Piper, the founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary, offered his advice about battling pride in a piece posted to his Desiring God website.
According to Piper, one way to battle pride is recognizing the way that God saved you.
“Let me commend this way of battling pride: a close look at the way God saved you — a close, repeated, regular attention to the way God saved you,” he said. “He saved you in a way that no matter how you look at it, if you look at it biblically, it was designed to humble you and destroy your pride. That’s the way you were saved.”
Piper also shared a number of scriptures that reflected how people should perceive being prideful.
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9),” he wrote before sharing another scripture. “There’s a principle here that Paul expresses in 1 Corinthians 4:7: ‘What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?’”
Piper went on to share how faith can help people overcome their pride.
“God appointed faith as the only way of salvation. And the way of faith excludes pride. It does so in two ways: (1) Faith, by nature, looks away from ourselves to God,” he wrote. “That’s what faith is — a looking away from ourselves to God. (2) Faith itself is a gift of God.”
The Bible teacher who served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis for 33 years, reminded people that Jesus Christ died on the cross for all sins–including pride.
When people are prideful, Piper said that can be like making a mockery of Christ.
“All self-exaltation is a re-crucifixion of Christ because he died to kill pride. Every boast, therefore, mocks the suffering of Jesus,” he said. “And I end on this: every humble attitude, every humble act of faith, glorifies the grace of God in Christ.”
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