Steps on the Road to God – Pride Is the Cause of Sin
Steps on the Road to God
Last week we spoke about contrition of heart as the first step on the road to God, as both a cause of repentance and a result of it. And since pride is a huge obstacle to repentance, I would like to speak to you about some of the manifestations and results of pride.
Some Manifestations of Pride
If a person knew the harms that result from pride, he would fully understand the value of humility. One of the saints said: “Every sin fights the virtue that opposes it.” Treachery, for example, fights faithfulness; adultery fights chastity; lying fights truthfulness. But pride fights all virtues…
Pride Is the Cause of Sin
How wonderful is the saying of Scripture in this regard: “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall” (Prov 16:18). Pride causes grace to withdraw, and thus a person falls. Grace withdraws so that when a person falls, he may feel his weakness; and in feeling his weakness, he becomes humble. Thus grace heals him by withdrawing—if the person benefits from his fall and becomes humble.
Pride is the dangerous sin of which Scripture says that the Lord resists it (1 Pet 5:5).
How compassionate the Lord was toward sinners, considering them sick and in need of a physician and of treatment… He had compassion on the adulterous woman who was caught in the very act, defended her, and sent her away in peace. He had compassion on the sinful woman who wet His feet with her tears in contrition. He also had compassion on the tax collector and preferred him over the proud Pharisee.
But as for the proud, He stood against them, and the Apostle says: “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (1 Pet 5:5).
If this is the case, then flee from pride… Yet the strange thing is that most of the proud claim that they are not proud—and this itself is pride!
Saint Augustine explained that the proud perish like smoke, saying: “Smoke rises very high upward! And while it rises, it disperses and comes to an end. Unlike flame, which does not rise like smoke, but remains by its power.”
There are people who, when grace helps them and they find that their lives have changed, boast, saying: “My life has changed and been renewed… I have become another person,” and they explain their lives to people in the manner of “I was… and I became….” And when a person boasts, grace departs from him and he falls. Let him remember the saying of Scripture: “Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor 10:12). If you are standing, do not think that your standing is a permanent state that does not change. Remember the saints who fell. Thus your heart becomes humble, and you take heed for yourself.
Humility preserves you, for the Lord is near to the brokenhearted.
The humble person, since he acknowledges his weakness, fears and is cautious and vigilant; thus he keeps away from stumbling and does not fall. But the proud person takes pride in his strength and is careless, so sin strikes him where he does not know.
The devil has the experience of thousands of years in fighting the sons of men.
He may find you cautious against a certain sin and thus not fight you by it, but he attacks you from another side in which you thought yourself strong, and makes you fall…
He may leave you without warfare for a period, until you think that you have risen above the level of battles, and you take lightly your vigilance; then he returns to you while you are unprepared. And when you fall, you become certain that you are not above falling.
Do not think that falling is only for beginners, and that you are not among the beginners.
When you were humble and vigilant, you used to pray fervently that God would grant you help so that you would not fall. But now you do not pray for this reason; rather, you may pray for others only, because they are exposed to falling and not you!! Thus you remain without help before the enemy…
Among the results of pride—besides falling—is the constant attempt to justify oneself.
The proud person continually defends himself. He never likes to appear in the image of the one who is wrong. He is always righteous in his own eyes, and he wants to be righteous in the eyes of people. If someone points out to him a clear mistake, he may try to cover it with lies or excuses, forgetting his repentance!! Adam did not confess his sin, but tried to justify himself, and so did Eve, and we inherited from them self-justification!
And the sinner adds to the sin he justifies the sin of justification.
How many tricks a person resorts to in justification, all of which go outside the spiritual scope, and in which the self becomes the center of action.
How difficult the word “I was wrong” is for the proud… It wounds him…
He may sometimes say it if it brings him praise, or if the image of humility satisfies his pride. But inwardly, he does not feel at all that he has erred. The word may come out of his mouth and not from his heart. And he says it—if he says it—with a kind of diplomacy, not with a spirit of humility, but with a spirit of benefit.
Therefore, the proud person is far from confession and from feeling error.
Many of the confessions of the proud are merely complaints about the faults of others toward them. They do not confess, but rather condemn others. In every problem, others must be the ones at fault, for it is inconceivable that they themselves would err!!
Therefore, the proud person is often argumentative and disputatious in order to prove his innocence…
Dealing with him is not easy, and understanding him is not easy. He wants all people to obey him, and it is difficult for him to obey anyone. Understanding, in his view, does not mean that he understands the opinion of the other party; rather, his understanding with others means that the other accepts his opinion and is convinced by it…
If the other is not convinced, he may rage and become angry, and he handles the matter with his nerves since he could not handle it with opinion, thought, and persuasion.
Therefore, anger is a companion of pride; it often accompanies it and is accompanied by it…
And because the proud person never concedes his opinion, and thinks that concession is a sign of submission that does not suit his dignity, he therefore tries to prove his opinion by all means… His opinion must be the truth, for the sake of his dignity…
As a result of this, he turns error into a principle and into a doctrine!
If you reproach him for an error, he tries to prove that this error is acceptable and logically sound, and he may search for a verse to prove its correctness, or a story of a saint, or a saying of a famous person—and we call this the “philosophy of errors.”
A person who took sick leave without right, or took “absence without permission,” or gained illicit gain, or evaded a tax, or broke the Lord’s Day—all this has justifications for him that prove that he is right.
Here ideals disappear, and truth disappears, and the self and pride remain…
The proud—by this state—present new scales for good and evil that agree with what they want in terms of dignity and what they hide of errors. Just as the existentialists did to prove themselves, they changed the scales of good, and even denied the existence of God so that they might wrongly enjoy their existence!
How easy it is for the proud to call errors by names other than their own, or by the names of virtues, so that wolves wear the clothing of lambs…
Pampering that spoils a child they call affection! Harshness that complexes children they call firmness! Cunning filled with malice and lying may be called wisdom! Even dancing and amusement they call art…! And if this method enters into doctrine, how easy it is for the proud to slip by it into heresy and heterodoxy. For among the manifestations of pride are self-reliance, self-confidence, stubbornness, and insistence on error—and all these are pillars of heresy…
In all this and more, the proud person loses his meekness…
Unlike the humble person, who is gentle, kind, and humble, easy to deal with others; therefore he is loved by all, submits to them in a spirit of love and wins them. If there is a problem, he solves it with the meekness of wisdom… But the proud person is not mistaken only spiritually, but socially as well…
The proud person is also against God, and God is against him…
The proud person attributes every virtue he does to himself, and not to the work of God with him. And his sins he may attribute to God’s forgetting him!
It is strange that pride may also enter into doctrine, such as the saying of some: “You must claim your rights in the blood of Christ”! What rights do you have? You are a sinful human being condemned to death, unable to save yourself… indebted to God and unable to repay your debts! And God, out of the abundance of His mercy, saved you freely by His grace… If your salvation is a gift from God, how do you claim rights, O sinful debtor?!
The sinner always stands before God as a sinner, asking in contrition and a sense of unworthiness. He does not consider that he has a right… and thus God grants him everything. But the one who demands rights from God places God as a debtor before him, who has not yet given people their rights!!
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