrote much of the New Testament was largely rejected by this church. Pride is far more insidious than any of us can begin to comprehend and it has far more of a hold on us than we will recognize until we reach glory. Perhaps pride has infected this church. It certainly has infected each of us. “Pride is spiritual cancer,” writes CS Lewis; “it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.”
No man knows the depth of his own pride. God reveals His children’s sin to them little by little because He knows the full horror of our sin would prove to be too much for any of us. If you are in the midst of being humbled by God, you know this to be true, and you know that, “a bruised reed He will not break, and a smoldering wick He will not snuff out.”
Now perhaps you are not being humbled by God. Perhaps you have never been humbled by God. It is very possible that you know that pride is wrong, but you really don’t know why it is wrong for you to be proud.
You must be humbled by God. You must be humbled because, as Jesus said, unless you become like a little child, you will not inherit the kingdom of heaven. If you are too full of yourself to be humbled before God, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. “It is easy to be heavy [as in full of yourself],” said Chesterton, “[it is] hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity… Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.”
Now you can only take yourself as lightly as God intends if you are born again. The Pharisee Nicodemus came to Jesus full of himself. Jesus told him, “unless you are born again, you will not inherit the kingdom of heaven.”
Now if you haven’t been born again, please consider that perhaps it is because you are full of yourself. Perhaps you will not exchange your life for Christ’s life because, although you would never say it aloud, you actually prefer yourself to Christ. You think more highly of yourself than you think of God.
You can change. You must change. You must say with John the Baptist, Jesus, “must increase, I must decrease.” Now interestingly enough as you become less, you will find yourself more the person whom you were created to be. It is fascinating: the prouder you become, the less you become. The humbler you become, the more you become.
Now you must be humbled by God, but God doesn’t humble you out of pride on His part. He doesn’t humble you for the sake of His own ego. He humbles you because it is good for you to be humbled. As the hymn says, “It is a gift to be simple, it is a gift to be free; it’s a gift to come down where we ought to be, and when we find ourselves in the place just right, it will be in the valley of love and delight.”
You can’t receive that from God when you are full of yourself. You can’t live in awe of God if you are puffed up with yourself. Humble people are much happier people. God humbles you for your good.
God humbles you so that you can love with His love. You can’t act in pride and act in love at the same time. You cannot imagine Churchill acting in love towards David Inches even as he said, “yes, but I am a great man.”
Now if you are a Christian, you need to take this to heart because we Christians can grow quite prideful as to what God has done in our lives. We wouldn’t say it aloud, but the prayer of the Pharisees isn’t all that far from our hearts, “God, I thank you that I am not like other men.”
By the power of God, you are growing in holiness. You are growing in love if you have the Spirit. You truly are becoming more like God, and, of course, you will notice the difference between yourself and someone who wants nothing to God. You will be tempted to interpret that difference as a sign of your superiority.
This is the bind in which we Christians find ourselves. We are becoming what the world can never because it lacks the Spirit and yet we must not consider ourselves better than the world. How can you do that? How can you know that you truly are becoming more like God and not consider yourself superior? You do it by recognizing that you are what you are only by the grace of God. As Paul asked the Corinthians, “what makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?”
You have no right to pride not because you are as bad as the world but because it is only by the grace of God that you are different at all from the world. You didn’t save yourself from sin. You didn’t bring yourself to spiritual life. You didn’t begin this good work in yourself. Left to yourself, you would be no better than the world. The fact that you have been changed and are being changed is due to the grace of God and only to the grace of God.
It is simply nonsense to say that a man who lays down his life for his wife as Christ lays down his life for the church is acting better than a man who beats his wife without remorse. It is nonsense. It is also nonsense to say that the man who lays down his life for his wife as Christ lays down his life for the church has a right to pride when he compares himself to the man who beats his wife without remorse. He has no right to pride; he is different because, and only because of, the grace of God.
This is essential for you to grasp because we Christians tend to think that humility consists in thinking less of ourselves when, in fact, humility consists in forgetting about yourself and remembering the grace of God. “Humility is not thinking less of yourself,” as CS Lewis put it, “it’s thinking of yourself less [often].” Stop thinking of yourself. Focus on the grace of God.
Now thinking the worst of yourself has never motivated you to do what love does. Humbling yourself before the grace of God will. We see that in our second point: love is humble.
Pride does not love. Humility loves. You see that in Jesus Christ. He who had every reason to be proud was not proud. He loved. He didn’t grumble about the incarnation as if it were unworthy of him to become like us. He became like us for us. He didn’t grumble about the cross as if it were unjust for he, who is our superior, to suffer for us. When you read the gospels, Jesus appears to be totally unconcerned with himself. In other words, he is completely humble. Only someone that humble would ever do for you what Jesus has done for you.
