The Pride Of Life

"Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever." 1 John 2:15-17 NASB (1995)

This is the most difficult Bible passage for me to obey. No other verses cut to the quick of what it means to be holy as these three do. God calls us to a life 'set apart' from the world in which we live. Once you become a Christian, you view people, events, and possessions through spiritual eyes rather than physical eyes. You see a dying world in which nothing matters that the world places importance on, such as material wealth or career advancement.

However, still living in the world, we as Christians possess a dual nature: we have the nature of Christ in us, but we also have the nature of sin in us. Sin is always just around the corner, even in the most unlikely of places, waiting to enter. An example could be when we are in the Word daily, communing with God, and hear that someone else is not as diligent in their devotions. The fleshly response to this would be to compare ourselves to them and thereby bolster our own egos. Pride (and sin) has now set in. In reality, we cannot even come close to the standard that God has set before us, and we all rely on His sovereign grace to accomplish the most menial of tasks. Click here for a great sermon preached by Spurgeon on this very topic.

In the end, as Spurgeon said, the conflict that we feel as Christians is the dueling of the dual natures within us. The struggle is good, for without it only two outcomes could have occured: we have achieved perfection, or sin has taken over completely. Since we will not achieve Christ-likeness until we enter Heaven, we should embrace the conflict and fight the good fight (1 Tim. 6:12) 'till the end, for this is our calling.