by Elder Mike Chon

In my last article we examined the dangers of pride in our life. I think it’s safe to say that pride is one sin that all of us struggle with in one form or another. And since pride is so powerful and so prevalent, God has not left us to ourselves to try to battle and defeat pride. God has given us Christ and the gospel as well as His providence of trials and suffering to continue to humble us and defeat pride in our lives.

The Gospel

If you are a believer, at one point in your life you heard the gospel and you realized that you couldn’t save yourself or earn your way to heaven. No matter how good we thought we were, we all needed to face the fact that each of us were sinners to the core and that we offended a holy and righteous God. Christ calls us to complete self-denial if we are to follow Him (Luke 9:23). In our salvation our pride, our self-worth, and our self-love were crushed by the Spirit of God. In a word, we were all humbled. We were humbled not by guilt, not by some virtuous act, not by comparing ourselves with someone else, but by the Spirit of God. Our self-love turned to self-hate, our self-worth turned to self-less, and our self-centeredness turned to self-death. The Holy Spirit overpowers pride in our life and convicted us of our sin and worthlessness before God.

But why do we still struggle with pride? We still have pride in our fallen flesh, even though it has been wounded it continues to live in us. That is what our sanctification is all about. John MacArthur said, “Sanctification is the triumph of humility over remaining pride.” So you want to know if you are growing and maturing in Christ? You will see the triumph of humility over pride in your life.

One way the Holy Spirit continues to subdue pride in our life is to remind us of the gospel. He reminds us of the contrite spirit that we had when our hearts and eyes were opened to our sinfulness and hopelessness. He reminds us of the atonement of Christ on the cross, who became sin for us so that we can be made righteous (2 Cor. 5:21). He reminds us that the only good that we do is because of God working in us (Phil 2:13). He reminds us that our salvation is completely and totally a work of God (Eph. 2:8). In these ways God humbles us and continues to subdue pride in our life.

Trials and Suffering

Not only does God’s truth help us to know the dangers of pride and gives us the ultimate example of humility in Christ, the bible also teaches us that humility is not learned only by the knowledge of the truth. No matter how much we may read on humility, it will ultimately never test us to live out that truth. So through God’s providence He will graciously bring us trials and suffering into our lives so that we will learn humility through experience. In James 1:2-4, we are instructed to respond with joy in our trials because it will perfect us; in 1 Peter 5:10, Peter himself learned that through suffering Christ would restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish him. The apostle Paul learned this as well in 2 Corinthians 12, when he prayed three times to God that a thorn in his flesh would be removed. And after pleading to God to remove it, Paul understood and confessed the reason why God would not remove it was so that he would not become prideful. The death of pride does not come easy. Humility is cultivated and learned by understanding the truth of God working in your life along with God’s providence that brings trials, suffering, and defeat which destroys our pride.

If we understand the importance of humility and the dangers of pride, we should embrace the truth and providence of God in our lives. If you have ever met someone who is humble, you know that they understand the depth of their sin in light of the cross, and have experienced trials, sufferings, disappointments, distress, and defeats in their life without ever losing hope in our sovereign and loving God.

In the next article we will examine some practical steps we can take to help in our battle with pride.