(Please note: This first published on July 2nd, 2020.)
I might be the proudest person I know. I like to believe I’m right, that I know how to fix every situation and am the perfect person to do so, of course. I want others to think I’m smart, important, talented, successful. But I was called to so much more!
Whenever I give in to pride, I place myself in direct opposition to God and His purposes. 1 Peter 5:5 says, “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble” (NIV). That’s a strong statement! The word our Bibles translate as opposes, antitassó in the original Greek, means to square off,” “reject the whole arrangement,” and “is used in antiquity of organized resistance, like an army assuming a specific battle-array position to resist in “full alignment”; to disagree (oppose) intensely.]*”
Whatever my pride fights for, whatever I think I might gain in feeding it, that thing can never be worth the cost.
I cannot live for Christ and myself. I cannot build His church while chasing my agenda.
Self-love nearly destroyed my marriage. It told me my way was best, and my needs and comfort were most important. Oh, the damage my husband and I created, the trust we weakened, through our constant fight for self. But then God began to shift our hearts and our thoughts until they more closely aligned with His. He showed us, while pride creates ever-increasing dysfunction, mutual submission and humility lead to relational health.
This, Scripture says, is how we are to interact with one another:
3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.
5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to His own advantage;
7 rather, He made Himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
He humbled Himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross! (Philippians 2:3-8, NIV).
Christ’s motivation wasn’t lowliness for lowliness’s sake. Love, for you and I, drove Him to the cross. He also grasped His true worth. Not once did He think, “I am nothing and worth nothing.” Rather, His unshakable, certain identity enabled Him to so humbly die. He knew precisely who He was. His value wasn’t dependent on how others viewed Him, how prestigious He appeared, or the societal successes He achieved. Those standards were far too insufficient, too inferior, to ever encapsulate Christ. He was, and is, God’s Son, matchless in wisdom and power, the Savior to whom, one day, all knees will bow.
Similarly, God doesn’t ask us to humble ourselves to bend our backs. Instead, He invites us to life our gazes onto Him, tune our ears to His voice, and follow however He leads.
In Christ, we’re chosen, redeemed, and empowered children of God, people of incomprehensible worth. Identifying ourselves in any other way causes us to live shadowed versions of ourselves.
When our identity is moored in Christ, however, our feet and our hearts remain firm; 
He empowers us to love fully, as we are fully loved. Strengthened for humility, we begin to realize it is pride that is true weakness and our greatest deception.
Love, Christ’s love, soaked deep into every crevice, enabling us to live and love as He loves us: free of striving, record keeping or conniving. That doesn’t mean we allow abuse, for love never tolerates disease. Rather, in all circumstances, we speak truth, seek health, and the authority of Christ, our humble yet victorious Savior, over all, ourselves included.
Humility may appear to bend us low, but in reality, it elevates us to our rightful place—secure, for eternity, in our Savior’s love—the One who knows us, chose us, and calls us to greatness, not by man’s deceived and subjective standards, but His.
