Pride is when sinful human beings
aspire to the status and position of God and
refuse to acknowledge their dependence upon him.
– C. J. Mahaney in Humility
Pride consists in attributing to ourselves
and demanding for ourselves the honor,
privileges, prerogatives, rights, and power
that are due to God alone.
– Wayne A. Mack (with Joshua Mack) in Humility
Is our heart overwhelmed by the truth of our
natural insignificance before the Almighty God?
Are we painfully aware of our sinfulness
and unworthiness before a Holy God?
Is God the constant center around which our
thoughts, desires, words, and actions revolve?
Do we give Him alone our worship, praise,
devotion, and obedience?
– Wayne A. Mack (with Joshua Mack)
in Humility: The Forgotten Virtue
Humility…consists in an attitude wherein we recognize our own insignificance and unworthiness before God and attribute to Him the supreme honor, praise, prerogatives, rights, privileges, worship, devotion, authority, submission, and obedience that He alone deserves. It also involves a natural, habitual tendency to think and behave in a manner that appropriately expresses this attitude. In other words, that attitude of humility is always seen in humble action.
– Wayne A. Mack (with Joshua Mack)
in Humility: The Forgotten Virtue
At the root of all ingratitude is the love of one’s own greatness.
– John Piper
The great obstacle to seeking the Lord is pride.
– John Piper
To be proud is to be more like the devil than like Christ.
– J. C. Ryle
The devil is content that people should excel in good works,
provided he can but make them proud of them.
– William Law
Humility makes you disappear, which is why we avoid it.
-Paul Miller
We spend the whole of our lives watching ourselves.
But when a man becomes meek he has finished with all that.
– Martyn Lloyd Jones
Every good thing in the Christian life grows in the soil of humility.
– John Piper
Pride is self-idolatry. God alone is to be worshipped and served because His will is supreme and He alone is God, but pride asserts that man should take supremecy over God. God proclaimed through Isaiah, “My glory I will not give to another” (Isaiah 48:11). God will not tolerate a usurper who attempts to rise above him. God hates pride because the proud man sets himself up in opposition to God. The proud man attempts to steal the glory that God alone deserves.
– Wayne A. Mack in
Humility: The Forgotten Virtue
Continuing our thoughts on humility, consider these words from Charles Spurgeon:
“One way in which the Holy Spirit glorifies Christ is this – He gives us more and more debasing views of our own selves. There are two Gods, as it were – one the true, the other the false. Self first mounts the throne in our hearts; the higher the throne of self is exalted, the lower must Christ go. Much of self, little of the Savior. With exalted views of self, self-power, or self-righteousness, then there are sure to be low views of Christ, but when self goes down, then Christ at once rises. It may be said of self, as John the Baptist once said of Christ and himself, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).
“If you have had shallow views of your own natural depravity, then you have had very shallow thoughts of Christ. If you think sin to be delightful, if Gethsemane and Golgotha and Calvary seem to you to be names without weight or meaning, if you have never groaned under your sin, I do not wonder that you think little of Christ’s groans and griefs and bloody sweat.
“But when you come to know yourself as verily lost and undone, then you will prize your Deliverer. When the dread word lost has seemed to fall like a death knell upon your ear, then the tidings that the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost will be sweet to you as the Christmas carol of the angels when they sang, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men” (Luke 2:14). If you feel the disease, you will value the Physician; if you know your own emptiness, you will prize Christ’s fullness. But if you reject the teaching of the Holy Spirit, which shows you your utter helplessness and worthlessness, in so doing you have rejected Christ and put far from you that Savior who alone came to save sinners.
“It is, then, a most precious thing when we begin to sink lower and lower in our own estimation. At the commencement of spiritual life, we believe that we are nothing; as we advance, we find that we are less than nothing. May the Holy Spirit so work in you!”
(From his sermon, The Spirit’s Office Toward Disciples)
Brian J. Mikul 