You are not a mature Christian, if you have a high esteem of yourself. He who boasts in himself is but a babe in Christ if indeed he is in Christ at all. Young Christians may think much of themselves. Growing Christians think themselves nothing. Mature Christians know that they are less than nothing. The more holy we are, the more we mourn our infirmities, and the humbler is our estimate of ourselves.
Wonderful was the grace that taught the once proud Pharisee thus to speak! Pride may be set down as "the sin" of human nature. The demon of pride was born with us and it will not die one hour before us! We are never so much in danger of being proud as when we think we are humble.
There is no sin into which the heart of man so easily falls as pride and yet there is no more vice which is more frequently, more emphatically, and more eloquently condemned in Scripture.
We are all proud. Pride can hide under a beggar's rags as well as under a minister's robes. Pride is a weed that will grow on a dunghill as well as in a palace garden; but it ought never to be allowed to grow in the heart of a Christian!
No matter how dear you are to God if pride is harbored in your heart, He will whip it out of you!
[Charles H. Spurgeon]
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2 Corinthians 12:11 … I am become a fool in glorying; ye have compelled me: for I ought to have been commended of you: for in nothing am I behind the very chiefest apostles, though I be nothing.
Ephesians 3:8 … Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ;
1 Timothy 1:15 … This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.❤
