What does Scripture say about pride?
Scripture treats pride in connection with seeing oneself as greater than one really is, forgetting dependence on God, and looking down on others. For that reason, the issue is not simply having confidence, but making the self the center. Pride closes a person to learning, makes…
Scripture treats pride in connection with seeing oneself as greater than one really is, forgetting dependence on God, and looking down on others. For that reason, the issue is not simply having confidence, but making the self the center. Pride closes a person to learning, makes repentance difficult, and damages relationships. Humility, by contrast, is not a sense of worthlessness; it is recognizing one's place rightly before God.
Proverbs and the prophetic writings often say that pride leads to downfall. This is not merely a logic of outward punishment; pride has a blinding effect within itself. When a person stops examining himself, he magnifies his errors and endangers the good of others. In the New Testament, the life of Jesus is especially decisive. In Philippians 2, the self-emptying of Christ is presented as the pattern for Christians. Though possessing true greatness, Christ gave himself for others and showed that real greatness is seen in service.
Across denominations the basic view is the same. Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant traditions all tend to treat pride as one of the root sins, though they may classify it differently or address it differently in spiritual formation. Traditions shaped strongly by monastic spirituality often discuss humility in greater detail as a discipline. Even so, the main idea does not change: when a human being attempts to take the place of God, spiritual disorder begins.
On a practical level, humility is not an artificial shrinking of the self. A person does not deny his gifts, but regards them as something entrusted to him. Listening to others, being able to apologize, remaining open to correction, and not claiming success as one's own alone are marks of this virtue. According to Scripture, the antidote to pride is learning to receive truth in love and to live in dependence on God's grace.