Want God to oppose your life and ministry? There’s an easy way: become proud.
James 4:6 always stops me in my tracks. Quoting from Proverbs 3:34, James writes, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”
God is gracious. He delights in giving grace to his people. Verse 6 begins by saying, “But he gives more grace.” James wasn’t talking about saving grace. He was referring to fresh supplies of grace for living in this broken world. No matter how much grace we need to live and serve him, God’s got us covered. He isn’t stingy with his grace. He never runs out. Any individual or church that wants more of God’s grace can be assured that God will provide it in abundance. “His resources are never at an end,” writes J.A. Motyer, “his patience is never exhausted, his initiative never stops, his generosity knows no limit: he gives more grace.”
But James provides us with a warning: it’s easy to forfeit God’s abundant grace. The best way to do so is to refuse to become proud: to refuse to admit our need of him, and to take on a bigger role in our minds than God intended. Pride leads us to resist authority and to look down on others, and it’s the best way to remove ourselves from God’s grace.
“Pride is the beginning of sin, the first impulse and movement toward evil,” wrote John Chrysostom. “Perhaps indeed it is both the root and the foundation.… For every sin begins from it, and is maintained by it.… There is therefore no evil like pride. It renders a man a demon, insolent, blasphemous, perjured, and makes him desirous of deaths and murders.” Pride is serious business.
When we’re proud, God opposes us. The word opposes was sometimes used in a military context to describe an army prepared for battle. When we’re proud, it’s as if God is prepared to do battle against us. I can’t think of a scarier thought.
The problem is that pride comes so naturally to all of us. The minute we think we’re not in danger of becoming proud is the moment we’re most in danger. “Oh Sir,” a lady said to Charles Spurgeon, “I pray for you every day that you may be kept humble!” Spurgeon expressed his appreciation, and confessed that he had never prayed the same for her. “There is no need for such prayers,” she replied, “for I am not tempted to be proud.” “How proud she was to have obtained such a delusion,” said Spurgeon.
We’re all in danger of becoming proud, never more so than when we think we’re not in danger.
I really don’t want God to oppose me, and I definitely don’t want God to oppose the church I’m privileged to pastor, which means that I must pursue humility. To pursue humility is to pursue God’s inexhaustible grace.
That means remembering that I’m not a big deal. It means resisting the urge to squabble with those who disagree with me. It means that I submit to God’s Word rather than following culture’s standards. It means pursuing holiness and taking God seriously. Pride is seeing God for who he is, and seeing myself in proportion to him.
The choice is stark. We can either choose God’s inexhaustible, unending supply of grace, or we can choose to think that we’re a big deal and that we know best. I long for the first. The churches and the lives that are most attractive are characterized by humility. God’s grace is tangible as you encounter them. No wonder: as Jack Miller said, God’s grace flows downhill to the low places, not uphill to the pompous and put-together places.
The path forward is clear for all of us: “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you” (James 4:10).