Jesus never spoke as if he were better than his listeners. He never acted as if he were superior to the people he was helping. Now this is remarkable, because everything Jesus said is what God would say in that situation. Everything that Jesus did is what God would do in that situation. We who have no reason for pride tend to be so very prideful and Jesus who has every reason for pride was completely humble.
He came to love. We are often too puffed up with ourselves to even take note of how we could love. His life made the impact of love. How often our lives make the impact of pride. We are so very apt to, in the words of Jonathan Edwards, “treat others with scorn and contempt what others say, or to speak of what they do with ridicule and jeering reflections; to sit and relate over what such an one said and did at such and such a time, and make… sport with it.” Edwards wrote those words sometime near 1749. How little has changed. How often we make the impact of pride by relating what others have done or said with a sense of ridicule and how often we relate what so and so said to show how very superior we are. That has an impact and it is the impact of pride.
You are called to make the impact of love. When you make the impact of love, you don’t show how very superior you are. Neither do you show how very inferior you are. You show that you are journeying right along with other people rather than having completely arrived, to paraphrase Wayne Mack. In short, you stop asking as if you’ve arrived.
When I act in pride, I act as if I have arrived and that the world would be a better place if only others could reach my level of maturity. That has an impact. When I act in love I act as if I am still learning and growing. That has an impact.
When you act in love, you will act as if you are much more like other people than unlike them. You have hopes and dreams? So do they. You have struggles? So do they. You have treasured possessions and memories? So do they. You are a responsible party? So are they so treat them as a responsible party. Don’t do for them what they must do for themselves. That is what pride does. Pride says, ‘you can’t be trusted to be responsible so I must do it for you.’ Love says, ‘of course you are worthy of being treated like a responsible person.’ So I will hold you responsible.
When you act in love, you will also be willing to do for others what they legitimately cannot do for themselves. Pride says, ‘I can do this. Why can’t you?’ Love says, ‘I can see that you can’t do that. There are many things I can’t do. Let me help you.’
When you act in love, you will be willing to confess your sin against another person because your humility makes you answerable to others. Pride is unwilling to humble itself this way. “It is pride,” says Jonathan Edwards, “that makes men so exceedingly [unwilling] to confess their fault when they have fallen into [sin], and [it is pride] that makes them think that [confessing this sin would be a source of shame when it is in fact] their greatest honor.” Refusing to confess sin will have an impact. Willingly confessing sin will have an impact. The first makes the impact of pride upon a relationship; the second makes the impact of love.
Humility allows a man to open himself up and this is the road to love. Rebecca DeYoung is right, “It’s ironic that the art of impressing others and gaining applause involves carefully hiding ourselves just as much as it involves showing ourselves off to advantage. To be lauded by others, there are things we cannot let them see. Winning their approval and praise requires not only that we put forward a false façade, but also the flip side of the coin: that we carefully conceal the ugly truth about ourselves. The sort of acceptance and approval this strategy wins us rightly feels fragile and hollow. It leaves the deep human need for full and unconditional welcome unfulfilled and unsatisfied.”
Perhaps your pride is keeping you from relationships. Perhaps you spend a good deal of time trying to manage others’ perceptions of you; you fear that you cannot be known for who you really are because who would love you as you really are? That is pride speaking. Humble yourself and join the human race which is filled with sinners; be a sinner for whom Christ died.
Pride will keep you from relationships and you can only make the impact of love in relationships. You can only make the impact of love if you are willing to love. Think of someone who has loved you. Now I would dare say that this person has had a much greater impact on your life than Winston Churchill has. Churchill might have considered himself a great man, but I would dare say that you haven’t missed him the way you’ve missed your mother who passed away or a grandfather who was influential in your life. You miss the people who loved you and the ones you wish loved you better.
You don’t need to be a Churchill to make an impact. What you need to do is love. You might need to get over yourself. Try to take someone else as seriously as you take yourself. This week try to take your wife as seriously as you take yourself. Take the time that you would normally devote to your own concerns and focus them on her concerns. That will make far more of an impact on your marriage than your becoming the greatest figure of the 21st century ever could. Choose one person you love and carry through.
Now consider the man who has made the greatest impact on the world. The man who has made the biggest impact on the world did so without political power. He didn’t have armies at his disposal the way Churchill did. He had a few handfuls of followers who were not influencers by any stretch of the definition. The man who made the biggest impact on the world did so without economic resources. He had no place to lay his head. The man who made the biggest impact on the world did so by way of love. “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.” The love you see on the cross is simply the logical conclusion of the love Jesus showed throughout his life. As John put it, “having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”
If you are born again, you are born again into that life. You are loved so that you can love. You are loved so that you will love. Don’t let pride get in the way of that. Amen.